By Perry Parks, Membership Co-Chair, Michigan State University, parksp@msu.edu

Matt Cecil

Where you work: Minnesota State University, Mankato is a 15,000-student regional comprehensive university about an hour southwest of the Twin Cities.

Where you got your Ph.D.: I received my Ph.D. from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Iowa in 2000. #GoHawks!

Current favorite class: I currently serve as Interim Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs here, so unfortunately, I’m no longer in the classroom. I have been an administrator for the past 11 years, serving in positions ranging from department head to dean to provost. My favorite class was the large lecture survey course I taught every semester from 2000 to 2015, Introduction to Mass Communication.

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By Rachel Grant, University of Florida, Membership Co-Chair, rgrant@jou.ufl.edu

Jon Bekken’s (Albright College) co-authored chapter, “Spanish Firemen and Maritime Syndicalism, 1902-1940,” appears in Christopher J. Castaneda and Montse Feu, editors, Writing Revolution: Hispanic Anarchism in the United States. University of Illinois Press, 2019. The chapter explores the weekly newspaper Culture Obrera and its role in sustaining a union of marine firemen and their immigrant community. He presented a paper, “Participatory Journalism & Democratic Communication in the Working­-Class Press,” to the Labor and Working Class History Association’s annual conference in May 2019, and reviewed Mediating America: Black and Irish Press and the Struggle for Citizenship in the most recent Journalism History 45:4. His entry on “Unions of Newsworkers” appears in the International Encyclopedia of Journalism Studies, edited byTim Vos and Folker Hanusch (Wiley Blackwell Publishing, 2019). And a commentary, “Restoring Labor to the Public Sphere,” is scheduled to appear in the next Journalism & Communication Monographs.

Jinx Broussard (Louisiana State University) and Sheryl Kennedy Haydel (Louisiana State University) along with Shaniece Bickham (Nicholls State University) will present their research “Framing an Acceptable Image: The Political Campaigns of Four of America’s First Black Mayors” at the 2020 Joint Journalism and Communication History Conference. The study examines the mayoral campaigns of the first black mayors in four major U.S. cities to determine how their images were cultivated on the campaign trail and the extent to which the race of their selected press secretaries influenced their ability to be more palatable to white citizenry. The conference will take place on March 14 at the NYU Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.

Teri Finneman (University of Kansas) is attending Podcast Movement in February in Los Angeles to learn more tricks for marketing the Journalism History podcast. The conference is a major event for the podcasting industry and will include sessions on livestreaming, monetizing podcasts, podcast listeners and transcription.

On Feb. 29, Will Mari (Louisiana State University) will be giving a talk on his book, “A Short History of Disruptive Journalism Technologies: 1960-1990” (Routledge, 2019) which covers the computerization of the American newsroom during the latter Cold War. The talk will take place at the Living Computer Museum in Seattle, Washington. 

David T. Z. Mindich (Temple University) published his third book, “The Mediated World: A New Approach to Mass Communication and Culture” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019).  The Mediated World departs from other mass communication textbooks by emphasizing history (including pre-printing press) narrative, diversity issues, and media literacy.

Founder and director Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez’s (University of Texas) Voces Oral History Project is now officially a Center at the University of Texas at Austin. This signals permanence – so that the oral histories will live on (vocesoralhistoryproject.org). Voces celebrated its 20^th anniversary in November 2019. It has video recorded over 1,250 interviews and has over 10,000 digitized photographs and other documentation. Its physical archives are held at the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection at the UT-Austin Campus. Collections include the Latina/o WWII, Korean and Vietnam eras; Political and Civic Engagement; Professions. The Voces Oral History Summer Institute will be held June 8-12, 2020, on the University of Texas campus.This workshop is for faculty and graduate students wishing to use oral history in research and teaching. Instructors have created oral history projects, published widely using oral history, and are leaders in oral history publishing and teaching. Applications accepted through March 9, 2020. Visit vocessummerinstitute.org for more information.

Kimberly Wilmot Voss (University of Central Florida) will be participating in Beacon College Salon Series on Jan. 22. Her talk is titled “Politicking Politely: Well-behaved Women Making a Difference in the 1960s and 1970s.”

By Perry Parks, Michigan State University, Membership Co-Chair, parksp@msu.edu

Ed Adams

Where do you work: Brigham Young University

Where you got your Ph.D.: Ohio University

Current favorite class: Currently serving as Dean of the College of Fine Arts and Communications. I don’t get much opportunity to teach.

Current research project: Dabbling with a couple of Public Relations History projects.

Fun fact: I really like mowing my lawn.

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By Rachel Grant, University of Florida, Membership Co-Chair, rgrant@jou.ufl.edu

Pam Parry (Southeast Missouri State University) was promoted to professor in Fall 2019.

Phillip J.Hutchison (University of Kentucky) published an article titled “Gay Talese and Floyd Patterson: Constructing a Liminal Hero for an Ambivalent Age” in  Journal of Sports Media Spring-Fall 2019.

Linda Steiner (University of Maryland-College Park), Carolyn Kitch (Temple University), and Brooke Kroger (New York University) edited book titled Front Pages, Front Lines: Media and the Fight for Women’s Suffrage will be published in March 2020.

This collection offers new research on media issues related to the women’s suffrage movement. Contributors incorporate innovative approaches to social movement, media theory, and historiography while discussing the vexed relationship between the media and debates over suffrage. Aiming to correct past oversights, the editors curate essays on overlooked topics like the participation of African American and Mormon-oriented media, coverage of black women in the movement, suffrage-related historiography, suffragist rhetorical strategies, elites within the movement, suffrage as part of broader campaigns for social transformation, and how views of white masculinity influenced press coverage.

Contributors: Maurine H. Beasley, Sherilyn Cox Bennion, Jinx C. Broussard, Teri Finneman, Kathy Roberts Forde, Linda M. Grasso, Carolyn Kitch, Brooke Kroeger, Linda J. Lumsden, Jane Marcellus, Jane Rhodes, Linda Steiner, and Robin Sundaramoorthy.

Patrick File (University of Nevada-Reno) received a $1,000 grant from Kappa Tau Alpha to study how photographers resolved legal concerns a century ago. The KTA grant will support File’s travel to review archives in New York City and at the University of Utah.

Kappa Tau Alpha, the national college honor society for journalism and mass communication, conducts the grant program to provide research assistance to chapter advisers and to recognize their efforts to promote excellence in scholarship.  The society has chapters at 97 universities. File has served as adviser of the University of Nevada chapter for two years.

Berkley Hudson (University of Missouri) is launching a Go-Fund-Me style $250,000 campaign to supplement his efforts for a nationally traveling photography exhibition and symposia based on historical Mississippi photographs from the Jim Crow era. The National Endowment for Humanities already has contributed two grants to the project, most recently in April for $150,000.

Hudson is reaching out to potential supporters of all kinds: those who can give perhaps $10, $25, $50 or $100 as well as those who can give much more. Here’s a link to the Missouri School of Journalismwebsite that allows donations of any amount, whether via the internet or via snail mail: GiveDirectMizzou link.

The project will incorporate vintage film and newsreels, oral history audio, an interactive mobile app, and a curriculum guide for secondary students and their teachers. In addition, an illuminated exhibition entry tunnel will be made of scores of facsimile large format, glass plate negatives of photographer O.N.Pruitt (1891-1967). Pruitt worked mainly in northeast Mississippi from 1915-1960.

Kevin Curran’s (Arizona State University) study of the 2006 iHeartMedia leveraged buyout has been accepted for presentation at the biannual World Media Economics and Management Conference to be held in Rome in May 2020. 

Poynter recently covered the newspaper launched by Teri Finneman (University of Kansas) and her reporting students. The town lost its newspaper during the Recession. Finneman’s KU students partnered with her alma mater, the University of Missouri, to tackle this news desert.

Dante Mozie (South Carolina State University) presented his paper “‘This, Too, Is Segregation: A Framing Analysis of the 1960 Sit-Ins in Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill, N.C., Through the Eyes of Student Journalists” Oct. 3 at the 38th American Journalism Historians Association National Convention in Dallas, Texas.

Students at Temple University tune in to the 1619 Project for Students and Educators session hosted by the New York Times. Photo submitted by Karen Turner.

By Perry Parks, Michigan State University, Membership Co-Chair, parksp@msu.edu

Lillie Fears

Where you work: School of Media & Journalism, Arkansas State University

Where you got your Ph.D.: University of Missouri School of Journalism

Current favorite class: Mass Communications in Modern Society

Current research project:  I am working on a project that examines coverage of the historic Memphis-based Universal Life Insurance Company in African American print media.

Fun fact about yourself: I have always enjoyed organizing information and edited three self-help books about health in the 7^th grade.

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By Rachel Grant, University of Florida, Membership Co-Chair, rgrant@jou.ufl.edu

Lillie Fears (Arkansas State) was named coordinator of the Multimedia Journalism Program in the School of Media and Journalism at Arkansas State University.

Teri Finneman (Kansas), Candi Carter Olson (Utah State) and Jinx Broussard (Louisiana State) discussed suffrage history at the Bob Dole Institute of Politics in September during the launch event for KU’s celebration of the 19th Amendment.

Nick Hirshon (William Paterson) learned that the campus chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists that he founded and advises was named the Outstanding Campus Chapter in the northeastern United States, placing above every other student chapter in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, central and eastern Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont. The distinction placed the William Paterson Society of Professional Journalists among ten finalists under contention for the most Outstanding Campus Chapter in the nation.

Julie Lane (Boise State) published a book chapter titled, “”Cultivating Distrust of Mainstream Media: Propagandists for a Liberal Machine and the American Establishment.” The chapter is featured in Oxford University Press’ News on the Right: Studying Conservative News Cultures, edited by Anthony Nadler and A.J. Bauer. 

Jon Marshall (Northwestern) had an op-ed, “Like Watergate All Over Again? In Some Ways, Yes, but There Are Stark Differences,” published Sept. 25 in the Chicago Tribune.

The Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota hosted a symposium in September for scholars contributing to an edited collection on journalism and the rise of Jim Crow in the New South. The book project, co-edited by Kathy Roberts Forde and Sid Bedingfield, examines the various ways newspaper editors and publishers exerted influence and shaped outcomes in the South during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Forde says the book will “document the substantive role of the white press in actively building, nurturing, and protecting the white supremacist political economies and social orders that emerged in the region.” The book will also highlight the struggle by black leaders who used the tools of mass media to fight these oppressive new regimes. “We envision this collection as part of the growing effort among historians to reconsider the political role of news media during times of change,” Bedingfield said. “Historians rely on news outlets as sources of information about political change, but they frequently ignore the specific and substantive roles that journalists and other media figures played in fostering that change.”

By Perry Parks, Michigan State University, Membership Co-Chair, parksp@msu.edu

Teresa Mastin

Where you work: Michigan State University, Department of Advertising and Public Relations , Professor and Chairperson

Where you got your Ph.D.: Michigan State University, 1998

Current favorite class: All classes that allow myself and the students to connect by way of our past, present, and future, which is essentially every class I teach. I appreciate that infusing these concepts into each course helps us to think well beyond those of us in the room. I am currently teaching Contemporary Issues in Advertising (and Public Relations)

Current research project: The one that is most timely is revisiting two articles that myself and colleagues published in 2004 and 2005 that explored slavery reparation.

Fun fact about yourself: I am double middle child, that is, the fourth child of eight and the middle of the the girls. I am a classic middle child. 

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By Rachel Grant, University of Florida, Membership Co-Chair, rgrant@jou.ufl.edu

Erin Coyle (Louisiana State University) published an article in Communication Law & Policy with Stephanie L. Whitenack. The article uses legal analysis to explore how states assess relational privacy rights and public rights to access 911 recordings involving death. The article is now available online via Taylor & Francis. Here is the citation and link to the abstract: Erin K. Coyle & Stephanie L. Whitenack (2019) Access to 911 Recordings: Balancing Privacy Interests and the Public’s Right to Know about Deaths, Communication Law and Policy, 24:3, 307-345, DOI: 10.1080/10811680.2019.1627796. 

Kristin Gustafson (University of Washington-Bothell) and Amy Lambertwere awarded one of the top three out of about 60 posters presented at the University of Washington’s 15th Annual Teaching & Learning Symposium in Seattle. The Gustafson-Lambert poster, “Team Teaching Models for Professional Development and Peer Learning,” was judged one of three winners based on appearance, content and presentation. The poster shared two outcomes of their team-teaching experience with first-year students. They identified how the experience functioned as faculty development, and shared a new peer-observation model that builds on the expertise and insight gained through team teaching. 

Nick Hirshon (William Paterson University) was selected for one of the highest honors that can be afforded to a journalism educator in the United States, the 2019 David Eshelman Outstanding Campus Adviser Award as the nation’s top adviser of a campus chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. Hirshon’s students nominated him for the award. In its 41-year history, the award has almost exclusively been granted to advisers at universities with enrollments at least double William Paterson’s, and largely to the nation’s most prestigious journalism programs, such as Columbia University, the University of Missouri, Ohio University, the University of Maryland, the University of Central Florida, and the University of Iowa. No educator from the New York metropolitan area has received the award since a professor at Columbia University in 1998. The award will be presented at SPJ’s annual Excellence in Journalism conference in September in San Antonio, Texas.

Will Mari (Louisiana State University) has signed a contract with Routledge for a sequel to “A Short History of Disruptive Journalism Technologies 1960-1990,” part of Routledge’s “Disruptions” series. The follow-up project will be titled, “Newsrooms and the Disruption of the Internet,” covering the period from c. 1990-2010, with an expected release date in late 2021 or early 2022.

Cayce Myers (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University) received tenure and promotion to Associate Professor at Virginia Tech’s Department of Communication.

Madeleine Liseblad, Middle Tennessee State University, Membership Co-Chair, Madeleine.Liseblad@mtsu.edu

Mark Arbuckle

Where you work: I’m a Professor in the Department of Communication at Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kansas.

Where you got your Ph.D.: I earned my Ph.D. (2001) from the School of Journalism at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.

Current favorite class: A tie between History of Mass Communication and Law of Mass Communication. I also greatly enjoy teaching my Free Speech graduate seminar class.

Current research project: I have a manuscript under review at a law journal that chronicles the numerous warnings from lawmakers, FCC commissioners, and the courts, over the decades, against excessive media ownership consolidation. The manuscript concludes that current-day regulators should heed the warnings from the past and return to a regulatory philosophy that promotes ownership diversity and, thus, protects the public interest, journalism and democracy.

Fun fact about yourself: I was a Maytag repairman for 10 years in my parents’ appliance business before going back to school to complete my B.S. in journalism at the University of Central Missouri. I’m also a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist and have been writing and recording songs in my home studio, playing all the instruments myself, for 35 years.

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