Matthew C. Ehrlich is a professor emeritus of journalism at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Describe the focus of your book.
The book is a historical case study about explosive ideas and the struggle to spark, spread, contain, or extinguish them on college campuses. The setting is the University of Illinois in the early 1960s: a traditionally conservative Midwestern campus in an era of idealism over civil rights and fear over nuclear annihilation. The protagonists are two Illinois professors: Leo Koch, a biology teacher and humanist who was fired after writing a letter to the editor that condoned premarital sex; and Revilo Oliver, a classics teacher and white supremacist who was not fired after writing an article that accused the recently assassinated President Kennedy of being a loathsome traitor. The book tries to cast fresh light on the meaning of academic freedom, the early 1960s, and the continuing debates over free speech on college campuses.
How did you come across this subject? Why did it interest you?
I’ve long been interested in how the news media have historically covered controversial subjects related to higher education. That interest comes from working in journalism and teaching at state universities. I found that premarital sex was a hot news topic in the early 1960s; everyone from Margaret Mead to Gloria Steinem was writing about it. That in turn alerted me to Leo Koch, who made news during that time period for what then seemed like far-out views on sex. After he was fired, the University of Illinois strengthened its academic freedom protections, and one of the beneficiaries was Revilo Oliver. I was reluctant at first to write about Oliver given that he was a racist and anti-Semite. But I decided that addressing the Koch and Oliver cases together would make for a stronger book with broader relevance to what we’re going through these days.
Dane S. Claussen taught on Semester at Sea as it sailed from Germany to Dubai via 11 ports in the Mediterranean, Suez Canal, Kenya, and India. During the Fall 2022 semester, he taught International Mass Communication, Media in Society, and an intermediate-level journalism course. Since March 2022, he has been copyeditor for a new Shanghai International Studies University-based scholarly journal published by De Gruyter, Online Media and Global Communication (Louisa Ha, editor). Since June 2022, Claussen has been leading the effort by the South Asia Communication Association (SACA) to launch its own scholarly journal. In September 2021, he completed his four-year term as Editor of Newspaper Research Journal. In Spring 2021, he was one of two official candidates for AEJMC vice president.
Cayce Myers (Virginia Tech) was elected to the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) National Board of Directors representing the Mid Atlantic District. He will serve a two-year term.
Owen V. Johnson, associate professor emeritus at Indiana University and longtime member of the History Division, died on August 6, 2022 at the age of 76. He was an expert on World War II correspondent Ernie Pyle, as well as Russian and East European mass media and Czech and Slovak history.
In 2020, he joined the Journalism History podcast to talk about his edited collection of Pyle’s columns, At Home With Ernie Pyle.
Johnson’s friend and former colleague, professor emeritus Steven Raymer of the Indiana University Media School, delivered the eulogy at Johnson’s funeral. Here is an excerpt.
“With his intellect and humanity, Owen made the bedrock values of journalism — independence, truthfulness, accuracy, fairness to the facts, holding the powerful accountable, and building an informed citizenry — come to life in his classes, his scholarly writing, and his own journalism and broadcasting. And I might add, these same ideals were often the topic of our frequent conversations in the corridors of Ernie Pyle Hall — Owen with his coffee cup and impish smile often one step ahead of me in discussing the day’s news. I am still wresting with what Owen might have said at lunch today on the one-year anniversary of the Fall of Kabul, the Afghan capital. Surely he would have an opinion on America’s longest war, just as surely as he knew the menus from memory at our favorite pubs.
Each issue, Clio highlights the latest episode of the Journalism History podcast and recommend a set of episodes from the archives. The podcasts — available on the website and through many podcast players — are excellent teaching tools, easy to add to your syllabi. Transcripts of each episode are available online.
This issue we highlight the origins of the paparazzi, celebrity journalism, and the college cover girls on Life magazine.
The virtual AEJMC history division meeting in late July included a summary of the division’s activities during 2021-22, membership, leadership voting, transitions and information, and a presentation of the success of Journalism History and its affiliated activities. More details, including a review of the meeting minutes, follows below.
2021-2022 Year In Review
Cayce Myers (Virginia Tech), discussed the History Division’s year. The History Division continued a number of successful initiatives. Research initiatives: Journalism History increased reviewer pool, including more international reviewers. We also ran two research paper competitions. JJCHC was held virtually while Southeast Colloquium was in-person.
This book examines the history of the Irish American press from the Early National period to the Kennedy presidency. We look at individual journalists who created the Irish American press, the journalists that constituted it, and, most importantly, the transnational nature of that particular press genre.
How did you come across this subject? Why did it interest you?
Editors Debra Reddin van Tuyll and Mark O’Brien met a decade or more ago at the annual meeting of the Newspapers and Periodicals History Forum of Ireland. During the conference, they began a discussion of how similarly, yet how differently, historians from different parts of the world told the stories of the Irish and the Irish diaspora presses and also how, together, they all seemed to constitute on continuous story. Or maybe a story on a continuum is more accurate. Van Tuyll and O’Brien believed they had an insight into a useful new way to frame journalism history stories, to both deepen and broaden understanding of how a diaspora press is connected to its home and vice versa. They thought this idea might be worth exploring with other historians in a couple of academic gatherings, though they didn’t have a name for it initially.
University of Wisconsin-Madison, School of Journalism and Mass Communication
Where did you get your Ph.D.?
Princeton University
What’s your current favorite class?
History of U.S. Media. We analyze a primary source together in every lecture, and I love puzzling through sources with students seeing them for the first time.
While I write this, I am still reflecting on how great the Detroit conference was. Most of all, I enjoyed seeing people in person again. There’s a certain positive energy that happens when we get together. Our gala event was terrific and so were the research paper and panel sessions. That feeling of “too many great sessions and not enough time to be at them all” was back. There were COVID concerns, but we were masked and together again. That was the best part – being together.
As I begin my year as chair of the History Division, I have been thinking about my personal experiences with this division. And the one thing I keep coming back to is its people. The past chairs have been terrific, and I have big shoes to fill. The executive team puts in countless hours behind the scenes, working for everyone’s benefit. The general membership steps up to help when needed. That is especially evident when we do the call for reviewers each year.
Sharon Bramlett-Solomon, an associate professor in the Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, is the 2022 recipient of the Lionel C. Barrow Jr. Award for Distinguished Achievement in Diversity Research and Education. The award is presented annually by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication and supported by the Minorities and Communication (MAC) Division and the Commission on the Status of Minorities (CSMN). Dr. Bramlett-Solomon will be honored at the MAC Awards and Social on Aug. 4 during the 2022 AEJMC Conference in Detroit.
Janice Hume, the Carolyn McKenzie and Donald E. Carter Chair for Excellence in Journalism at the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, has been named the college’s associate dean of academic affairs.
Brian Creech has been named Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies at Temple University’s Lew Klein College of Media and Communication.
Ross F. Collins, professor of communication at North Dakota State University, Fargo, has published a 420-page book entitled Chocolate: A Cultural Encyclopedia (ABC-CLIO, 2022). As an academic history it is fully referenced, includes a timeline and bibliography. Collins explained that while he has primarily published in journalism history, this book gave him an opportunity to work in his original discipline of cultural history. The book emphasizes economic, colonial, military, social and medical history of chocolate over 500 years. Collins has been a member of AEJMC’s history division since 1990 and is a former president of the American Journalism Historians Association.
Kristin Gustafson was promoted from Associate Teaching Professor to Teaching Professor at the School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences at the University of Washington, Bothell. Gustafson is entering her third year on the AEJMC Teaching Committee.
“Acadian Airwaves: A History of Cajun Radio” by Noah Arceneaux, a professor at San Diego State University, has been accepted for publication at the Journal of Radio Studies and Audio Media. Thanks to some family connections, Arceneaux has also been invited to present this material at the Grand Reveil Acadien, a festival to celebrate Cajun culture that happens every five years. In October 2022, he’ll be traveling to Lafayette, Louisiana to speak at the event, and most likely do more research for future extensions of the project.
Joe Campbell, a professor at American University, participated in a discussion about myths and counter-narratives of the Watergate scandal in the run-up in June to the 50th anniversary of the break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters that set off the scandal. Joe described why the “heroic-journalist” myth has become, and remains, Watergate’s dominant popular narrative. The two-day online conference was organized by Shane O’Sullivan of the Kingston School of Art in London and included presentations and reminiscences by Watergate prosecutors, lawyers, and FBI agents. Joe, a former History Division chair, also discussed Watergate mythology in a pre-anniversary essay for the Conversation.
Amber Roessner has been promoted to full professor at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville’s School of Journalism and Electronic Media.
Each issue, Clio highlights the latest episode of the Journalism History podcast and recommend a set of episodes from the archives. The podcasts — available on the website and through many podcast players — are excellent teaching tools, easy to add to your syllabi. Transcripts of each episode are available online.
This summer we highlight U.S. presidents and the media.
Episode 18: Wars on the Press by Richard Nixon and Donald Trump Professor Mark Feldstein discusses the contentious relationships between U.S. presidents and the American press, including the extreme measures Richard Nixon went to in order to silence Jack Anderson, the most famous investigative journalist of the era.
Episode 43: Jimmy Carter and the Media Professor Amber Roessner joins the podcast to talk about her book that covers the astonishing Carter presidential campaign. Roessner focuses on the construction of a political image that beat the odds and signaled a new chapter for American political campaigns.
Episode 75: Nixon’s War on TelevisionPresident Richard Nixon’s press management strategies are the focus of another podcast episode, this one discussing the relationship between the Nixon Administration and ABC News. Dale Cressman details what happened to that relationship in the wake of Vice President Agnew’s attack on television journalists.
BONUS EPISODE: Front Row at the Trump Show Podcast host Teri Finneman speaks with Jonathan Karl about his book Front Row at the Trump Show. Karl is the ABC News Chief Washington correspondent and co-anchor of “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.” He is also the former president of the White House Correspondents’ Association.
And one more for the road:
Episode 69: Coverage of Detroit’s 12th Street Riot For those of you interested in learning more about Detroit newspapers and the city’s history before AEJMC in a few weeks, check out the episode discussing newspaper coverage of the July 1967 Detroit riots. Brandon Storlie joins the podcast to explain how and why the reporting was so problematic and how that connects to current issues in media coverage.
