I sent this out to our listserv, but also wanted to post this message from Gerry Lanosga, about AJHA’s upcoming CFP:
“AEJMC colleagues,
Many of you are also members of or familiar with the American Journalism Historians Association. But in case you missed it, I wanted to post this quick plug for AJHA’s annual research competition. The deadline is June 15, so there’s still time to polish a paper, put together a panel proposal, or draft a research in progress abstract.
The History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication will present its award for Outstanding Master’s Thesis in Journalism and Mass Communication History in 2022, recognizing the outstanding mass communication history thesis completed during the 2021 calendar year.
The award will be presented during the member awards gala at the 2022 AEJMC Conference, scheduled for August 2022 in Detroit.
Dr. Hazel Dicken-Garcia, the pioneering media historian for whom the award is named.
Any master’s thesis on a topic in mass communication history will be considered, regardless of research method. Submissions must be in English. The thesis must have been submitted, defended, and filed in final form to the author’s degree-granting university between January 1, 2021 and December 31, 2021. Membership in the AEJMC History Division is not required to submit.
Candidates for the award should submit the following materials:
A cover letter with the thesis author’s contact information.
A letter of nomination from the thesis chair/director or the chair of the university department in which the thesis was written. The letter should concisely describe the scope and significance of the thesis, including its contribution to the knowledge base of the discipline.
A blind copy of the full thesis (including abstract) in PDF form. IMPORTANT: Please make sure that all identifying information—including author, school, and thesis advisor/committee names—have been removed from all parts of the document. Be sure to check not only the title page but also the abstract, dedication/acknowledgements, bio page, and other pages that such identifying information often appears in academic theses.
A blind copy of a sample chapter, submitter’s choice, from the thesis, identifying information removed, for first-round competition. This should also be in PDF form.
Nominations, along with all the supporting materials, should be sent to AEJHistoryThesisAward@gmail.com no later than 11:59 p.m. Pacific on Feb. 1, 2022.
Questions should be directed to Dr. Amy Mattson Lauters, chair of the AEJMC History Thesis Award Committee, at AEJHistoryThesisAward@gmail.com.
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.
Dr. Jinx Broussard
“We are gratified by the quality of the nominees for this prestigious award, which is only in its second year,” the judges said. “In a wonderful field of nominees, Dr. Jinx Broussard stood out as the perfect choice for this significant award. The depth and breadth of her research, as well as the scholars she has helped to support and inspire, have left an indelible mark on the study of media history. She is a rock star among rock stars, and we are thrilled to select her for this honor.”
Broussard was excited to hear she had won the award.
“I am incredibly honored to receive an award of this magnitude that is named after someone who made a tremendous contribution to journalism and mass communication. I had no idea when I began to conduct research on the Black press while seeking to break new ground in media history, the work would lead me to this recognition.”
She added, “I am ecstatic and grateful to be so recognized and to know that my colleagues and those who conduct impactful scholarship hold me in such esteem. For this, I thank them.”
Broussard left the professional public relations world for higher education in 1997. She teaches public relations, strategic communication, mass communication theory, media history, and pedagogical courses at LSU. Earlier this year, she was named a recipient of the LSU Distinguished Faculty Award. She received the LSU Rainmaker senior scholar award the previous year. In 2018, she won the Scripps Howard Foundation/AEJMC National Teacher of the Year. The History Division also notified her in 2019 that it would name an excellence in teaching award after her: Jinx Coleman Broussard Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Media History.
In 2019, she was the co-author of Public Relations and Journalism in Times of Crisis: A Symbiotic Partnership, released by Peter Lang Publications. Six years before that, she wrote African American Foreign Correspondents: A History, was published by LSU Press and won a national award. She also penned Giving a Voice to the Voiceless: Four Pioneering Black Women Journalists, was published in 2004 by Routledge. Additionally, she has written or co-written several book chapters and journal articles.
The totality of her research was honored with the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University 2019 Guido H. Stempel III Research Award.
Broussard noted, “My passion for removing the veil of obscurity; and uncovering, examining and presenting untold stories will continue as I seek to mentor and motivate others to do the same.”
Some of the scholars nominating Broussard recognize her contribution as a mentor. Division member Erin Coyle was among the scholars who nominated Broussard, noting that she shared many traits of Donald Shaw.
“Both are innovative scholars who have enriched the field of mass communication history with their extensive bodies of scholarship,” Coyle wrote in her nominations letter. “Dr. Broussard has published three books, six book chapters, and numerous peer-reviewed articles. Her excellent research addressing women, African-Americans, foreign correspondents, and public relations has broken new ground in our field.”
Dr. Broussard will receive a plaque and check for $200 during the division’s Awards Gala in conjunction with the AEJMC annual meeting.
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. In addition to receiving a plaque and cash prize, Melillo will be honored during the History Division’s awards gala at this year’s virtual AEJMC National Convention.
Prof. Wendy Melillo
Melillo’s article, published in the Summer 2020 issue of Journalism History, examined the Ad Council’s public promotion of the Peace Corps in the context of internal deliberative materials drawn from four separate archival collections. Her research demonstrated how the coded language and imagery of the Ad Council’s campaign masked the true purpose of the Peace Corps, which was to blunt the spread of communism throughout the world.
In summing up her manuscript, Melillo said, “We can’t ignore the hidden propaganda in federal government advertising campaigns that are presented to Americans as pure public service.”
The History Division’s Publications Committee selected Melillo’s article from among five finalists provided by Journalism History Editor Gregory Borchard. Committee Chair Gerry Lanosga reported the scores were quite close this year with another group of excellent articles.
About Melillo’s winning essay, the judges commented: “This fascinating article provides a deep analysis of Peace Corps ads and examines communism and other conceptual frames behind the ads themselves.”
“The author is to be commended for the tedious work put into mining the four archives for evidence of propaganda used in the Kennedy Administration’s Peace Corps advertising campaign. As someone who teaches propaganda in media, I consider this work to be an ideal example to use for teaching propaganda techniques. Good job!”
“This article is sharply written and makes a salient point about the importance of seeing self-serving purposes behind the public service campaigns that we see wrapped in the archetypes of American heroism. I enjoyed reading this and thought the visuals helped to ground the numbers and give an example of the ads so that the text didn’t seem too overwhelming at any one point in time.”
Melillo’s research program focuses on the influence of strategic communication in media and society, and she is author of a 2013 book about the Ad Council’s campaigns, How McGruff and the Crying Indian Changed America. She holds an M.A. in the History of Ideas from Johns Hopkins University and an M.A. in International Communications from American University. Previously, she was a reporter for The Washington Post and the business publication Adweek.
The History Division created the Sweeney award in 2018 to honor Michael S. Sweeney, who served as editor of Journalism History from 2012 to 2018 and worked to ensure its future by initiating the transition from an independent publication to the official scholarly publication of the History Division.
“The Sweeney Award represents excellence in mass communication history research, and I am honored to be a part of the community of scholars whose work reflects this proud tradition,” Melillo said. “This award is particularly meaningful for me since Prof. Sweeney has been an important role model for me throughout my academic career.”
The other finalists for the 2021 Sweeney Award were Raymond McCaffrey, “From Baseball Icon to Crusading Columnist: How Jackie Robinson Used His Column in the African-American Press to Continue His Fight for Civil Rights in Sports” (Fall 2020); Vanessa Murphree, “Universal Localism: WWOZ Community Radio, 1980-2006” (Spring 2020); Karlyga Myssayeva and Michael Brown, “Labor Propaganda and the Gulag Press: The Case of Putevka” (Fall 2020); and Ronald Rodgers, “The Social Awakening and the News: A Progressive Era Movement’s Influence on Journalism and Journalists’ Conceptions of Their Roles” (Summer 2020).
The History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) congratulates Dr. L. Amber Roessner of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, winner of the 37th annual Covert Award for best mass communication history article, essay, or book chapter published in 2020.
Dr. Amber Roessner
The award memorializes Dr. Catherine L. Covert, professor of journalism at Syracuse University. Dr. Covert, who died in 1983, was the first woman professor in Syracuse’s Newhouse School of Journalism and the first woman to head the AEJMC History Division, in 1975. The award has been presented annually since 1985 (see https://aejmc.us/history/about/covert-award/)
Dr. Catherine L. Covert
Journalism History published Dr. Roessner’s article, “The Voices of Public Opinion: Lingering Structures of Feeling about Women’s Suffrage in 1917 U.S. Newspaper Letters to the Editor,” in volume 46, no. 2, 2020 (https://doi.org/10.1080/00947679.2020.1724588).
“Anyone who knows me recognizes that I am not often at a loss for words,” Roessner said upon learning the news, “but in this moment, I am silent with humility. Over the years, the Covert Award has been bestowed upon some of the most prominent thinkers in our field, including two of my mentors, Janice Hume and Kathy Roberts Forde. I am honestly humbled beyond belief to be mentioned in the same breath with them. Moreover, I hope more than anything to live up to the legacy of Dr. Catherine L. Covert and the past winners of this award, who have had an enduring influence through their scholarship, their pedagogy, and their mentorship.”
Dr. Thomas A. Mascaro, the Covert Award Chair, said: “Dr. Roessner’s article expands the scholarship on letters to the editor by examining historical artifacts in service to understanding an era’s public sentiments and journalistic practices. She places readers in the times and minds of advocates for women’s suffrage at a crucial moment in 20th century history.”
“The Voices of Public Opinion” outranked a large, highly competitive field of entries analyzed, grouped, and ranked by the Covert Award judges. Mascaro, who liaised with submitters and judges, added: “The literature of media history has been greatly expanded and elevated by the body of this year’s exceptional entries. The division owes a debt of thanks to the efforts of judges working in difficult times.”
The History Division will honor Dr. Roessner and present a check for $200 at the annual AEJMC convention in August 2021. The abstract for Dr. Roessner’s article follows:
Abstract: Answering continued calls for a cultural approach to the study of women’s history, this article explores what social historian Raymond Williams referred to as lingering traces of “structures of feeling” about women’s suffrage in letters published in the U.S. commercial periodical press. Through a discourse analysis of 225 letters to the editor published in five prominent U.S. newspapers, alongside other relevant primary and secondary sources, this study offers insight into the production of letters to the editor as an act of strategic communication by suffragists and anti-suffragists, the regulation of letters to the editor by news gatekeepers and agenda-setters, and the consumption of letters to the editor by newspaper readers in 1917, a pivotal year in the decades-long cultural struggle over women’s suffrage. This article contends that these contested editorial spaces were important strategic sites where the negotiation of common-sense logics that continue to inform our present-day discourse unfolded.
The History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) has selected John Maxwell Hamilton as the winner of its Book Award honoring the best journalism and mass communication history book published in 2020. The author of Manipulating the Masses: Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of American Propaganda (LSU Press), Hamilton is the Hopkins P. Breazeale Professor of Journalism at Louisiana State University’s Manship School of Mass Communication. He’s also a Global Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, both in Washington, D.C. Hamilton worked as a journalist for the Milwaukee Journal, Christian Science Monitor, and ABC Radio before entering academia. At LSU, Hamilton was the founding dean of the Manship School and also served as executive vice chancellor and provost. He has a Ph.D. in American Civilization from George Washington University.
The committee is also recognizing two runners-up for this year’s Book Award. Craig Allen, author of Univision, Telemundo, and the Rise of Spanish Language Television in the United States (University Press of Florida), is an associate professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University and associate dean of the Barrett Honors College at the Downtown Phoenix campus. He earned his Ph.D. at Ohio University. Stephen Bates, an associate professor in the Greenspun School of Journalism and Media Studies at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, is the author of An Aristocracy of Critics: Luce, Hutchins, Niebuhr, and the Committee that Redefined Freedom of the Press (Yale University Press). Bates holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School.
A panel of three distinguished media historians chose Manipulating the Masses from a strong field of entries. The judges described Hamilton’s book as “a magisterial work, comprehensive and highly readable” and a “meticulously researched contribution to communication history.”
Manipulating the Masses offers a deep examination of the Creel Committee’s impact on public attitudes about information and propaganda. The judges believed the book is particularly strong in its examination of the role of journalists in both the work of the Committee and creation of the information state. They noted that Hamilton presents his impressive archival research “in an engaging and insightful historical narrative.” According to one of the judges, “Its critical analysis of the information eco-system back then could not be timelier, given the torrent of disinformation we confront today.”
Allen’s Univision, Telemundo, and the Rise of Spanish Language Television in the United States fills a notable gap in media history by detailing the rise and innovations of Spanish-language television through extensive use of interviews and archival sources. Not only does the work bring to light new information, but it rightly calls out previous histories of broadcasting that have focused on the “Big Three” networks to the exclusion of ethnic and local programming. One judge commented, “Allen’s book fills an enormous hole in media history, and his dogged pursuit of interviews with the pioneers who built Spanish-language TV in the United States has created a valuable new archive of primary sources that should help future historians build on his seminal work.”
In an Aristocracy of Critics, Bates draws us into the intellectual debates that informed the work of the Hutchins Commission. Through diligent archival research, Bates shows us how the Commission grappled with fundamental questions about the role and duties of the media. The judges think this book “makes a strong contribution to our understanding of the Commission’s influence on U.S. media after World War II” and offers a “valuable reinterpretation of an event we thought we knew so well.” The book is also “beautifully written and well argued.”
Hamilton will receive a plaque and cash prize. All three honorees will be recognized during the division’s awards gala at the AEJMC National Convention, which will be held virtually this year, and featured in future episodes of the Journalism History podcast.
I don’t know about you, but so far, a month into this semester, it feels like it’s been three (or four) months. And so knowing that things are hard out there for a lot of us, I wanted to offer some practical, “off-the-shelf” teaching ideas that you can use in your media-history classes.
If you don’t teach media history right now, these could work in other journalism or mass-comm courses that either feature a history component or even just a section on the use of the college/university library or digital archives. They can be part of a lecture day, an activity-oriented day, either synchronous, asynchronous, or as a standalone out-of-class activity.
I’ll focus on a short list of volunteer public-history projects that are interactive, engaging and rewarding for undergraduate and graduate students alike and that use transcription as their main vehicle. I’ve used these to invite conversation about the role of media history in the ongoing, complex, American story. You might find them helpful, too.
A project led by Cornell, it guides volunteers through scanned but-as-yet transcribed ads for enslaved people from before the Civil War, and has them either do the actual transcription or check the work of others. I was a bit hesitant to ask students to do this, but many felt that it was a way to give back and give voice to previously unheard people. I’ll talk a bit more about how I structured this assignment below.
The Smithsonian, National Archives and Library of Congress’ projects tend to be trickier in that they sometimes require the ability to read cursive, which might be challenging for some students. That same challenge is present with the War Department and Digital Newberry projects, but some later-in-the-20th-century efforts are more straightforward, and just involve tagging images versus transcribing writing. One immensely popular project with the New York Public Library transcribes menus (“What’s on the Menu?”), but it often has more volunteers than it has un-transcribed material!
One alternative is to have students look at finished projects and their curated artifacts, online, and talk about the long journeys these physical things have taken to survive to the present, or what they meant, perhaps, for the people who once used them.
But the initiative I’ve had the most success with this semester is Freedom on the Move, which offers helpful tutorials, videos and other “explainer” material, and is perhaps the most user friendly. I had students take a screenshot of a finished contribution and respond to just two prompts: first, why did they pick their project, and second, what did they learn while working on it? Most of my students choose Freedom on the Move and reported feeling convicted and surprised. They hadn’t realized that slavery was such an embedded part of American society—“even” in the northern part of the country—for so long. At least a few said that doing the transcription drove home that lesson more than reading our textbook.
I would add that it’s good to let students pick, to a certain degree, what project they want to help out on, and to make sure that they have enough time to complete them (I gave my students an extra day). But I highly recommend this as a way to enhance an existing class, and to give yourself some mental space, if you need the support.
A final idea: some university and public libraries are documenting the pandemic and are encouraging students to contribute (this is happening at Louisiana State, where I work). But that might require another conversation to unpack more fully.
If you do have your students use an interactive, volunteer project for an activity, I would invite you to have them tweet about it to our fall media-history awareness campaign, #mediahistorymatters.
Please reach out to me with suggestions or ideas, to wmari1@lsu.edu, wtmari@gmail.com, or @willthewordguy, on Twitter. We’ll have more updates later in the fall on our panel line-up for next year’s conference, as well as other initiatives and efforts.
By Rachel Grant, Membership Co-Chair, University of Florida, rgrant@jou.ufl.edu
Pat Washburn, Chris Lamb,
Dr. Patrick Washburn (Ohio University) & Dr. Chris Lamb (Indiana University-Indianapolis)
Sports Journalism: A History of Glory, Fame, and Technology
University of Nebraska Press, release date, July 2020
Book Cover
Q: What is the focus of your book?
A: Sports Journalism: A History of Glory, Fame, and Technology tells the story of the past, the present, and, to a degree, the future of American sports journalism. The book chronicles how and why technology, religion, social movements, immigration, racism, sexism, social media, athletes, and sportswriters and sports broadcasters changed sports as well as how sports have been covered and how news about sports has been presented and disseminated. Sports Journalism also examines how sports coverage has differed from that of non-sports news, and how new media, social media, and the internet have changed the profession of sports journalism and raised ethical issues.
Q: How did you come across this subject? Why did it interest you?
A: In 2007, I (Patrick Washburn) received AEJMC’s first annual Tankard Book Award for The African American Newspaper: Voice of Freedom, which was published by the Northwestern University Press. The award was for the best research book by an AEJMC member on journalism and mass communication published in the previous year that broke new ground. The book was part of a series of mass communication histories overseen by David Abrahamson of Northwestern, and he asked me to author another book on a subject of my choice. I had long been interested in sports. I was a high school and college athlete, worked as a sportswriter on newspapers and in sports information at Harvard and Louisville, and then served as an NCAA faculty athletic representative at Ohio University. Thus, I decided to do a history of American sports journalism. Nothing had been written on the entire almost three hundred year history. Instead, books, articles, and documentaries existed on various parts of the history, such as biographies and autobiographies of sports journalists, specific sports media outlets (like ESPN and Sports Illustrated), different sports and the journalists who covered them (like baseball), media technologies and sports (like radio and television), and groups of sports journalists (like women and blacks) and their impact. Joining me as an author of this book was Chris Lamb, who has written widely about sports for newspapers and magazines and is the author or editor of eleven books. His book, Conspiracy of Silence: Sportswriters and the Long Campaign to Desegregate Baseball (University of Nebraska Press), won the award for best book on Journalism and Mass Communication History from the History Division of AEJMC in 2013.
Q: What archives or research materials did you use?
A: Both Chris and I knew some of the information in this book from teaching journalism history classes and from our own research. The major piece of research involved searching diligently for what had been written about the history of American sports journalism. This involved reading an enormous number of books and paying careful attention to notes and bibliographies that led us to further sources, such as newspaper and magazine stories, journal articles, dissertations and theses, archival documents, and the Internet. The value of the latter cannot be overstated. And over the ten years spent in researching and writing this book, new items appearing in the media and on the Internet continually were collected to make this book as update as possible. In addition, both of us had interviews that were useful.
Q: How does your book relate to journalism history? How is it relevant to the present?
A: Pat and I are both journalism historians who study the issue of racism in journalism and in the news media. We also happen to be sports fans who recognize that sports have been neglected and underappreciated as a subject of scholarship. Anything that plays so heavily upon the sensibilities of so many people as sports and sports journalism deserves far more attention than it has been received from scholars. This book is an attempt to right that wrong. As we reveal in this book, many of the issues that historians examine are not only found in sports but appear there before they show up elsewhere in newspapers and the rest of the news media. This was true three hundred years ago, and it is no less true today. One, for instance, could write a book about the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on sports and sports journalists.
Q: What advice do you have for other historians working/starting on book projects?
A: Both Pat and I like writing—as much as it is possible to like something as arduous and sometimes demoralizing as writing often is. Writing a book provides an opportunity to tell a story in a way that you cannot do in a newspaper, a magazine, or in an academic journal article. It is far more gratifying than writing a journal article. Most books require a helluva lot more work than journal articles. You will be surprised—perhaps even depressed—when you realize how much time a book takes to research and write. You may think your book idea is so important that you are amazed no one has thought of it before. But you must disabuse yourself of the notion that just because you think your subject is undeniably important a book editor will automatically agree. You must convince the editor, and you must know what subjects the publisher publishes and what makes your book so important. Come up with a brief summary that captures the essence of your book, describes its contribution, justifies its publication (in other words, how it breaks new ground), and convinces the acquisitions editor that he or she would be an idiot if you are not offered a contract. A formal written proposal for the editor is the relatively easy part. Researching the book and writing it is the hard part.
As the current president of the American Journalism Historians
Association (AJHA), Ross Collins of North Dakota State University has long
dedicated himself to the advancement of journalism history and stressed its
importance to university journalism and communications programs. In his
position as president, he has worked to raise the profile of AJHA and encourage
more journalism history scholarship.
Recently, Ross provided insight into his approach to journalism
history, offered advice for junior faculty members, and explained why all
journalism historians need to think internationally.
Q:What is the most recent historical research project you have worked on?
A: I took a look at American volunteers during World War I who served in France before the United States joined the war. Because I’m a journalism historian I was particularly interested in how the French press used these Americans as a propaganda tool to boost morale.
Q:How did you come to your area of scholarship?
A: I began as many of our members did—I was a professional journalist. But I also had a minor in French and a master’s in European cultural history, emphasizing French and German history at the beginning of the last century. When I decided to try for a Ph.D., I thought, why not combine all those? My Ph.D. was in French history, emphasizing journalism.
