REMINDER – Award Call: Covert Award in Mass Communication History for Articles, Essays, or Book Chapters Published in 2022

AEJMC’S History Division announces the annual competition for the Covert Award in Mass Communication History for entries published in 2022.

The Covert Award recognizes the author of the best mass communication history article or essay published in the previous year. Book chapters in edited collections published in the previous year are also eligible. The AEJMC History Division has presented the award annually since 1985.

The $400 award memorializes the esteemed Dr. Catherine L. Covert, professor of journalism at Syracuse University (d.1983). Cathy Covert was the first woman professor in Syracuse’s Newhouse School of Journalism and the first woman to head the History Division, in 1975. Prof. Covert received the AEJMC Outstanding Contribution to Journalism Education Award in 1983.

Submit an electronic copy in pdf form of the published article/essay/chapter via email to Professor Thomas A. Mascaro, mascaro@bgsu.edu, by March 31, 2023. The publication may be self-submitted or submitted by others, such as an editor or colleague.

The following links connect to articles providing more background on Dr. Covert:

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

https://roghiemstra.com/covert-bio.html https://clas.uiowa.edu/sjmc/people/catherine-covert

Microgrant winners selected for American Journalism/Journalism History initiative

Six historians will receive funding this spring to advance diverse perspectives in media history.

The microgrant initiative was a joint collaboration between American Journalism/American Journalism Historians Association and Journalism History/AEJMC History Division. Journalism History Publications Chairwoman Teri Finneman said the goal was to provide direct support to increase diversity research in the journals.

“The number of applications that we received exceeded expectations, prompting us to award more projects than initially planned,” Finneman said. “It’s truly wonderful to see how many great ideas there are and the direction of journalism history research.”

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Award Call: Covert Award in Mass Communication History for Articles, Essays, or Book Chapters Published in 2022

AEJMC’S History Division announces the annual competition for the Covert Award in Mass Communication History for entries published in 2022.

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Journalism History Announces Reilly Award Winner

Betto van Waarden is the winner of the 2023 Tom Reilly Award.

His article, “The Many Faces of Performative Politics: Satires of Statesman Bernhard von Bülow in Wilhelmine Germany,” was the most popular on the Journalism History website in 2022.

He is a senior postdoctoral fellow of the Research Foundation Flanders at the KU Leuven in Belgium. He researches transnationalism, democratization, parliaments, celebrity politics, and the attention economy.

Betto van Waarden, senior postdoctoral fellow of the Research Foundation Flanders at the KU Leuven, is the winner of the 2023 Tom Reilly Award.

“I am honored to receive the Reilly Award and grateful for its recognition of my efforts to communicate my research to the public, which is an important ambition of mine,” van Waarden said. “The award helps to highlight journalism research on satire and its role in modern politics.”

While historical and contemporary thinkers have described politics as theater, van Waarden’s winning article moves beyond this representation of politics to understand how performance was central to politics around the turn of the twentieth century. It does so through an analysis of a large volume of hitherto unstudied caricatures of the German statesman Bernhard von Bülow.

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DEADLINE EXTENDED – Award Call: Jinx C. Broussard Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Media History

This award is presented to the winners of the AEJMC History Division’s teaching competition. Members may submit an innovative teaching technique to the contest, which is judged by a committee each spring.

Teaching ideas should be original, tested, and creative techniques used by the author in teaching media history and could be used by other instructors or institutions. The competition welcomes a variety of teaching ideas, including those taught across a quarter/semester or taught as a module within an individual course. Of particular interest are teaching ideas that help instructors address one or more of these pedagogies: diversity, collaboration, community, or justice. The 2023 deadline for submissions has been extended to February 15.

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Journalism History Podcast Announces Best Guest

Jon Marshall of Northwestern University is the winner of 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.

Jon Marshall of Northwestern University, winner of Best Podcast Guest Award

“I am deeply grateful to AEJMC’s History Division for this award,” Marshall said. “It is especially meaningful for me because the Journalism History podcast series provides a valuable service to teachers, students, and anyone else who is interested in learning more about media history’s fascinating past, and I often use some of its episodes in my own courses. I was honored to be interviewed by Ken Ward about Watergate and the history of presidents and the press for the podcast.”

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A Word from the Membership Committee

When History Division Chair Maddie Liseblad asked us to write about what the membership committee does for this issue of Clio, I was initially at a loss at how to explain our role. At first it seemed obvious: We’re the people emailing you to participate in a membership Q&A or a book author Q&A, and we’re the ones reminding you to send in your recent news and updates. But as I reflected more on not just our committee’s monthly tasks, but how we fit into the mission of the history division, I realized that the membership committee’s work can best be described as creating a sense of community among its members.

*Caitlin Cieslik-Miskimen is a Membership Committee Co-Chair and an assistant professor at the University of Idaho*

Historians often labor out of the spotlight — tucked away working in a special collections room or sitting in front of a microfilm reader scrolling through old issues of newspapers. Too often, historical research can seem isolating. Much of our scholarship is solo authored, and many of us work in departments where we are the only faculty who ask historical questions and use historical research methods. We often have to explain the value of historical research (or at least its somewhat lengthy path to publication).

For me, the AEJMC History Division was a way to connect with other historians and learn the latest about scholarship in my area of interest. But the real value in joining the division was to meet other graduate students, early career scholars and established leaders in the field — people who could inspire me at each step of my academic journey.

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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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Comprehensive List of Journalism History Articles Organized by Subject Available to Membership

In an effort to raise awareness about the depth of the Journalism History archives, Pam Parry and Teri Finneman have organized 600 Journalism History articles by topic. The hope is that this document will aid in the compilation of readings lists, literature reviews and syllabus development. The list includes more than 30 topics.

The list was distributed to History Division members in January. If you would like to receive a copy, please reach out to Teri Finneman (finnemte@gmail.com) or Pam Parry (pparry@semo.edu).

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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