Q and A with author Cayce Myers on Public Relations History

Public Relations History: Theory, Practice, and Profession (Routledge 2021)

Describe the focus of your book.

The book examines the development of public relations in the United States, specifically looking at sectors of public relations practice. Its focus is historiographic. I wanted to examine the different narratives of public relations and craft a new narrative of PR history that was more inclusive of non-corporate PR development. I also examined the relationship between public relations and propaganda, and how the historical development of the public relations field was impacted by growing awareness of public opinion and the power of communication. The end result showed that modern U.S. public relations is the byproduct of many different types of public relations practiced in politics, social movements, religion, corporations, higher education, and the government.

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

This subject is an outgrowth of several years of study on PR history. My dissertation looked at public relations development, particularly early American PR practice in the late 19^th century. As my research progressed, I became more interested in the development of PR as a practice and profession, and how diverse sectors, such as politics, entertainment, corporate communication, and social movements, actually impacted public relations practice that we know today.

What archives or research materials did you use?

Much of my research examined early news accounts of public relations, as well as legal documents that examined public relations. As a historiography, I also used many early histories written about public relations and public opinion. I made good use of digital newspaper archives, and the interlibrary loan system for trade press and other early public relations publications.

How does your book relate to journalism history? How is it relevant to the present?

The history of public relations is intertwined with the development of the press. As the press evolved in the 19^th century from the partisan press to the penny press and later to yellow journalism and muckrakers, the public relations field followed suit. Like today, many early public relations practitioners were former journalists. The book shows that PR history is journalism history, and that the two fields are highly interconnected in their development in the U.S.

What advice do you have for other historians that are working on or starting book projects?

Book projects, like all big projects, need to be tailored. Even when a book project is narrow in scope you invariably find out that the topic is much bigger than you originally thought. So, in that sense, I would say choose your topic with an eye toward a clearly defined and manageable topic. As far as writing, I think everyone has their own work habits that work for them. My advice is to know what you can write in a day and what writing habits work best for you. Books are something that take time, sometimes years, to complete. Set deadlines, follow them, and soon enough you’ll be finished.

Award Call: Jinx C. Broussard Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Media History (Feb. 15)

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

Teaching ideas should be original, tested, and transformative pedagogies that have been used by the author in teaching media and journalism history and could be used by other instructors or institutions. Teaching ideas should help professors address one or more of these pedagogies: diversity, collaboration, community, or justice. The competition welcomes a variety of teaching ideas, including those taught across a quarter/semester or taught as a module within an individual course. The 2022 deadline for submissions is Feb. 15.

The applications should be submitted as one document saved in a PDF format to aejmchistory@gmail.com using the subject line “Transformative Teaching of Media and Journalism History” and should include:

· Required: a three-page CV

· Required: a single-spaced, two-page discussion of the teaching idea that includes a 250-word overview followed by discussions of these seven criteria used for judging:

· Originality (makes clear how the work has not been published or presented at a conference or an online forum previously; is not in any other 2022 AEJMC competition; and does not represent another person’s teaching without acknowledgement of that work and discussion of significant modification by the author),

· tested (describes how employed previously in the author’s classroom),

· transferability (makes a case for how other schools/classes/programs could use),

· degree of transformative nature (speaks to evidence of how the teaching leads to a marked change on the part of students, such as via assessment or student feedback),

· degree of focus on diversity, collaboration, community, and/or justice (addresses one or more of these pedagogies, as defined by the author),

· degree of clarity (presented clearly, completely, and concisely),

· willingness to present (expresses willingness to present at the 2022 AEJMC conference).

· Optional: a set of supplementary teaching materials relevant to the teaching idea, such as syllabus, assignment, handouts, links, or slide, saved as PDF and no more than five pages

Please send any questions about the 2022 question to division teaching award chair Ken Ward at kjward@pittstate.edu.

Award Call: Hazel Dicken-Garcia Outstanding Master’s Thesis in Journalism and Mass Communication History (deadline extended to March 1)

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.

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 March 1, 2022 (this is a deadline extension).

Questions should be directed to Dr. Amy Mattson Lauters, chair of the AEJMC History Thesis Award Committee, at AEJHistoryThesisAward@gmail.com

Award Call: Best Journalism & Mass Communication History Book (deadline extended to Feb. 15)

The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication History Division is soliciting entries for its annual award for the best journalism and mass communication history book. The winning author will receive a plaque and a $500 prize at the August 2022 AEJMC conference in Detroit, Michigan. Attendance at the conference is encouraged as the author will be invited to be a guest for a live taping of the Journalism History podcast during the History Division awards event. The competition is open to any author of a media history book regardless of whether they belong to AEJMC or the History Division. Only first editions with a 2021 copyright date will be accepted. Entries must be received by February 15, 2022. Submit four hard copies of each book or an electronic copy (must be an e-Book or pdf manuscript in page-proof format) along with the author’s mailing address, telephone number, and email address to:

Gwyneth Mellinger, AEJMC History Book Award Chair
James Madison University
54 Bluestone Drive, MSC 2104
Harrisonburg, VA 22807
mellingx@jmu.edu

If you have any questions, please contact Book Award chair Gwyneth Mellinger at mellingx@jmu.edu.

Call for Proposals: 2022 Joint Journalism and Communication History Conference (deadline extended to March 15)

The Joint Journalism and Communication History Conference, co-sponsored by the American Journalism Historians Association and the History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, is accepting submissions for its 2022 conference, to be held virtually via Zoom.

This free, one-day, interdisciplinary conference welcomes faculty, graduate students, and independent scholars researching the history of journalism and mass communication. Topics from all geographic areas and time periods are welcome, as are all methodological approaches. This conference offers a welcoming environment in which participants can explore new ideas, garner feedback on their work, and meet colleagues from around the world interested in journalism and mass communication history.

When: Friday, May 13, 2022, 9:00am to 5:00pm Eastern (U.S.) time

Where: Virtual (Zoom)

Proposals for paper presentations, research-in-progress presentations, or panels are all welcome. Your proposal should detail your presentation topic and offer a compelling rationale for why this research would interest an interdisciplinary community of scholars.

Papers are completed research studies. The paper should be attached to the submission (as a Microsoft Word document or PDF) along with an abstract of up to 500 words.
Research-in-progress (RIP) proposals are projects that are currently underway and that would benefit from collegial feedback in a conference setting. The JJCHC eagerly welcomes such work and prides itself on being a forum for generative thinking and feedback. RIP proposals should be described in an abstract of up to 500 words.
Panels are pre-constituted presentations from multiple scholars working on similar topics or using similar methodological approaches. Panels generally consist of 3-4 scholars. To submit a panel proposal, please include an overview of the panel along with abstracts for each of the individual projects/presentations. The overview and the individual abstracts each may be up to 500 words.

Submissions should be emailed to JJCHC2022@gmail.com. Please remove any identifying information from your abstract and attach it to your email as a Microsoft Word document or a PDF. In the body of your email, please include your name, preferred email address, and institutional affiliation and title/rank (if applicable). If you are submitting a panel proposal, please include that information for all panel participants.

The deadline for proposal submissions is March 15, 2022. Authors will be notified as to whether their proposal was accepted no later than April 13, 2022. Please direct any questions to one of the conference co-chairs: A.J. Bauer (ajbauer2@ua.edu), Matthew Pressman (matthew.pressman@shu.edu), or Rich Shumate (rich.shumate@wku.edu).

Call for Abstracts: American Journalism Special Issue on the History of Investigative Reporting (March 1)

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the 1972 break-in at the Democratic headquarters at the Watergate complex, which precipitated some of the most heralded investigative reporting in American history and a classic journalism book and film, All the President’s Men. To mark this milestone, American Journalism is soliciting submissions of abstracts for original research on the history of investigative reporting in the United States. Submissions may examine reporting on the Watergate scandal itself, such as analysis of period journalism, the legacy of that coverage, and the production of All the President’s Men, or any aspect of investigative reporting before or after Watergate, no later than the year 2000.

Authors should submit an abstract of 300 words to americanjournalismeditor@gmail.com by 11:59 p.m. March 1, 2022. Submissions will be refereed by a panel of media historians who will judge entries based on the significance of the research, methodological clarity and rigor, grounding in appropriate literature, and writing style. Authors of accepted abstracts will be notified by April 1, and selected authors will be invited to submit full-length articles of 6,000 to 10,000 words, including endnotes, by July 1 for a special issue to be published in Fall 2022.

Deadline for Abstract Submissions: March 1, 2022 Announcement of Selected Abstracts: April 1, 2022

Deadline for Articles: July 1, 2022

Expected Commencement of Publication: Fall 2022

For more information or questions about submissions and potential topics, please contact AJ editor Dr. Pamela E. Walck at walckp@duq.edu or associate editor Dr. Nick Hirshon at nickhirshon@gmail.com.

Award Call: Donald L. Shaw Senior Scholar Award (March 15)

Nominations are open for the Donald L. Shaw Senior Scholar Award. This History Division honor will recognize an individual for excellence in journalism history research who has a minimum 15-year academic career and a record of division membership. To apply, the nomination packet should include a cover letter that explains the nominee’s research contributions to journalism history, a CV, a brief biography, and a minimum of two letters of support. Self-nominations, with the accompanying supporting materials, are welcome. Letters may be addressed to Committee Chair Amber Roessner.If you have been nominated in the past two years, you do not need to reapply since your nomination remains in the pool. Email nominations to aejmchistory@gmail.com by 11:59 p.m. Central Time March 15.

A Word From the Chair

It’s hard to believe we are finally at the end of what has no doubt been a busy semester. I appreciate all of the hard work of our members and executive team this year, and look forward to the History Division events and conferences in 2022.

The first 2022 event is the AEJMC Southeast Colloquium, held March 17th-19th as a hybrid event at the University of Memphis. The paper, panel, and research in progress deadline for the Southeast Colloquium is fast approaching on December 18, 2022 at 5 p.m. CT. More information about the conference can be found here.

A big thank you goes out to our Southeast Colloquium Division representative Dr. Scott Morton (Catawba College). If you have an interest in reviewing papers or serving as a moderator/discussant at the conference, please contact Dr. Morton at smorton17@catawba.edu. This conference is a great opportunity for graduate students and early career faculty. Remember that submissions accepted for presentation at the Southeast Colloquium can also be submitted to the AEJMC 2022 annual convention in Detroit.

As I mentioned last month, we also appreciate the numerous panel submissions we received for AEJMC 2022. Our division’s Vice Chair Dr. Maddie Liseblad (Cal.State-Long Beach) will send those notices out by January 2022.

This month’s CLIO showcases the ongoing work of our members, and also includes a call for an upcoming essay series in American Journalism. As this is the last CLIO of 2021, I want to thank everyone for their help in making the History Division a standout within AEJMC, and wish everyone a happy end of the semester, holiday, and New Year.

– Cayce Myers

Member News: Matthew C. Ehrlich, Will Mari, Elisabeth Fondren, Joe Campbell

Matthew C. Ehrlich, an emeritus professor of journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has a new book, Dangerous Ideas on Campus: Sex, Conspiracy, and Academic Freedom in the Age of JFK (University of Illinois Press). The book focuses on two academic freedom cases at the University of Illinois: a biology professor fired in 1960 after he condoned premarital sex, and a classics professor not fired in 1964 after he claimed that the recently assassinated John F. Kennedy was a loathsome traitor. The book places those two cases in the context of the culture wars of the time and shows how the cases continue to resonate in today’s polarized political climate. The book also highlights the distinction between academic freedom and free speech, as well as the important role of student news media in promoting the open exchange of ideas.

Will Mari, an assistant professor at Louisiana State University, has a forthcoming book, Newsrooms and the Disruption of the Internet: A Short History of Disruptive Technologies, 1990-2010 (Routledge, February 2022). It explores how the internet impacted the journalism industry in the 1990s and 2000s and is a sequel to A Short History of Disruptive Journalism Technologies, 1960-1990 (Routledge, 2019), which explored the computerization of the newsroom during the Cold War. (Contact Will for a digital copy of the latter.)

Elisabeth Fondren, an assistant professor at St. John’s University, published “Fighting an Armed Doctrine: The Struggle to Modernize German Propaganda during World War I (1914-1918)” in Journalism & Communication Monographs. Her article chronicles the ideas and methods of early German propagandists, including their secret attempts to copy ideas from their enemies, and how World War I conspiracy theories and publicity lessons carried over to World War II and informed Nazi propaganda. Michael S. Sweeney, Ross F. Collins, and Sarah Oates wrote expert commentaries. In October, Elisabeth was invited to speak at Yale University about her research on archiving media, memory, and propaganda history.

A class lecture by Joe Campbell, a professor at American University, about the media myths of the Washington Post and Watergate was taped by C-SPAN in November and is to be shown in 2022 on the cable network’s “Lectures in History” series. C-SPAN previously has aired Joe’s lectures about the myths of yellow journalism and the Spanish -American War and of the “Cronkite Moment” of 1968. Joe, a former History Division chair, is in his 25th year at American.

Member Spotlight: Ashley Walter

Ph.D. Candidate Ashley Walter of Pennsylvania State University

Where you are currently getting your Ph.D.: Penn State University

What brought you into grad school for journalism: I knew I wanted to be a professor while sitting in a media law class during my undergraduate. But, it was important for me to work first. I worked for an alt-weekly, and after a handful of years, I knew it was time for grad school. Luckily for me, in my master’s program, I was randomly paired to work with Pamela Walck, who opened up the journalism history world to me.

Why journalism history: My journalism history origin story starts with historical fiction. As a young girl, I loved the Dear America book series, which looked at a historical event through the eyes of a fictitious young girl. I still love historical fiction, but, as the saying goes, I’ve found that real life is even stranger than fiction. I love finding new stories and figuring out how to tell that story best.

Current research project: I am finishing my dissertation, which looks at sex discrimination class-action lawsuits at press organizations during the 1970s. After the 1964 Civil Rights Act banned sex discrimination, women working at U.S. magazines, newspapers, and wire services sued for equal rights in contentious decades-long battles. It is a project rooted in oral history and sheds light on modern-day inequities inside U.S. newsrooms.

Fun fact about yourself: I love folk music, and I play guitar and sing. I am most attracted to narrative folksongs and have written a few songs based on stories I’ve dug up while researching.