Assistant Professor of Journalism, Auburn University
What is your favorite class to teach?
Journalism history! I’m even more thrilled than usual, because next fall I have been approved to teach a Women in Journalism History course to be cross listed with the Women and Gender Studies department!
What is your current research project?
I am currently finishing up a book about newsgirls and papergirls. The book, Extra! A History of America’s Girl Newsies, is in peer review now and should (hopefully!) be out sometime in 2025.
Fun fact about yourself?
I don’t really believe in soulmates, but if I did, mine would be my extraordinarily large dog named SunSpot. He’s a Briard (a French sheepdog), he has fluffy long blond hair, and it’s like he was built in every way to be mine. I bring him with me everywhere I am legally allowed.
Dr. Gwyneth Mellinger and Dr. Pam Parry are the recipients of the History Division’s 2024 Exceptional Service Award. This important award is given by the division’s chair and vice chair to members who have provided stellar service.
Gwyneth MellingerPam Parry
Mellinger is a professor at James Madison University. Parry is a professor at Southeast Missouri State University.
Both Mellinger and Parry have provided critical services to the History Division.
Mellinger has chaired the division’s Book Award Committee for several years. She is the author of the book Chasing Newsroom Diversity: From Jim Crow to Affirmative Action. Mellinger is the winner of the 2019 Ronald T. and Gayla D. Farrar Award in Media and Civil Rights History for her research on Charles S. Johnson, an African American newspaper columnist in the 1940s.
Parry has served as the editor of Journalism History since 2021. Under her leadership, she and her staff produced the commemorative issue celebrating 50 years of the journal. She is the 2020 winner of the Best Podcast Guest Award from Journalism History. Parry is the author or co-editor of eight academic books.
“It is a tremendous task to lead the book award and Dr. Mellinger handles all the behind the scenes work of receiving, distributing and seeking the best books in our field,” said Rachel Grant, chair. “The division appreciates all the work she has done to honor her fellow scholars. Serving beyond her term, Gwyn has stayed on through several transitions and we appreciate her time and commitment. Her kindness and leadership is an inspiration to us all.”
“There is so much unseen work that goes into managing a journal, and Journalism History is the cornerstone and legacy of the History Division’s scholarly community. Dr. Parry has stewarded the journal artfully during her tenure,” said Brian Creech, vice chair. “The journal has grown in scope and prominence during her editorship, but also retains an attention to detail and care for prose that makes publishing in the journal a genuinely meaningful experience for junior and senior scholars alike. From an expanded essay series, to facilitating research microgrants, to a rich, critical engagement with the content of scholarship in the journal over its history, Dr. Parry has led the journal in a way that best reflects the breadth and depth of our subfield and pushes the project of Journalism History and journalism history forward.”
Parry and Mellinger will be honored during the History Division’s annual Awards Gala on Aug. 7 at 7:30 p.m. in Philadelphia.
The History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) is pleased to announce that Autumn Linford of Auburn University has won this year’s Top Faculty Paper Award.
Autumn Lorimer Linford
She will receive a plaque and a $100 cash prize for her paper, ‘“Is This an Evil Practice?”: Newspapers and Newsgirls.’
The second-place faculty paper award goes to Ashley Walter of Saint Louis University for “After the Gauntlet: Sex Discrimination Lawsuits at The Washington Post, 1972-2003.”
Third place faculty paper goes to Eric Freedman, Michigan State University, Joshua Duchan, Wayne State University , Vladislava Sukhanovskaya, and Finn Hopkins, Michigan State University. This co-authored paper is “Extra! Extra! Sing All About It: Portraying Newsies in 19th and 20th Century Sheet Music.”
In the student paper competition, the top award winner is Hannah LeComte of George Mason University for “Radical or Assimilatory? The Fight for Family Life Education by Virginia’s Gay Press, 1977-1998.” She will receive a plaque and a $100 cash prize.
The second-place student award goes to Joey Mengyuan Chen of University of Maryland for “Dancing with Shackles on: The Consulted New Woman in the Exchange of Letters in Linglong Magazine.”
Third place in the student paper competition was won by Diana Krovvidi of University of Maryland for her paper “How Ethnic Press in the US Urged the Diaspora to Preserve the Ukrainian Language (1893-1914)”
The History Division also awards a top extended abstract award, which will go to the University of Pennsylvania co-authors, Anjali DasSarma and Valentina Proust. Their abstract is titled ““We Want Entire Freedom”: The New Orleans Tribune and the Foundation of Counterpublics Through Affective Discourse.”
The top faculty papers and student papers will be presented together at the division’s top papers panel during AEJMC’s 2024 conference in Philadelphia on Friday, August 9 at 6:30-8:30 p.m.
Lisa is an assistant professor at Indiana University
Lisa D. Lenoir (Indiana) received Indiana University’s Presidential Arts and Humanities Fellows Program award to advance her research on the life and career of The Chicago Defender’s Mattie Smith Colin. The fellows program supports IU faculty with promise to be national and international leaders in their discipline. Lenoir’s research focuses on media discourses surrounding journalism, activism, and identity, and consumer culture.
The 2024-2025 fellowship features a $50,000 grant, which allows her to host scholars and to conduct archival and oral history work to bring Colin’s work to the forefront, focusing on the journalist’s career from 1950-2002. Colin is known for covering the return of Emmett Till’s body from Money, Mississippi to Chicago, a critical moment in the long Black civil rights struggle. In addition, the journalist worked as a food and fashion editor. Lenoir knew Colin during her tenure in Chicago, while working as a fashion editor for the Chicago Sun-Times.
The Mattie Smith Colin Project has been generously supported by grants from AEJMC’s Commission on the Status of Women and the American Journalism Historians Association (AJHA).
Tom is a professor emeritus at Bowling Green State University
Tom Mascaro (Bowling Green) has co-authored a revised edition of William Porter’s 1976 classic, Assault on the Media: The Nixon Years, Updated with Analysis of 21st Century Threats to Democracy (University of Michigan Press). The expanded version includes several new chapters, additional Documents of Significance, several key analyses of First Amendment issues, and a critique of the role of academe in the pursuit of rampant authoritarianism.
Do you have member news to share? Send your updates for the next Clio to Caitlin Cieslik-Miskimen at caitlinc@uidaho.edu.
Rachel Grant is the chair of the Media History Division
We are less than a month away from this year’s conference in Philly. So much work and dedication happened behind the scenes, and I want to thank all the executive members of the History Division leadership. I especially want to thank our vice-chairs Brian Creech (program chair) and Melissa Greene-Blye (research chair) for organizing our panels and research competition. Also, thank you to everyone who submitted and reviewed submissions. Our division has the most dedicated members who continue to help elevate the importance of historical research.
We have an exciting schedule this year and we have an included abbreviated schedule of all our division’s sessions in this issue of Clio. For a full schedule of AEJMC events, check out the program online.
Ford is a distinguished professor in the Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State University. Ashley is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Saint Louis University. The two recently published the book How America Gets the News: A History of US Journalism(Rowman & Littlefield, 2024).
1. What is the primary focus or central question (s) of your history research? Explain.
Ford is a distinguished professor journalism at Penn State University
While our individual research is focused on two separate subjects—Ford examines Civil War era journalism and Ashley researches women’s media history—we are both broadly concerned with questions surrounding media production and media consumption.
Our coauthored book, How America Get the News: A History of U.S. Journalism, is a concise history of American journalism—including newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and digital—and introduces readers to the news media from the first colonial newspapers to today’s news conglomerates and the rise of the digital media.
Where are you currently getting your Ph.D. and/or what is your current position?
I am finishing up my dissertation at the University of Missouri, which I will defend in the Fall. In addition to finishing up my dissertation, I will start as an assistant professor at in the Department of Journalism and Strategic Media at the University of Memphis this Fall.
What brought you to grad school?
As a young undergrad student, I grew a love of research through the McNair Scholars program. Engaging with my mentors in the program showed me what I wanted to do with my career. Entering grad school, my goals were reaffirmed by learning from the faculty at Ohio University. From there, I decided to return to my undergraduate alma mater to finish my PhD and once again learn from the faculty that first encouraged me in my journey.
Fordham University associate professor Beth Knobel has won the 2024 Diversity in Journalism History Research Award for her conference submission, “Breaking Barriers: Ed Bradley’s Early Years in Radio.”
Presented by the History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), the Diversity Award recognizes the outstanding paper in journalism or mass communication history submitted to the annual paper competition that address issues of inclusion and the study of marginalized groups and topics. Knobel will receive a cash prize during the division’s awards gala on August 7 at the AEJMC National Convention in Philadelphia, PA.
The judges for the History Division’s Diversity Award recognized the richness and depth of Knobel’s primary research and her compelling storytelling ability.
“We had a very strong, and very competitive, group of Finalists for this year’s award. ‘Breaking Barriers’ stood out for being richly embedded within this year’s conference theme, connected to its location, and the ways it wove oral history, archival broadcast media, and traditional print journalism sources into a vivid narrative of overcoming structural inequality in the radio industry.”
The History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) has selected A.J. Bauer, Erin Coyle, Michael Fuhlhage, and John Vilanova as the winners of this year’s Jinx C. Broussard Award for Excellence in Teaching of Media History.
This sixth annual award recognizes transferable, original, tested, and creative teaching ideas, especially those that engage with diversity, collaboration, community, or justice.
This year’s winners will present their teaching practices this August at AEJMC’s National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and will be honored at the division’s awards gala.
Bauer, an assistant professor in the Department of Journalism and Creative Media at the University of Alabama, detailed an archival research methods activity aimed at showing students how historians develop narratives from archival materials and encouraging them to engage with archival documents in a tactile way. Bauer’s award submission described “sharing that sense of wonder and uncertainty” of archival work with students, and centered teacher-student collaboration, writing, “we are all trying to make sense of history, together.”
Coyle, an associate professor at the Lew Klein College of Media and Communication at Temple University, was named a Broussard Award winner for an interactive, candy-based classroom activity that encourages students to question their own perceptions, biases, and their impact on journalistic and historical writing. Coyle’s M&M sorting activity, paired with Wesley Lowery’s “A Reckoning Over Objectivity, Led by Black Journalists,” engages both students’ present biases and the continued impact of decades of white news leaders’ values in mainstream media.
Fulhage, an associate professor in the Department of Communication at Wayne State University, shared an activity for students to examine a major daily newspaper’s historical treatment of communities of color and to assess that coverage to determine whether the paper should offer an apology to those groups. Fulhage said the project brings “students of different races into dialogue about the significance and appropriateness of apologies by news organizations for their complicity in systemic racism.”
Vilanova, an assistant professor of Journalism & Communication and Africana Studies at Lehigh University, was awarded for his “critical fabulation” activity. In this teaching idea, Vilanova encourages students to research and construct a new reality from archival silences and violences, which “fuses the creative and the historical, recuperating lives and stories of people unacknowledged by the choices of the archivists.”
The Broadcast Education Association (BEA) announced Noah Arceneaux (San Diego State University) will become the new editor of the Journal of Radio & Audio Media. The journal publishes research on radio’s contemporary and historical subject matter, and the audio media that have challenged radio’s traditional use.
