Teri Finneman (Kansas) has launched a new podcast, The First Ladies. Lisa Burns is the first guest discussing why studying first ladies matters. Burns and Finneman are editing a book, A Cambridge Companion to First Ladies, that will release next year.
Finneman’s book, Reviving Rural News, with Nick Mathews (Missouri) and Pat Ferrucci (Colorado Boulder) released in February.
Elisabeth is an assistant professor of journalism at St. John’s University in New York. Her research focuses on the history of propaganda, international journalism, media-public affairs, and press-military tensions in the twentieth century.
1. What is the primary focus or central question(s) of your history research?
My research broadly explores the history of international journalism, government propaganda, military-media relations, and freedom of speech during wartime. I research reporters’ interactions with propagandists during past conflicts and, collectively, my scholarship argues how important it is to: 1) have journalists as eyewitnesses and foreign news as sources of information during conflicts, and 2) for scholars to dig deep and reveal how governments continue to build proficiency in propaganda and censorship that restrict reporters’ access to all sides of the story.
Continue readingEdgar Simpson of The University of Southern Mississippi has won the 2024 Michael S. Sweeney Award for his article, “Manipulating the Sphere: Mississippi’s Post-Brown Offensive Against White Journalists.”
Presented by the History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), the Sweeney Award recognizes the outstanding article published in the previous volume of the scholarly journal Journalism History. The Division’s Publications Committee selected the article from among four finalists provided by Journalism History Editor Pam Parry. In addition to receiving a plaque and cash prize, Simpson will be honored during the History Division’s awards gala at this year’s AEJMC conference in Philadelphia.
Continue readingAndie Tucher of Columbia University is the winner of the 2023 Best Podcast Guest Award from Journalism History.
Tucher is the guest of “Episode 121: The Colonial Press,” which was released in February 2023. It was the top-rated episode of that year, drawing over 500 downloads.
“I’ve been so pleased to see that ever since I began working on the history and meaning of fake news I seem to have become much more interesting wherever I go,” Tucher said. “And I’m so grateful to the Journalism History podcast and to the great interviewer Teri Finneman for the opportunity to share my thoughts and insights with this even more interesting community of journalism history scholars. I appreciate how seriously you all have taken fake news and fake journalism, and I thank you for this honor!”
Continue readingWhat is your current position(s)? Assistant Teaching Faculty, Loyola University Maryland, and PhD candidate at University of Maryland.
What is your favorite class to teach? I have a couple of favorites but first and foremost is Media Ethics which I teach as a seminar course with a focus on exploring mass communication practices and ethics through a DEIJ lens. It is open to any student and a surprising number of students who are not Communications majors sign up every semester. As a result, the conversations are very dynamic and the energy in the room is always palpable. Students say it was a class where they learned a lot and felt involved in their learning process, and I always end up learning something new.
What is your current research project? My current research project is finishing my dissertation, an exploration of the experiences U.S.-based women journalists have with sexual harassment and sexual assault through their work, and their advice, given their personal exprience, to develop best practices for all journalists reporting on stories involving accusations of sexual harassment and sexual assault.
Fun fact about yourself? I can cook and it is one of my very favorite things to do. If I had to quit academia tomorrow and pick something new, I would cook like I was living a real life “The Bear,” making chaos menus for days.
The History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) is pleased to announce that Dr. Perry Parks will be the next editor of its journal, Journalism History.
The History Division officers unanimously voted to accept the Publications Committee’s recommendation to select Parks, an assistant professor in the School of Journalism at Michigan State University.
“Dr. Parks’ vision for the journal, his professional background, and his service commitment and research focus, make him the ideal person for moving Journalism History forward,” said Maddie Liseblad, chairwoman of the division’s Publications Committee. “He is a perfect fit for the position and a tremendous asset to our division.”
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Will Mari (LSU) won the Dr. Dimitrije Pivnick Award in Neuro and Psychiatric History, and with it conducted archival research at McGill University’s Osler Library of the History of Medicine, in July 2023. While there, he was also an invited visiting researcher at the Département de communication at the Université de Montréal.
What is your current position and favorite class taught: I am a brand new teaching assistant professor at the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication. It’s only my first semester here but my favorite class to teach so far has been multimedia storytelling. For some it’s their first experience making any sort of media in the journalistic form and it’s really gratifying to watch them grow in their confidence and capability.
What is your favorite journalism history scholarship that you’ve worked on so far: I got an article published during my Ph.D. that looked at the collective memory around the reporting of Fred Rogers’ famous congressional testimony to John Pastore in 1969. Examining how the current collective memory of the event grew out of the contemporary reporting of the time (and getting my first experience requesting and utilizing archival material) was a ton of fun!
Do you have any interesting projects in the pipeline: I’ve begun the arduous process of trying to prepare my recently defended dissertation for further publishing, hopefully as a book.
Fun fact about yourself: I got my start in media production (which ultimately led me here) making stop-motion LEGO short films as a kid.
Clash: Presidents and the Press in Times of Crisis (Potomac Books, 2022)
Describe the focus of your book.
Clash: Presidents and the Press in Times of Crisis examines the history of the shifting relationship between presidents and journalists from the founding of the United States until Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021. The book explores the forces – technological, economic, political, and social – and the personalities that have led to the often-tumultuous current relationship between the news media and the White House. Clash focuses specifically on times of crisis during the presidencies of John Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump. They are the ones who I think shed the most light on how we arrived at this point of heightened tension.
How did you come across this subject? Why did it interest you?
Since a young age, I have been interested in how reporters covered the presidency. My first book, Watergate’s Legacy: The Investigative Impulse, focused heavily on the Nixon administration and the fate of investigative journalism afterward. After Donald Trump was elected in 2016, I wanted to understand the historical dynamics that shaped his interactions with reporters. People frequently said his relationship with the news media was unprecedented; and, in some ways, it was, but I also wanted to analyze the ways that precedents had been established during other administrations.
Continue readingWhat is your current position, and what is your favorite aspect of your job?
I am a part-time journalism instructor in the Department of Media, Journalism, and Film at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where I teach journalism students the fundamentals of news reporting and writing. I also teach, mentor, and support first-year students as a full-time librarian at Miami University Libraries. I really enjoy doing research and supporting students and I get to do a lot of that in my role.
What inspired you to write “Boundary Work, Specialized Accreditation for Journalism, and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938,” which won the second-place faculty paper award at AEJMC 2023?
My dissertation advisor Mike Conway at Indiana University introduced me to the boundary work framework. I thought it would be interesting to apply that framework to the history of journalism education, and the development of specialized accreditation. But then I just sort of stumbled upon this legal dispute between a newspaper in Jackson, Tennessee, and the federal government over the application of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Then I started seeing this court case get referenced in primary documents. So, it just sort of came together. Boundary work, specialized accreditation for journalism, and the Fair Labor Standards Act.
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