Category Archives: Member News

Michael Stamm (Michigan State) and Gerry Lanosga (Indiana) Win 2023 Covert Award

The History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) congratulates Dr. Michael Stamm, Professor in the Department of History at Michigan State University (MSU), and Dr. Gerry Lanosga, Associate Professor in The Media School at Indiana University Bloomington (IU), as co-winners of the annual Covert Award for best mass communication history article, essay, or book chapter published in the previous year.

The award memorializes Dr. Catherine L. Covert, professor of journalism at Syracuse University, the first woman professor in Syracuse’s Newhouse School of Journalism and the first woman to head the AEJMC History Division, in 1975. Dr. Covert died in 1983. The award has been presented annually since 1985 (see https://mediahistorydivision.com/history-division-awards/covert-award/).

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AEJMC History Division Honors Erika Pribanic-Smith and Keith Greenwood for Exceptional Service

Dr. Erika Pribanic-Smith and Dr. Keith Greenwood are the recipients of the History Division’s 2023 Exceptional Service Award. This important award is given by the division’s chair and vice chair to members who have provided stellar service.

Pribanic-Smith is an associate professor at the University of Texas at Arlington. She is UTA’s journalism sequence coordinator and has served in many roles for the History Division, including as a chair. Her most recent role is as the web content coordinator for the division’s academic journal, Journalism History.

Greenwood is an associate professor at the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism. He was the division’s website administrator for many years before stepping down last year. He spearheaded the division’s move to a new website platform two years ago and continues his involvement with the division as the listserve administrator.

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AEJMC History Division announces Dr. John M. “Jack” Hamilton as winner of 2023 Donald L. Shaw Senior Scholar Award

The History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication will honor Dr. John M. “Jack” Hamilton as the Donald L. Shaw Senior Scholar during the Division’s Awards Gala on Aug. 6. The longtime journalist, author and public servant is the Hopkins P. Breazeale Professor of Journalism and founding dean at the LSU Manship School of Mass Communication and a global scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, in Washington, D.C.

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Author Q&A: Berkley Hudson, Photographing Trouble & Resilience in the American South

O.N. Pruitt’s Possum Town: Photographing Trouble & Resilience in the American South (University of North Carolina Press, 2021)

*Berkley Hudson is an associate professor emeritus at the University of Missouri School of Journalism*

Describe the focus of your book.

Photographer O. N. Pruitt (1891–1967) for forty years was the de facto documentarian of Lowndes County, Mississippi, and its county seat, Columbus—known to locals as “Possum Town.” His work recalls many Farm Security Administration photographers, but Pruitt was not an outsider; he was a community member with intimate knowledge of the town.

He photographed fellow white citizens and Black ones, too, in circumstances ranging from the mundane to the horrific: family picnics, parades, river baptisms, carnivals, fires, funerals, two of Mississippi’s last public and legal executions by hanging, and a lynching. From formal portraits to candid images, Pruitt’s documentary of a specific yet representative southern town offers viewers an invitation to meditate on the interrelations of photography, community, race, culture, and historical memory. The book is a companion to an NEH-traveling exhibition.

AEJMC History Division Announces Winners of the 2023 Jinx C. Broussard Award for Excellence in Teaching of Media History

The History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) has selected Ira Chinoy, Caitlin Cieslik-Miskimen, Bailey Dick, and Autumn Lorimer Linford as winners of the 2023 Jinx C. Broussard Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Media History.

The award acknowledges original, creative practices that journalism educators and media historians use in their classrooms to teach media history and seeks to share those techniques with other instructors. Ideas and practices focused on diversity, collaboration, community, and justice receive special attention in the selection process. The award is in its fifth year.

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Member Q&A: Allison Frisch

Where do you work: Ithaca College Journalism Department, in Ithaca, N.Y.

Tell us about your journalism experience: I was a journalist and editor at newspapers in NY and PA for 15 years before transitioning to a career in higher education.

Current favorite class: I really don’t have a favorite. In Investigative Journalism, we are embarking on a podcast project to document homelessness in Ithaca. In Journalism Innovation, we will create grassroots startups to present to the community at the end of the year. And Introduction to Journalism is always a favorite because I’m heartened to hear a new class of student journalists talk about why they are pursuing the field!

Member News: Jason Lee Guthrie, Jon Marshall, David E. Sumner, Carolina Velloso, Ashley Walter

Jason Lee Guthrie, an assistant professor at Clayton State University, won the Leibner Cooper Grant for Creative Productions on the History of Media from the Broadcast Education Association (BEA). Guthrie was honored for his podcast Recollecting Carter, which explores the life of President Jimmy Carter. The full series will consist of several episodes and will feature oral history interviews with journalists, archivists, and academic experts, as well as archival media from the 1960s to the present day. The podcast is available through Apple podcasts and Spotify.

Jon Marshall of Northwestern University won the Best Podcast Guest Award from Journalism History. He is a guest in “Episode 105: Watergate and the Press,” a top-rated episode of the podcast with over 400 downloads. Marshall was also selected for his support of the show in the past year. Journalism History chooses its top guest from the prior calendar year.

Membership Q&A: Dana Dabek

Where are you currently getting your Ph.D.?

Klein College of Media and Communication, Temple University

*Dana Dabek is a doctoral student at the Klein College of Media and Communication at Temple University*

What brought you to grad school?

Prior to starting my doctorate, I spent about fifteen years working in the non-profit sector. First, I worked as a program director at a historic site (which relates to my current research), and then for several years in fundraising and communications for grassroots community organizations. Over time, I became increasingly disenchanted with the sector. Not the organizations I was working for, but larger structural issues that would have been present no matter where I was working in the field. At the same time, I was craving the space to step back and take a big picture approach to social change, but my day-to-day was bogged down by the nitty gritty. I had gone into the non-profit sector after my master’s program because at that time I wanted to be in the nitty gritty. The circuitous nature of my career aspirations is not lost on me.

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Author Q&A: Matthew C. Ehrlich, Dangerous Ideas on Campus

Dangerous Ideas on Campus: Sex, Conspiracy and Academic Freedom in the Age of JFK (University of Illinois Press, 2021)

*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.

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Member News: Dane Claussen, Cayce Myers

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.