By Rachel Grant, University of Florida, Membership Co-Chair, rgrant@jou.ufl.edu

Jon Bekken’s (Albright College) co-authored chapter, “Spanish Firemen and Maritime Syndicalism, 1902-1940,” appears in Christopher J. Castaneda and Montse Feu, editors, Writing Revolution: Hispanic Anarchism in the United States. University of Illinois Press, 2019. The chapter explores the weekly newspaper Culture Obrera and its role in sustaining a union of marine firemen and their immigrant community. He presented a paper, “Participatory Journalism & Democratic Communication in the Working­-Class Press,” to the Labor and Working Class History Association’s annual conference in May 2019, and reviewed Mediating America: Black and Irish Press and the Struggle for Citizenship in the most recent Journalism History 45:4. His entry on “Unions of Newsworkers” appears in the International Encyclopedia of Journalism Studies, edited byTim Vos and Folker Hanusch (Wiley Blackwell Publishing, 2019). And a commentary, “Restoring Labor to the Public Sphere,” is scheduled to appear in the next Journalism & Communication Monographs.

Jinx Broussard (Louisiana State University) and Sheryl Kennedy Haydel (Louisiana State University) along with Shaniece Bickham (Nicholls State University) will present their research “Framing an Acceptable Image: The Political Campaigns of Four of America’s First Black Mayors” at the 2020 Joint Journalism and Communication History Conference. The study examines the mayoral campaigns of the first black mayors in four major U.S. cities to determine how their images were cultivated on the campaign trail and the extent to which the race of their selected press secretaries influenced their ability to be more palatable to white citizenry. The conference will take place on March 14 at the NYU Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.

Teri Finneman (University of Kansas) is attending Podcast Movement in February in Los Angeles to learn more tricks for marketing the Journalism History podcast. The conference is a major event for the podcasting industry and will include sessions on livestreaming, monetizing podcasts, podcast listeners and transcription.

On Feb. 29, Will Mari (Louisiana State University) will be giving a talk on his book, “A Short History of Disruptive Journalism Technologies: 1960-1990” (Routledge, 2019) which covers the computerization of the American newsroom during the latter Cold War. The talk will take place at the Living Computer Museum in Seattle, Washington. 

David T. Z. Mindich (Temple University) published his third book, “The Mediated World: A New Approach to Mass Communication and Culture” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019).  The Mediated World departs from other mass communication textbooks by emphasizing history (including pre-printing press) narrative, diversity issues, and media literacy.

Founder and director Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez’s (University of Texas) Voces Oral History Project is now officially a Center at the University of Texas at Austin. This signals permanence – so that the oral histories will live on (vocesoralhistoryproject.org). Voces celebrated its 20^th anniversary in November 2019. It has video recorded over 1,250 interviews and has over 10,000 digitized photographs and other documentation. Its physical archives are held at the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection at the UT-Austin Campus. Collections include the Latina/o WWII, Korean and Vietnam eras; Political and Civic Engagement; Professions. The Voces Oral History Summer Institute will be held June 8-12, 2020, on the University of Texas campus.This workshop is for faculty and graduate students wishing to use oral history in research and teaching. Instructors have created oral history projects, published widely using oral history, and are leaders in oral history publishing and teaching. Applications accepted through March 9, 2020. Visit vocessummerinstitute.org for more information.

Kimberly Wilmot Voss (University of Central Florida) will be participating in Beacon College Salon Series on Jan. 22. Her talk is titled “Politicking Politely: Well-behaved Women Making a Difference in the 1960s and 1970s.”

By Perry Parks, Michigan State University, Membership Co-Chair, parksp@msu.edu

Ed Adams

Where do you work: Brigham Young University

Where you got your Ph.D.: Ohio University

Current favorite class: Currently serving as Dean of the College of Fine Arts and Communications. I don’t get much opportunity to teach.

Current research project: Dabbling with a couple of Public Relations History projects.

Fun fact: I really like mowing my lawn.

By Rachel Grant, University of Florida, Membership Co-Chair, rgrant@jou.ufl.edu

Pam Parry (Southeast Missouri State University) was promoted to professor in Fall 2019.

Phillip J.Hutchison (University of Kentucky) published an article titled “Gay Talese and Floyd Patterson: Constructing a Liminal Hero for an Ambivalent Age” in  Journal of Sports Media Spring-Fall 2019.

Linda Steiner (University of Maryland-College Park), Carolyn Kitch (Temple University), and Brooke Kroger (New York University) edited book titled Front Pages, Front Lines: Media and the Fight for Women’s Suffrage will be published in March 2020.

This collection offers new research on media issues related to the women’s suffrage movement. Contributors incorporate innovative approaches to social movement, media theory, and historiography while discussing the vexed relationship between the media and debates over suffrage. Aiming to correct past oversights, the editors curate essays on overlooked topics like the participation of African American and Mormon-oriented media, coverage of black women in the movement, suffrage-related historiography, suffragist rhetorical strategies, elites within the movement, suffrage as part of broader campaigns for social transformation, and how views of white masculinity influenced press coverage.

Contributors: Maurine H. Beasley, Sherilyn Cox Bennion, Jinx C. Broussard, Teri Finneman, Kathy Roberts Forde, Linda M. Grasso, Carolyn Kitch, Brooke Kroeger, Linda J. Lumsden, Jane Marcellus, Jane Rhodes, Linda Steiner, and Robin Sundaramoorthy.

Patrick File (University of Nevada-Reno) received a $1,000 grant from Kappa Tau Alpha to study how photographers resolved legal concerns a century ago. The KTA grant will support File’s travel to review archives in New York City and at the University of Utah.

Kappa Tau Alpha, the national college honor society for journalism and mass communication, conducts the grant program to provide research assistance to chapter advisers and to recognize their efforts to promote excellence in scholarship.  The society has chapters at 97 universities. File has served as adviser of the University of Nevada chapter for two years.

Berkley Hudson (University of Missouri) is launching a Go-Fund-Me style $250,000 campaign to supplement his efforts for a nationally traveling photography exhibition and symposia based on historical Mississippi photographs from the Jim Crow era. The National Endowment for Humanities already has contributed two grants to the project, most recently in April for $150,000.

Hudson is reaching out to potential supporters of all kinds: those who can give perhaps $10, $25, $50 or $100 as well as those who can give much more. Here’s a link to the Missouri School of Journalismwebsite that allows donations of any amount, whether via the internet or via snail mail: GiveDirectMizzou link.

The project will incorporate vintage film and newsreels, oral history audio, an interactive mobile app, and a curriculum guide for secondary students and their teachers. In addition, an illuminated exhibition entry tunnel will be made of scores of facsimile large format, glass plate negatives of photographer O.N.Pruitt (1891-1967). Pruitt worked mainly in northeast Mississippi from 1915-1960.

Kevin Curran’s (Arizona State University) study of the 2006 iHeartMedia leveraged buyout has been accepted for presentation at the biannual World Media Economics and Management Conference to be held in Rome in May 2020. 

Poynter recently covered the newspaper launched by Teri Finneman (University of Kansas) and her reporting students. The town lost its newspaper during the Recession. Finneman’s KU students partnered with her alma mater, the University of Missouri, to tackle this news desert.

Dante Mozie (South Carolina State University) presented his paper “‘This, Too, Is Segregation: A Framing Analysis of the 1960 Sit-Ins in Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill, N.C., Through the Eyes of Student Journalists” Oct. 3 at the 38th American Journalism Historians Association National Convention in Dallas, Texas.

Students at Temple University tune in to the 1619 Project for Students and Educators session hosted by the New York Times. Photo submitted by Karen Turner.