Wendy Melillo, an associate professor in the School of Communication at American University, has won the 2021 Michael S. Sweeney Award for her article, “Democracy’s Adventure Hero on a New Frontier: Bridging Language in the Ad Council’s Peace Corps Campaign, 1961-1970.”

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.

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.

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/)

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.

For additional references on Dr. Covert, see:

https://surface.syr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1063&context=sumagazine

https://roghiemstra.com/covert-bio.html

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.  

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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.

By Erika Pribanic-Smith, History Division Chair, University of Texas-Arlington, epsmith@uta.edu

The History Division has had a busy year, and the incoming leadership aims to continue the momentum we’ve built. To that end, the membership has a lot to discuss during our annual member business meeting, scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Aug. 9 at the AEJMC conference in Toronto.

To make sure meeting attendees have enough time for discussion, the meeting format will be different from what we have done in recent years. For one, we will not have a lengthy recap of the previous year’s activities. Although we view the work we’ve done as important and we are proud of what we have accomplished, we have done so much that we simply do not have time to go over everything in detail. Instead, after voting on whether to approve last year’s minutes, I will give a brief summary of the highlights to start the meeting. Those interested in the full review of our activities are encouraged to read the 18-page (single-spaced) annual report that we submitted to AEJMC Headquarters. Clicking this link will download the report as a PDF. We also will have a few copies available in Toronto.

Next on the agenda, the membership will discuss several items up for a vote.

W. Joseph Campbell (American University) presented research in May at the annual conference of the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) in Toronto. Campbell’s presentation, “Myths of Political Polling,” addressed such misperceptions as the notion that pollsters ended their fieldwork weeks before the “Dewey defeats Truman” election of 1948 and that the Literary Digest‘s demise was caused by the magazine’s failed polling about the 1936 election.

Elisabeth Fondren (Louisiana State University) will be joining St. John’s University in New York as an assistant professor of journalism in September 2019. 

By Rachel Grant, Membership Co-Chair, rlgrant6@gmail.com

AEJMC History Division member Carrie Teresa, an assistant professor and chair in Communication and Media Studies at Niagara University, recently authored Looking at the Stars: Black Celebrity Journalism in Jim Crow America, and we recently had a chance to chat with her about the process of researching and co-authoring this thought-provoking manuscript.

Q: Describe the focus of your book. 

A: Looking at the Stars focuses on an analysis of the entertainment pages of Black press weeklies from 1900 to 1940. It charts the development of celebrity reporting in those pages, and it analyzes the discourse journalists used to discuss famous black performers in theatre, radio, film, and sports. The book argues that early Black celebrities fulfilled three important social functions. First, they constituted what ordinary black citizens deemed “positive representations” of the race, though that definition changed by decade and, I think, continues to evolve today. Second, they worked tirelessly to give back to the communities from which they emerged. And finally, they proudly defined black identity on its own terms, confronting and dismantling racist ideologies along the way. Ultimately, the book argues that early coverage of the popular culture celebrities of the Black press set the stage for the work of modern “entertainer-activists” such as Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar, and Colin Kaepernick.

Q: How did you come across this subject? Why did it interest you?

A: This work began as my dissertation project for Temple’s Media and Communication program. My interest in the Black press was first sparked in Carolyn Kitch’s Journalism History course, and my interest in celebrity culture and representation developed after I watched Ken Burns’s documentary on the first Black heavyweight champion, Jack Johnson, called Unforgiveable Blackness. Johnson’s position as a polarizing celebrity in the early 1900s prompted me to think about how other Black celebrities might have been framed as representations (or not) of the race, especially against the backdrop of rapidly changing technological, political, and social conditions during the early twentieth century.