Patrick File, associate professor at the Reynolds School of Journalism, University of Nevada, Reno
Where you work: Reynolds School of Journalism, University of Nevada, Reno
Where you got your Ph.D.: University of Minnesota
Current favorite class: This is like asking to pick a favorite child! I’m certainly feeling the gravity of teaching our required First Amendment class these days. I also teach a fun class on using FOIA and public records laws in reporting.
Current research project: A book project on the early legal problems encountered in the incorporation of photography into journalism, circa 1880-1920.
Fun fact about yourself: I’m a twin! My twin sister is a high school music teacher.
It’s hard to believe that we are just two weeks away from meeting in Detroit for our annual AEJMC conference. Even more difficult to believe is that the last time we met was in 2019 in Toronto, Canada. Our excellent leadership team, Maddie Liseblad (California State, Long Beach) and Rachel Grant (Florida), are excited to see everyone in person. As I have said before, AEJMC is not designed to be a virtual organization. The friendships and connections made at the annual convention are a big part of what the History Division as an organization does. In many ways, those friendships, collaborations, and mentorship are the heart of what our division does best.
There are many things that have changed in the past two years with AEJMC, and our leadership team has worked hard to facilitate the familiar and the new. One familiar aspect that we are excited about is the annual division Gala, which will be held on August 2nd at 7:30 p.m. CST. The Gala is where we plan to give our annual awards. The cost for attendance is $5.
A new aspect of our annual conference is the virtual business meeting scheduled for July 28th at 1 p.m. EST. The business meeting is being held on Zoom and will be facilitated by AEJMC through a Zoom link sent directly to members. A meeting agenda and annual division report was sent to members on the division’s listserv on June 26th. If you did not receive the information for the business meeting, please email me directly at mcmyers@vt.edu.
The virtual business meeting will serve as our only business meeting for the conference, so there will not be a separate meeting in Detroit. At the meeting we will cover the traditional agenda, and elect the new Second Vice Chair/Research Chair for 2022-2023. On the agenda are also some voting items, so please plan to attend even if you are unable to join us in person in Detroit.
I want to thank the leadership of the History Division for their hard work during unprecedented times. The quality of what our division provides members is the product of many hours of work from many dedicated members. I also want to take this opportunity in my final Clio letter to thank Maddie Liseblad (California State, Long Beach) and Rachel Grant (Florida) for their amazing work this past year. The Division is stronger for their leadership. I also want to note that my role as chair would not be possible without the help and dedication of my immediate predecessors, Will Mari (Louisiana State) and Teri Finneman (Kansas), who were always there for guidance and support.
Finally, I want to thank our members for all that they have done to make this year a tremendous success. I have enjoyed the opportunity to serve as the History Division Chair, and am excited about the division’s future.-
Fake news has been a feature of American journalism since Publick Occurrences hit the streets of Boston in 1690. Paradoxically, however, the enduring battles to defeat fake news have helped give rise to a phenomenon even more hazardous to truth and democracy. I’m calling it “fake journalism”: the appropriation and exploitation of the outward forms of professionalized journalism in order to lend credibility to falsehood, propaganda, disinformation, and advocacy. As the media have grown ever more massive and ever more deeply entwined in the political system, so has fake journalism, to the point where it has become an essential driver of the political polarization of public life.
How did you come across this subject? Why did it interest you?
I’ve been writing about fake news since long before it became a meme. I’ve always been interested in the evolution of the conventions of truth-telling–in journalism but also in history, photography, personal narrative, and other nonfiction forms–and it became very clear to me that you can’t study what’s accepted as true without also understanding what isn’t, what wasn’t, and what shouldn’t be.
Andie Tucher, H. Gordon Garbedian Professor of Journalism and director of the Communication PhD Program, Columbia Journalism School
What archives or research materials did you use?
My main—and favorite—sources were searchable databases of historical newspapers and magazines (ProQuest, Chronicling America, Newspapers.com, Readex Historical Newspapers, American Periodicals, OpinionArchives, lots of individual and proprietary databases), which allowed me to follow particular stories across eras and regions and to watch how they grew, mutated, and clashed. What a welcome change from the hassles, limitations, and discomforts of the microfilm reader!
How does your book relate to journalism history? How is it relevant to the present?
It addresses the whole three-century-plus history of U.S. journalism, and concludes by arguing that it’s more important than ever for the true professional journalists to strengthen and maintain the traditional standards and conventions of the craft. They must commit themselves to the rigorous, fact-based, non-partisan, intellectually honest search for truth–wherever the evidence might lead.
What advice do you have for other historians that are working on or starting book projects?
Know when to stop! Every time I thought I’d come to the end, some fresh incident, provocation, or outrage involving fake journalism or fake news would erupt and tempt me to add just a few more paragraphs… Of course you want your book to be good, but you also want it to be done.
We have great history division sessions planned for Detroit AEJMC conference. The division is involved in seven panels and has four research paper sessions planned, plus an awards gala event.
The gala will take place on Tuesday, Aug. 2 at 7:30 p.m. Please note that it requires pre-registration. Our top paper session is scheduled for Friday, Aug. 5 at 6 p.m. You can find the rest of the conference schedule here, https://community.aejmc.org/conference/schedule/program. We hope to see you in Detroit!
Joint New York Conference Needs Your Help! We’re looking for an AEJMC History Division representative to help organize the Joint Journalism and Communication History Conference (JJCHC) for spring 2023.
JJCHC is a one-day interdisciplinary conference held in New York. It is co-sponsored by the American Journalism Historians Association (AJHA) and the AEJMC History Division.
The AEJMC History Division representative would join AJHA’s A.J. Bauer and Rich Shumate as a conference co-chair. If interested, please contact current Vice Chair Maddie Liseblad (Madeleine.Liseblad@csulb.edu). More information about the joint conference can be found at https://ajha.wildapricot.org/JJCHC
Kathryn Olmsted, professor of history at the University of California, Davis, published in March 2022 her new book, The Newspaper Axis: Six Press Barons Who Enabled Hitler, with Yale University Press. The book examines the six most powerful press lords in the United States and Great Britain in the 1930s and argues that they prevented their tens of millions of readers from understanding the fascist threat. Some ignored or appeased Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler; others were overtly pro-fascist in their coverage. The book shows that the right-wing media’s embrace of authoritarian dictators has deep roots in the past.
Joe Campbell, a professor in the School of Communication at American University, published his latest polling-related op-ed recently in TheHill. Campbell advised caution about way-too-early predictions about this year’s mid-terms, noting that “expectations about national elections, confidently asserted months in advance, are prone to error — a historical reality tends to be overlooked as a dominant narrative takes hold about an unfolding national campaign.” Drawing on his latest book, Lost in a Gallup: Polling Failure in U.S. Presidential Elections (University of California, 2020), Campbell noted that the historical record “encourages caution and humility about expectations developed six or seven months ahead of national elections.”
Maddie Liseblad,an assistant professor of journalism at California State University Long Beach, has been awarded a Fulbright Specialist Award to teach at Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca in Romania in May. She will be lecturing in journalism and public relations classes at the undergraduate and graduate levels. With its about 45,000 students and 365 different programs, the public research university is the largest university in Romania. Liseblad is one of 400 U.S. citizens who will spend time overseas as a part of the Fulbright Specialist program.
Jon Marshall’s new book, Clash: Presidents and the Press in Times of Crisis, was released May 1 by Potomac Books. Clash explores the political, economic, social, and technological forces that have shaped the relationship between U.S. presidents and the press during times of crisis. Jon is an associate professor in the Medill School of Northwestern University. He also had an op-ed, “Calling Democratslike Biden fascists has always been false,” published on April 25 in the Washington Post’s “Made by History” section.
Anthony R. Fellow, Ph.D., who has taught at California State Fullerton, California State Los Angeles, and the University of Southern California, is author of the fourth edition ofAmerican Media History: The Story of Journalism and Mass Media. It is the story of a nation and of the events in the long battle to disseminate information, entertainment, and opinion in a democratic society. It is the story of the men and women whose inventions, ideas, and struggles shaped the nation and its media system and fought to keep both free. New chapters cover women’s rights, civil rights movements, significant moments in media history (such as 9/11 and the 2020 pandemic), fake news, bias news, and the social media presences of Barack Obama and Donald J. Trump.
Kimberly Voss, professor of journalism at the University of Central Florida, has been named a board member of the Florida Council for History Education. She has also been named the book series editor for Mediating American History with Peter Lang.
By Kimberly Voss, professor, University of Central Florida
Martha Mitchell and Attorney General John Mitchell in 1970. (UPI)
Martha Mitchell was a major figure during Watergate – although you would not know that from much of political and journalism history. The current Starz series Gaslit features the story of Martha Mitchell – played by Julia Roberts. Martha Mitchell was an American socialite and the wife of President Richard Nixon’s Attorney General John Mitchell, a good friend of Nixon and head of the Committee to Re-Elect the President. The Mitchells lived in the infamous Watergate building.
A fascinating figure, Martha Mitchell earned the reputation of being an outspoken media celebrity with the nickname “Martha the Mouth” and the “Mouth of the South.” She was a media darling. She would often phone female reporters with political gossip after reading her husband’s papers.
She had stories to tell. Martha Mitchell was the first person to speak about Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate scandal. (The series title was a nod to the fact that the truth she was told was treated as lies.) As John Mitchell’s wife, she was one of the most well-known Watergate whistleblowers. In the famous 1977 interview with the British journalist David Frost , Nixon said: “If it hadn’t been for Martha Mitchell, there’d have been no Watergate.”
Many have questioned why Martha Mitchell has been largely left out of the histories about Watergate. The same could be said about the women who covered Martha Michell. For example, longtime Washington reporters Vera Glaser and Malvina Stephenson became journalism partners during the presidential election night in 1968. They got information from John Mitchell and other Nixon employees. Glaser had reached out to Stephenson and suggested a joint column: Offbeat Washington. (Glaser had been the press secretary for a Republican and Stephenson had been a spokesperson for a Democrat.)
Several male reporters had teamed up for columns and they would be the first women. One of the more common sources for “Offbeat Washington” was Martha Mitchell. The Nixon administration had invited wives to cabinet meetings, as a way of reaching out to women. One wife complained to Glaser. The wife said she called Martha Mitchell to say she did not want to be part in a particular program, “but Martha is someone you don’t say ‘no’ to. Martha didn’t realize until later that her zeal for what she termed ‘helping both the country and the Administration’ wasn’t shared by everyone. She forged ahead, looking for meaningful thing the wives to do.”[i] Apparently, Nixon later became concerned. Glaser noted that an unnamed Cabinet wife that the president had turned to her husband and “completely out of the blue, in the middle of another conversation, asked, ‘What are going to do with Martha Mitchell’?”[ii]
According to Stephenson: “Martha was comparatively anonymous until our first column in October 1969, which proved her a talking doll. She would call us very early in the morning.”[iii] Glaser recalled that the pair were threatened by then-Attorney General John Mitchell, “who told us if we quoted him he’d see that we never got inside the White House or Justice Department again.[iv]
In the weeks prior to the Watergate break in, Martha Mitchell had been interviewed by reporters and anybody who would listen to her about the Republicans carrying out “dirty tricks” against the Democrats after overhearing her husband’s conversations.
Soon after the burglary, John Mitchell resigned as attorney general. Martha Mitchell gave testimony in a deposition regarding the Democratic Party‘s civil suit against the CRP. In 1975, John Mitchell was convicted of perjury, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy, He served 19 months in prison. Martha Mitchell died in 1976 at 57 years old.
The Gaslit series featured Martha Mitchell being interviewed by Winzola “Winnie” McLendon. She asked hard news questions – about Martha Mitchell being banned from Air Force One and how she felt about the Vietnam War. McLendon couches her tough questions by saying that she was reporting only from a women’s magazine – although it was a real interview. When Martha Mitchell speaks to her husband, she also defends her interview because it was just a women’s magazine.
It has been a long historical oversight for Martha Mitchell – as well as the women journalists who covered her. Instead, we too often cover the same politicians and reporters in a sort of echo chamber. It marginalizes the many women who played an overlooked part of our history. Now that Martha Mitchell has been featured, it is also time for McLendon, Glaser, Malvina Stephenson and their colleagues to be examined.
[i] Winzola McLendon, Martha: The Life of Martha Mitchell (New York: Ballantine’s, 1979), 158.
[ii] McLendon, 161.
[iii] Hoyt and Leighton, Drunk Before Noon: The Behind-The-Scenes Story of the Washington Press Corps, (New York: Prentice Hall, 1979), 193.
Each month, 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 month we highlight political radicalism and the fight for the First Amendment.
Episode 101: Anna Popkova – The Immigrant Press and the Red Scare Researcher Anna Popkova describes the importance of the immigrant press in the early 1900s to help build and inform communities new to America and how critical they were during times of sweeping discrimination.
Episode 35: Bailey Dick – Dorothy Day and The Catholic Worker Host Nick Hirshon spoke with Bailey Dick about the radical journalism of Dorothy Day during her five decades at the helm of The Catholic Worker.
Carolyn Kitch, winner of the Donald L. Shaw Senior Scholar Award
The History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication will honor Dr. Carolyn Kitch as the Donald L. Shaw Senior Scholar during the Division’s Awards Gala on Aug. 2. Dr. Kitch is the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Journalism in the Department of Journalism and the Media and Communication Doctoral Program of Temple University’s Klein College of Media and Communication.
Established in 2020, the award honors a scholar who has a record of excellence in media history that has spanned a minimum of 15 years, including division membership. It is named in honor of the pioneering journalism theoretician, distinguished journalism historian and former head of the History Division, who taught for almost half of a century at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Hussman School of Journalism and Media.
“We were gratified by the quality of the nominees for this prestigious award, which is only in its third year,” the judges said. “Dr. Carolyn Kitch’s work is astounding in its depth, breadth, quantity, and quality. Where most scholars might aspire to produce field-defining work in one area, Dr. Kitch has done so in two: memory studies and the history of magazines. In addition to her remarkable publication record, she has made an immeasurable contribution to the field of journalism history by mentoring numerous younger scholars. Although there were other worthy nominees for this award, Dr. Kitch’s career accomplishments in research and mentorship are unparalleled.”
Dr. Kitch has authored, co-authored, or co-edited five books: Front Pages, Front Lines: Media and the Fight for Women’s Suffrage (University of Illinois Press, 2020), co-edited with Linda Steiner and Brooke Kroeger; Pennsylvania in Public Memory: Reclaiming the Industrial Past (Penn State University Press, 2012); Journalism in a Culture of Grief (Routledge, 2008), co-authored with Janice Hume; Pages from the Past: History and Memory in American Magazines (University of North Carolina Press, 2005); and The Girl on the Magazine Cover: The Origins of Visual Stereotypes in American Mass Media (University of North Carolina Press, 2001). Additionally, she has published more than 70 journal articles, book chapters, and reviews and is a member of the editorial boards of 11 scholarly journals.
Based in her record of research, Dr. Kitch was presented the prestigious Guido H. Stempel III Award for Journalism and Mass Communication Research in 2018 from the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University, given for a body of work that has made an impact in our discipline. In 2006, she won the James W. Carey Media Research Award from the Carl Couch Center for her second book, Pages from the Past (University of North Carolina Press). Moreover, she is a prior winner of AEJMC’s Under-40 Award for excellence in research, teaching and service.
Despite her record of tremendous accomplishments and honors, news of the award surprised the always humble and ever gracious Dr. Kitch.
“This is a humbling honor, and a somewhat bittersweet one in light of Dr. Shaw’s passing last fall,” she noted. “The wide range of his scholarship was an inspiration to me, and he himself was very kind and encouraging when I first attended AEJMC as a graduate student. Similarly, it was the History Division in which I found my first research community, with so many wonderful academic role models. My own scholarly confidence grew within and because of that culture, which has inspired my work for 25 years. Especially for these reasons, I am deeply grateful for this recognition, and for the support of my colleagues, nationally and at Temple, who made it possible.”
During her 21 years at Temple, Dr. Kitch has taught undergraduate and graduate classes on media history, media and social memory, gender and media, visual communication, journalism theory, magazine journalism, and cultural studies. She also has been a Faculty Fellow in the Center for the Humanities at Temple. Previously, she taught at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and worked as a magazine editor and writer for McCall’s, Good Housekeeping, and Reader’s Digest.
Within those classrooms, Dr. Kitch mentored countless undergraduate and graduate students, who have gone on to illustrious careers of their own, including Sue Robinson, Rick Popp, and Carrie Teresa, just to name a few at the graduate level only, and they regularly cite the influence of her contributions on their lives.
“Carolyn Kitch is most deserving of the Shaw Senior Scholar award not only because of her exceptional record of research, but also because of her reputation as a productive, caring, and supportive mentor,” Teresa said. “I have had the pleasure of knowing Carolyn for over ten years; during that time, she not only selflessly shared her expertise and experience with me, but she also gave me the confidence to pursue my research. She was the first scholar to introduce me to the study of journalism history, and her enthusiasm for the subject was infectious. She is not only brilliant, but she is passionate about her work. I am lucky to call Carolyn my mentor and friend. Composer Duke Ellington used the phrase ‘beyond category’ to describe people in whom he held the highest esteem; Carolyn is, without a doubt, ‘beyond category.’”
Division members Janice Hume and Brian Creech were among the scholars who nominated Dr. Kitch, noting that she shared many traits of Donald Shaw and highlighting her priceless contributions as a scholar, mentor, collaborator, and friend.
“Carolyn [Kitch] is one of those scholars who changes the way we think about journalism/mass communication history,” said Dr. Hume, who co-authored Journalism in a Culture of Grief with Dr. Kitch in 2008. “She is more than just highly productive, she is influential. She is also a generous mentor who brings along other scholars in our field.”
Added Dr. Creech, “Carolyn Kitch’s scholarship is foundational in the field. She has helped cement memory studies as a central means for understanding journalism and has written some of the most rigorous, lucid, and engaging scholarly prose in the field. Her insights remain urgent, and can be traced in the strains of research her works continue to inspire.
But her impact has also been uniquely personal. So many junior and mid-career scholars have moments of inspiration we can draw back to Professor Kitch. Whether it’s a reading that caused a change in perspective, a presentation that stimulated a new line of inquiry, a motivating comment or incisive review, or—for the luckiest among us—regular guidance and mentorship, Carolyn embodies the discipline at its most generative and generous.”
Dr. Kitch will receive a plaque and check for $200 during the division’s Awards Gala in conjunction with the AEJMC annual meeting.
Kimberley Mangun, Associate Professor at the University of Utah
Where do you work? I joined the Department of Communication at the University of Utah in 2006.
Where did you receive your Ph.D. from? I earned a Ph.D. in Communication and Society from the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication.
What is your current favorite class? I developed a beat-reporting project during a weeklong workshop on “Teaching Diversity Across the Curriculum” at the prestigious Poynter Institute in May 2007. Initially, it was incorporated into the semester-long intermediate reporting class I taught. Student-journalists covered a specific diverse beat for the entire term and wrote as many as four multisource stories for publication on a website called Voices of Utah (voices-of-utah.com). Over the years, that class has shifted from a mid-level course to a community-engaged learning capstone, and the name has changed; it is now called “Voices of Utah” to reflect the importance of the published reporting that students do about diverse populations in the Salt Lake Valley. To date, student-journalists have covered 15 different communities, some more than once, and the website I created has been viewed by almost 200,000 people from more than 160 countries.
What is a current research project? I’m taking a break from research after spending a decade working on my recent book about Birmingham World editor Emory O. Jackson and his fight for civil rights in Alabama between 1940 and 1975. But, I have long dreamed about creating a children’s book about another editor I’ve studied—Beatrice Morrow Cannady, leader of the Portland, Oregon, Advocate in the 1920s and 1930s. My dissertation and subsequent book have brought a lot of attention to the activist-editor—including a new elementary school named for her—and I would enjoy creating a book so youth can learn more about her passions for education and equality.
What is a fun fact about yourself? I love to eat grits, which is an unusual food choice for someone raised in Southern California. Whenever I travel in the South, I look for local mills where I can purchase cloth bags of yellow or white or blue grits. But once, TSA agents at Reagan National Airport were puzzled by a dense bag of grits I had purchased at nearby Mount Vernon. I tried to explain that the contents were similar to oatmeal or porridge but they still were dubious. I finally realized that one agent had a New York accent and asked about his familiarity with Italian cuisine. “Polenta!” I exclaimed, after the agent said he missed the city’s Italian food. “Grits are like polenta!” And with that, the two-pound bag was returned to my carry-on.
