A former journalist and copyeditor for several newspapers including, the Niagara Falls Gazette, Greensboro News & Record, Miami Herald, St. Petersburg Times, Boston Globe and Philadelphia Inquirer, the University of South Carolina’s Kenneth Campbell now applies his reporting skills to adding to journalism’s history. 

As an Associate Professor and Mass Communications Sequence Head, Campbell teaches mass communications theory, representation of women and minorities in the media and mass media history. He also taught journalism workshops in Zambia and Greece and participated in a faculty development experience in Cameroon.

He is chairman of the university’s biennial Media & Civil Rights History Symposium, which is being held March 8-9, and the Farrar Award in Media & Civil Rights History, which recognizes the best journal article or book chapter on the topic.

Campbell’s research uses collective memory and framing to examine media coverage of lynching and the representation of African Americans in the media. His work ranges from writing about newspapers in the 1800s to exploring recent political topics, such as Journalism Practice‘s “Walking a tightrope: Obama’s duality as framed by selected African American columnists.” 

Currently, he’s researching the U.S.’s first African American newspaper. His latest findings were presented to AEJMC’s History Division last summer.

We recently chatted by about the impetus of his work, his most recent research project, and how his research informs his teaching.

Q: What is the most recent historical research project you’ve worked on?

A: Looking at the origins of the first African American newspaper, Freedom’s Journal, started in March of 1827. I’ve gone back to some of the questions that have surrounded the founding of the paper. Was it an antislavery paper? Was it about uplift? Or was there another purpose? My research looks at how Freedom’s Journal was founded to resist the colonization movement of the period, a movement to essentially deport African Americans from the U.S. to a colony in Africa.

Q: How did you come to your area of scholarship?

A: Ever since I’ve been in academia, I’ve had an interest in the black press and journalism history. Lately, I’ve been interested in Samuel E. Cornish, one of the two founding editors of Freedom’s Journal. I looked at his work as a Presbyterian minister, being the second African American ordained minister in the Presbyterian church, to see if that influenced his founding Freedom’s Journal and the kind of content the journal would publish during its short lifespan. In that research, I focused on Cornish and his influences. A significant influence was the colonization debate going on in major urban areas like Philadelphia, where he lived as an adult, and in New York City, where he ultimately ended up a few years later. So, I am studying possible influences on him as a result of the colonization movement taking place, since the paper was anticolonization until shortly after Cornish resigned.

Q: How does your research relate to journalism today?

A: We should have a historical perspective on why our mass media, particularly early mass media, have come about to see how they are changing and give some meaning to those changes.

Q: How does your research inform your teaching?

A: In my undergraduate history class, I talk about the founding of Freedom’s Journal. Not just about the founding of the newspaper, but to give context to the role newspapers were playing in the first quarter of the 1800s to help students see that there was more going on in history at the time than the mainstream press reported.

Q: What was the key moment or turning point when you decided on this approach?

A: There is a story out there in the historical literature about the founding of Freedom’s Journal. For me, it wasn’t a satisfying story. Once I started looking at the broader context in which Freedom’s Journal was founded, then focusing on Cornish, this aspect of him as a Presbyterian minister simply caught my attention. I started looking at whatever I could find in newspapers, because you can’t find any other primary documents about him yet. I was surprised to find some of the newspapers in New York and Boston and Philadelphia announced when he became an ordained minister. Then, I found that some of the newspapers also quoted some of his ministerial activities, like preaching to congregations on Maryland’s eastern shore …. The fact that he was being documented in the media says something about his importance at the time.

Q: How does your research program add to the diversity goals of the AEJMC History Division?

A: Any time we do research on minorities and marginalized populations in the media it gives us all a fuller picture of our history and of what’s going on.

Q: What advice do you have for junior faculty?

A: My advice would be to do something you really love in terms of research and teaching. I know we hear that all the time, but I think there’s a lot of truth to that. It’s something that you have to have a passion for over a long period of time. Don’t focus on areas or research just because it’ll get you a conference paper or a publication. Find out what you really enjoy. 

Interview conducted by Samantha Peko a doctoral candidate at Ohio University.