Five media historians will receive funding supporting their research related to diversity and media history. The microgrants are sponsored by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication’s History Division and the American Journalism Historians Association. It’s a collaborative effort to stimulate more diversity research in their journals, Journalism History and American Journalism.

“The microgrants program reflects a unified commitment by our journals to support the unearthing and amplification of underrecognized voices and experiences from media history,” said Journalism History’s Editor Perry Parks. “The more of these stories we are able to tell, the richer all of our histories will be.”

Here are this year’s microgrant winners:

Andrew T. Daws is a doctoral candidate in the College of Communication and Information Sciences at The University of Alabama. His research primarily focuses on LGBTQ+ publications. His microgrant project expands on his dissertation research on classified advertisements in Southern gay newspapers and how they shaped queer community and identity from the 1980s to early 2000s. The grant will allow him access valuable archival material, offering a broader context of how these ads functioned as sites of community-building and resistance across diverse queer landscapes and cultural contexts.

Michael Fuhlhage is an associate professor in the Department of Communication at Wayne State University. He researches newsgathering with a focus on Latinos and Latino immigration and how cultural identity shapes journalists’ perceptions. Fuhlhage’s microgrant project, while building on his previous research on the prehistory of stereotypes about Latinos, represents a new research agenda for him, as he will study how Chicanos pushed back against mainstream media misrepresentation through counter-narratives. His research will focus on how Chicanos told their own stories to their people and mainstream media in the late 20th century.

Takeya Mizuno is a professor in the School of Political Science and Economics at Meiji University in Tokyo, Japan. His research centers on the history of Japanese American journalists in Hawai’i and the mainland United States. His microgrant project expands on his current research to examine how the military government began licensing and censorship of the Japanese “enemy language” press in Hawai’i during World War II. By using archival material, he will examine the press licensing system, censorship, and how Japanese newspapers and readers reacted to stringent press control.

Robin Sundaramoorthy is an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland and American University. Her research focuses on silences, gaps, and omissions; she feels strongly that the people the media leave out are more important than those they include. Her microgrant project will build on her award-winning dissertation, which examined efforts by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the 1980s to increase broadcast minority ownership.  Her new research will focus on Jo-Al Broadcasting, Inc. and KTOY Radio in Texarkana, Arkansas. Her microgrant will help her conduct oral history interviews.

Wafa Unus is an associate professor of journalism at Fitchburg State University. Her research interests include minority press, local news deserts, and journalism history. She authored A Newsman in the Nixon White House, examining political image-making and journalistic integrity. Unus develops local academic-news partnerships to address news gaps. She is also a columnist for the Fitchburg Sentinel & Enterprise. Her microgrant project is a case study of advocacy and reporting in The Moslem World & The U.S.A., the first monthly journal about Islam in the United States, examining how minority journalism historically united marginalized communities and shaped narratives around intersectional struggles.

"The American Journalism Historians Association and American Journalism are grateful for the opportunity to partner with the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication’s History Division and Journalism History to help fund scholarship that gives voice to and amplifies diverse media histories,” said Amber Roessner, editor for American Journalism. “These undertold narratives can help us reckon with challenging chapters of our history, and they contribute to a more complete, holistic understanding of our past and how it relates to this present moment.”

The microgrant winners have until June 1, 2026, to finish their research and submit an academic journal article to American Journalism or Journalism History for review.

This microgrant program was launched in 2023. Counting this year’s awardees, a total of 14 media history scholars have been helped financially by these grants. 

How did you become involved with AJHA?

I first learned about AJHA through my dissertation chair and research advisor while pursuing my Ph.D. at Mizzou. At the time, I was researching the history of digital camera technology in photojournalism, particularly the roles of the Associated Press and the Olympic Games in driving its adoption. My advisor, a media historian and an active member of AJHA, encouraged me to submit my research to AJHA’s conference as a place where it could find a strong scholarly audience. 

My path to media history has always felt like a natural progression, albeit one that could be described as an aberration of sorts. My career has been built on working with the newest technologies, the most cutting-edge tools and techniques. But I have always believed that in order to understand where we are going, we must understand where we have been. I don’t see history merely as a tool for course correction—it is a story, one that deserves to be explored and respected. The people we study in history were acting in their present, just as we are acting in ours. Historians in the future will examine our decisions, just as we analyze those of the past. There is something profoundly humbling in that. 

This mindset has shaped how I approach research. Years ago, while living in China, I was hired as a consultant for Guangzhou Daily Press. My job was to modernize the layout and editorial structure of their English-language newspaper. But before making any changes, I first went into the archives to understand how the paper had evolved to that point. At Mizzou, when studying emerging digital technology, I wanted to trace every innovation since the telegraph that led to the tools we use now. That curiosity—the need to ask, "What led us to here?"—has defined my work.

AJHA provided a scholarly home for that perspective. It connected me with other researchers who see media history as more than just a chronology of past events, but as an ongoing conversation that informs how we understand journalism, technology, and culture. The association continues to influence my research through its daily newsletters, research calls, and conferences, keeping me engaged with new scholarship and opportunities. If anything, I need to do better about fully engaging—attending more in-person events and taking part in networking opportunities. The first year after completing my Ph.D. and relocating to a new position was a whirlwind, but now that the initial chaos has settled, I look forward to becoming more involved in the years ahead.

How do you connect your research on emerging digital technology with media history in the classroom?

I treat media history as an intrinsic linkage to learning emerging digital technology. Every tool, every industry standard, and every decision that seems taken for granted today was once an innovation. By exploring the origins of these tools and practices in the classroom, students develop a robust professional foundation on which they are able to engage with future technologies.

In my Media Production Principles course, for instance, I guide students through the invention of the kinetoscope, the rationale behind 35mm film as the standard for full-frame digital sensor technology, and why we continue to rely on a 4:3 aspect ratio in digital motion picture for standard television in North America. We also explore why movies are presented at 24 frames per second in major motion pictures (Director Peter Jackson, notwithstanding)—a decision rooted in early technological constraints and cost efficiency rather than any inherent natural law. Students swiftly recognize that many of the tools and formats they use daily were shaped by historical decisions made long before their time.

I have often observed a profound fascination for these lessons on history in my students—they frequently express surprise at understanding why certain media conventions exist and gain a deeper appreciation for the industry once they do. Many have commented in their course evaluations that my approach to teaching these lessons captivates them. Some students even remark that, despite their best efforts, they could not remain uninterested because it is too engaging for learning. This is one of the greatest compliments I can receive as an educator.

At times we explore transcending current industry standards, contemplating how present-day choices might influence media in the next century. We’ve contemplated alternative histories, such as, what if Edison and Dickson had selected a 1:1 or 3:4 format instead of 4:3? What if spatial computing leads us to entirely break away from traditional frames? While students sometimes laugh at such forward-thinking ideas or give the imitation shiver, these discussions help them realize that they are part of an ongoing evolutionary process, not passive users of technology.

Ultimately, my goal is to assist students in recognizing that history is not merely something to study for the sake of studying it. History is something they are living and shaping right now. By fostering this perspective, I aim to instill a sense of responsibility and agency among my students, encouraging them to contribute meaningfully to the future evolution of media.

How has your extensive international travel and twelve years living outside the U.S. informed your understanding of media history in the U.S. and/or abroad?

Spending over a decade in China fundamentally shaped my understanding of media history—not just in terms of studying it, but in living it firsthand. I worked inside state-controlled media as a visual editor at Guangzhou Daily and as a voice-over reporter for GDTV’s World Channel, where I saw how journalism functioned in a system with direct government oversight. Each week, we received a white paper outlining which stories had to align with Xinhua's [News Agency, China's state news outlet] official version. It was an accepted reality of the newsroom, and while there were moments when editors might have quietly joked about running a different version, there was no question about what would actually go to print.

What many people don’t realize, however, is that even in state-run media systems, investigative journalism still exists—it just operates within defined boundaries. Local corruption, consumer protections, and infrastructure failures were fair game for reporting, and I saw firsthand how these stories could still have real impact. Working within this system didn’t make me more cynical about press freedom; rather, it deepened my understanding of journalism as an impartial act that is shaped by the structures in which it operates. In the West, journalism serves one set of interests; in China, it serves another. No system is without influence.

My time in China also made me view Western media through a more critical lens. While American journalism prides itself on press freedom, the U.S. has its own forms of narrative control—through omission, misdirection, or the economic realities of media ownership. Teaching this perspective to students often results in pushback, which I welcome. Many have grown up immersed in American ideals of free press, and it can be jarring to confront the reality that all media systems, even democratic ones, have constraints. But as someone who has lived in both worlds, I try to bring that complexity into the classroom.

Beyond China, my travels across Southeast Asia—Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Sri Lanka—exposed me to even more varied approaches to journalism and media governance. Seeing how different nations handle media access, censorship, and digital communication reinforced my view that media history isn’t just a timeline of technological advances, but a reflection of each society’s values and power structures.

Having graduated semi-recently, what advice do you have for other PhD candidates or recent graduates? This could be about the job market, dissertation writing, first year at a new job, etc.

Transitioning from PhD candidate to tenure-track professor has been both rewarding and overwhelming. One of the biggest adjustments wasn’t just stepping back into the instructor’s role. A professorial role carries with it a substantial burden of responsibilities. Doing this at an American university after years of teaching in China added an additional challenge of shifting into a new culture. While I had extensive experience in the classroom, the cultural and institutional expectations were more of a transition than I had anticipated.

One of the hardest realities of this position is the workload—upwards of 70-80 or more-hour workweeks, constant pressure to publish, committee service, professional service, curriculum development, and teaching. Unlike in China, where I had long semester breaks, there is no real downtime here. Winter break is for writing and prepping courses; summers are spent teaching, revising curriculum, attending conferences, and producing research. This is the reality of tenure-track life at a research university in the U.S., and no one should enter it under any illusions that the workload eases up once the dissertation is finished. The pressure of the tenure clock is real. Defending your dissertation helps to prepare for that ticking pressure.

Financially, the transition has been jarring as well. The most important piece of advice I can offer to PhD candidates is this: Make sure your program is fully funded with a living stipend. The dissertation process is all-consuming, and unless you are in an extraordinary situation, working a full-time job while writing a dissertation is nearly impossible. You may find yourself starting to fund your studies on credit, and I cannot stress this enough—do not charge your way through school. The financial burden of paying down that debt after graduation will follow you for years.

As for the job market, it’s an intense but thrilling process if you know your worth. I was writing my dissertation while applying for positions, meeting search committees at AEJMC, and flying to universities for campus visits. The experience was high-pressure but ultimately rewarding, and I was fortunate to receive multiple offers. Timing and my research area contributed favorably, as I’ve known others who applied to 50 or more institutions and heard back from only a handful. Applying for a tenure-track line is highly competitive, but when you find the right fit, the process is worthwhile.

What hobbies or activities do you enjoy outside of academia?

Travel, photography, and fitness. Photography is the longest throughline in my life. It has been with me from childhood, through my travels, into my career, and even into my academic research. My father taught me how to use a camera when I was a kid, letting me experiment with his Pentax 35mm SLR film camera. We practiced photographing everything—macro photography of coins on the kitchen table shooting through extension tubes to get right down into the scratches and nicks, documenting birthdays, holidays, and everydays, whatever caught our curiosity. My grandfather was also an avid photographer, a hobbyist who never ate a warm meal because he was too busy photographing his food—long before Instagram was ever a concept, my grandpa photographed everything. My father took photography a step further than his dad, turning it into a small business when he and my mother ran a video rental store and eventually expanded into video production. My brother and I would use the editing decks to make skate videos, cutting together footage of us out on our boards.

I carried this passion forward. In high school, I ordered a photography class-on-tape from the Seattle Film School and dreamt of attending the Art Institute, which I eventually did—earning my BA from the Art Institute of Colorado. I took my father’s camera on my first-ever solo trip to New York City in 1991, where I photographed everything—including a worm’s eye view shot looking up at the tall palm trees inside the World Trade Center. That trip was a turning point in my life. For one, I’d never seen palm trees inside a building before. It galvanized my passion for travel, a passion that deepened when I served in the Marines as I traveled to almost every country with shores on the Mediterranean Sea—Egypt, Tunisia, Israel, Greece, Italy, and Spain. I have been a traveler ever since, always with at least one camera in hand.

Photography became the foundation of my career. It took me to China, where I documented a mid-tier city for my master’s thesis, and later, it led me into journalism and academia. Photography got me here, and now, though I don’t have time to make photos the way I once did, my research is taking me where I’m going next.

Fitness has also played an important role in my life. I ran track in high school, ran in the Marines, and later, I picked it back up while living in China. Running has been a constant, though my passion for fitness deepened in 2014-2015 when I decided I wanted more than just running. I joined a gym, started resistance training, gave up the sweets, colas, alcohol, even meat, and trained religiously—lifting on gym days, running on the in-between days.

Fitness was also what connected me to my brother, so when he passed away in 2021, my fitness routine unraveled. Now, though my training regimen isn’t what it was, every time I train, I think of him, and it keeps him.

Travel, photography, fitness—these have all shaped me (no pun intended). Even when one fades into the background, it never truly disappears.

Chad Stuart Owsley is an assistant professor of communication in emerging media studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

The AJHA Board of Directors has named Erin Coyle as second vice president, filling the position vacated upon the death of Pam Parry. Per the AJHA Constitution and Bylaws, the Board is tasked with appointing officers to vacated positions, subject to confirmation by the AJHA membership at the next election. 

Coyle thanked the board for the opportunity to serve AJHA at a time when we need to strongly defend education, journalism history, historical research, journalism, press freedom, and civil rights.

“I am proud of this organization for providing opportunities for historians to research communication and underrepresented members of society,” Coyle said.

“This organization provides essential mentorship and support for journalism historians,” she said. “I am looking forward to working with our members to continue fostering mentorship and support for communication historians.”

Coyle researches advocacy for free expression, rights to access government information and government proceedings, and conflicts between free expression and privacy rights. Winner of the 2023 AJHA National Award for Excellence in Teaching, Coyle teaches courses in journalism history, media law and ethics, writing and reporting, and theory as an associate professor at Temple University.

She is the author of The Press and Rights to Privacy: First Amendment Freedoms vs. Invasion of Privacy Claims and articles in top media law and media history journals.

Coyle has served two terms on the AJHA Board of Directors and has been chair of the Research Committee. She also has been a liaison to the Graduate Student Committee and assisted with the silent auction.

President Debbie van Tuyll said Coyle is an outstanding choice to join the AJHA leadership.

“She is an excellent scholar and teacher, energetic and organized,” van Tuyll said. “I've been so impressed as I've worked with her in various capacities over the years—everything she does is done thoughtfully and well. I am truly looking forward to serving with her.”

First Vice President Michael Fuhlhage said he is thrilled that Coyle will be joining the leadership team.

“I have known her since joining the doctoral program at UNC, and she conducts herself as a scholar with great care, skill, and integrity,” Fuhlhage said. “It will be a pleasure to serve AJHA alongside her."

Coyle will fulfill the tasks associated with the second vice president for the remainder of this year, which includes assembling the conference program. If confirmed by the membership on the fall ballot, Coyle will ascend to the position of first vice president after this year’s convention in Long Beach and then to president the following year.

Board Members React to US Archivist Firing

In an emotional meeting on Friday, Feb. 21, AJHA board members approved signing on to the American Historical Association statement regarding the firing of the archivist of the United States, Dr. Colleen Shogan.

Board members also asked President Debbie van Tuyll to craft a letter to U.S. President Donald Trump that directly protests his firing of Shogan. The letter follows this story. Members who wish to add their names to the letter can let van Tuyll know at dvantuyl@augusta.edu. You must sign on no later than Friday, Feb. 28, which is when the letter will be mailed and emailed. Members are also welcome to use the letter as a template for their own individual communications.

Ad Hoc Committee to Support Members’ DEI Research

A new ad hoc committee is putting together a cache of resources for members who work in areas related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and who are threatened by either state or federal attacks on their work. Those resources might be publications, websites or even experts who are willing to offer pro bono services.

A University of California system tenured law professor told Inside Higher Education that President Donald Trump's recently issued executive orders are vague when it comes to defining DEI and that concerned the professor, whose specialty is critical race theory, enough to ask for certain information to be removed from their website biography. They have also declined teaching a class on that specialty for the duration of the Trump presidency.

The AAUP and others have filed a federal law suit arguing that President Trump's DEI orders violate both the First and Fifth Amendments and threaten academic freedom.

Michael Fuhlhage of Wayne State University will chair the committee. Members include Yong Volz, University of Missouri; Robbie Byrd, University of Memphis; Gwen Mellinger, James Madison University; and Melita Garza, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. A sixth appointment is pending and will be announced once it is made.

"This is the work of angels right now," AJHA President Debbie van Tuyll said. "Government interference with Hi what happens in the collegiate classroom or individual research is a form of censorship, and we want to help our colleagues prepare to respond to such interference."

The committee began compiling links and documents for members whose work is threatened by pending legislation or other government actions that target diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and teaching during its first meeting on Friday, February 21. The committee also recommended that AJHA sign on to the American Historical Association’s statement opposing Trump’s executive order “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling.” The committee will also host a listening/discussion session in late March for anyone who wishes to discuss the impact of the anti-DEI government action on their work. The time and date will be announced soon.

Van Tuyll has asked the committee to have their full report ready for presentation at the fall board meeting.

AJHA to Apply for Organization Credit Card

Board members also approved applying for an organizational credit card to handle convention expenses that are too great for the limits on the organization's debit card. According to Treasurer Ken Ward, the card will be paid off immediately after the conference and will not carry a balance. He will also seek a card that offers the best rewards for the organization.

Closing Note on 2024 AJHA Convention Budget

Aimee Edmondson, convention planner, sent the good news that the Pittsburgh convention did not lose money, thanks to a last-minute donation by the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Letter Regarding US Archivist Firing

February 21, 2025

Dear President Trump:

I am writing on behalf of the American Journalism Historians Association to protest your firing of the archivist of the United States, Dr. Colleen J. Shogan. We are an organization that seeks to advance education and research in mass communication history and is committed to upholding the principles of our democracy.

Dr. Shogan was appointed to a role that is required by law to be non-partisan. Further, the law requires that her appointment be grounded in her professional qualifications. The law also requires that you inform both the House of Representatives and the Senate of the reasons for her dismissal. That was almost a month ago.

We urge you to follow the law and forward your reasons for her dismissal immediately. We also remind you that any replacement must be non-partisan in order to conform to the rule of law. As president of the United States, you are pledged to uphold the laws of our country. Such a pledge should not be taken lightly.

Sincerely,

Debra Reddin van Tuyll, Ph.D.

President

American Journalism Historians Association

Michael Fuhlhage, Ph.D., First Vice President, AJHA

By: Amber Roessner, American Journalism editor

Seeking digital media reviews for American Journalism: A Journal of Media History

Any digital media resource or production (website, social media account, digital archive, or film) about journalism, media, film, or public relations history.

Are you interested in writing a digital media review for American Journalism: A Journal of Media History? The Digital Media Reviews (DMR) section of the journal showcases digital archives, websites, social media accounts, and film resources that would be useful to media historians or media history educators. Past submissions have highlighted digital archives authors have consulted in their own research or that are housed at their own institutions, while others have explored popular media (social media, film, or television series) that engage with relevant historical topics or issues. 

I am currently collecting reviews for 2025’s Volume 42, Issues 2 through 4. Please visit American Journalism’s website to learn more about the journal itself as well as the DMR section. If you have an idea for a digital media review, I warmly encourage you to contact me at cteresa@niagara.edu for further information about submission guidelines. Thank you!

Review length: 700 to 800 words long

Deadline: Flexible

Contact: Carrie Teresa, Digital Media Reviews editor, cteresa@niagara.edu

Upcoming American Journalism Rename Feedback Survey

American Journalism Historians Association members should be on the lookout for a Qualtrics survey that is designed to offer feedback around calls to rename the organization’s journal, American Journalism. The survey will be distributed to AJHA’s membership through Wild Apricot within the next month.  

As the survey introduction explains:

At American Journalism’s 40th anniversary, former editors Barbara G. Friedman and Kathy Roberts Forde (2023) asked: ‘why should a journal that publishes media history, not only journalism history, across national contexts and boundaries continue to call itself by a name—American Journalism—that excludes content it welcomes?’ (p. 356). Incoming editor Amber Roessner heard similar calls for a more inclusive name during the journal’s editorial transition and approached the boards of the American Journalism Historians Association and American Journalism about continuing a dialogue more than a decade in the making. With support from both boards and our Taylor and Francis representative, this survey is designed to gain insight into the perspective of our community of scholars.

Roessner further contextualized calls for a name change in her recent editor’s note published in American Journalism Vol. 42, No. 1, citing the 2024 AJHA Presidential Address. “It’s time,” AJHA president Tracy Lucht noted in her address. “The name of our journal should respect and reflect the research of those among us who study the histories of public relations, advertising, entertainment, and other forms of media communication, not just within the US but globally. We can be exclusionary, or we can be inclusive. To me, the choice is clear” (Lucht, "Noise and Numbers"). In response to these continued calls, the Qualtrics survey was designed in consultation with the AJHA board to gather feedback from our community in the coming days. So, please be on the lookout for the AJHA Wild Apricot survey announcement in your in-boxes within the next month. Moreover, as we engage in dialogue around this topic, please remember to heed the voice of former American Journalism editor Jim Martin, who once reminded reviewers to “let courtesy prevail.” (Jim Martin, “Editor’s Note,” American Journalism 22, no. 2 (2005): 6.).

How did you become involved with AJHA?

Ever since I edited my high school newspaper and read W. A. Swanberg's biographies of Pultizer and Hearst, I've had a keen amateur interest in the history of journalism. I planned a career as a journalist but changed direction and became an historian—that is, a journalist without deadlines. I was never formally trained in journalism history and did not even begin to teach the subject until fairly late in my academic career. My university, Drew University, created a new major in Media and Communications, so I decided to work up a new course on the History of American Journalism, which is the only American history course I teach (I'm a specialist in modern Britain and Europe). And so I joined AJHA to keep up (or rather, catch up) with the scholarly literature.

Around the same time, I began researching what was for me unknown historical territory: Playboy magazine's female readers. There were literally millions of them, about a third of Hefner's audience. And that was another good reason to join AJHA. In my journalism history course, I have my students read the May 1963 issue of Playboy and write a short paper analyzing it as a document of American popular culture in the age of MadMen. They can focus on the articles, the fiction, the interviews, the cartoons, the ads, the letters to the editor, or (yes) the ladies. But none of my students has ever chosen to write about the centerfolds. What's wrong with kids nowadays? 

How do you see your research on the history of the book, publishing, and reading in Britain contributing to the study of media history?

My research has always focused on readers. Frankly, I'm more interested in how a Victorian chambermaid responded to Middlemarch than I am in the novel itself. And that has important implications for journalism history. Why do we study newspapers and magazines and newscasts anyway? Obviously they're tremendously influential, but how exactly did they influence readers? We can only know that if we study readers directly, rather than focusing on the printed page and trying to guess how readers might have responded. To take the most basic question, which we should be asking at a time when media credibility is sinking to an all-time low: Did readers believe what they read in the papers? I tackled that and other problems of reader response in my book Readers' Liberation. 

The historiography of reading leads us again and again to counterintuitive conclusions. In The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes I found that Victorian laborers did not limit themselves to penny dreadfuls, they were also enjoying Shakespeare and Shelley and Charles Darwin. I investigated a Black working-class public housing project in Louisville in 1943, where the most popular novel turned out to be (are you sitting down?) Gone with the Wind. And though feminists reviled Playboy, they were far outnumbered by the women who read it as a feminist magazine (which in many ways it was). 

What has your role as co-editor of Book History taught you about reviewing and publishing research?

While Book History wasn't the first journal in the field, it was pioneering on several fronts. Ezra Greenspan, my coeditor, and I had to decide what the history of the book was, what was included within its disciplinary limits. And from our first issue in 1998, we definitely included journalism history. Those early issues featured articles on press coverage of Jenny Lind's American tour, an eighteenth-century German women's magazine, and an English magazine that published sheet music. Later, we had studies of editor-reader dialogue in the Russian dissident journal Kolokol, "bohemian" reporters in the American Civil War, Canadian pulp magazines, Duke (a short-lived publication much like Playboy for a predominantly Black readership), government manipulation of Spanish Armada news in Elizabethan England, the Christian Science Monitor and the professionalization of journalism, how technological information systems transformed the Times of London in its first century, and digitally archiving nineteenth-century amateur newspapers. So we not only published journalism history, we expanded its methodological range.

Since practically everything we did was innovative, we had a large proportion of graduate students and junior faculty among our contributors. To attract younger scholars, we created an annual prize for the best article by a graduate student. Of course we also published distinguished senior scholars, but we especially wanted to showcase the work of young people who will be distinguished senior scholars thirty years hence.

How has your approach to teaching changed since you were part of the team that redesigned the graduate history program at Drew University? What lessons or advice can you offer to other graduate instructors looking to update their history media course or add media history into their syllabi?

We designed our graduate program to train students broadly in cultural and intellectual history, not just journalism history. I did teach a graduate course on journalism history, and there I had students read, analyze, and criticize books that cast light on the whole of American culture: for instance, Alan Brinkley on Henry Luce, William Hammond on covering the Vietnam War, Laurel Leff on the New York Times and the Holocaust, Neal Gabler on Walter Winchell, John McMillan on underground newspapers, and Jennifer Scanlon on Helen Gurley Brown. 

What hobbies or activities do you enjoy outside of academia?

I'm so far behind the times, I still read paper-and-ink newspapers! In fact just about all my recreations are anachronistic. I enjoy visiting historic towns and museums, I watch old movies on TCM, I love live theater but almost never watch anything on a screen. I have no Twitter or Instagram or Facebook accounts, I don't even have a smartphone. For a media scholar I'm fairly allergic to new media.

Jonathan Rose is the William R. Kenan Professor of History at Drew University. He specializes in British history, intellectual history, and the history of the book.

Pam Parry was among the outgoing committee chairs honored at the 2017 AJHA conference. From left: Amber Roessner, Parry, David Vergobbi, Pete Smith, and Michael Fuhlhage. 

Pam Parry, second vice president of AJHA, passed away on Feb. 4. Pam was a professor of public relations at Southeast Missouri State, where she taught media history.

A Lifetime Member of AJHA, she joined in 2009 on the advice of David Davies. She was a doctoral student at the University of Southern Mississippi at the time. Davies required his students to write and submit a conference paper to AJHA.

“He told my class that the organization would change our lives, and he was right,” Parry wrote in a 2023 AJHA member spotlight. “I was hooked by meeting these kindred spirits, and I’ve never looked back.”

Pam served on the AJHA Board of Directors from 2015 to 2018. She also chaired the Education Committee (2015-2017) and was a member of the Public Relations Committee (2010-2013).

Additionally, Pam served our field as editor of Journalism History from 2020 until 2024. She was the author of Eisenhower: The Public Relations President and co-editor of the Women in American Political History book series.

In her bio as a candidate for second vice president, Parry wrote:

As a 15-year member of AJHA, I want to give back to the organization that advances the discipline to which I devoted my life. My professional goal involves progressing media history as a discipline, and that goal aligns with the mission of AJHA. My love of this organization drives me to want to lead it.

Through her teaching, research, and service to the field, Pam has touched the lives of many AJHA members. Some of them sent comments, which are included below.

Kaylene Armstrong

Pam and I first met in the PhD program at Southern Miss and quickly became study buddies — and great friends. We graduated together in December 2013, both of us David Davies' protégées. She pulled me into activity with AJHA by cajoling me into being on the education committee, which she chaired at the time. Then when she left that position, she encouraged me to accept the chair position, which I did. She and I shared a room at every AJHA conference we attended together. We were talking about doing it again this year and meeting up this summer. Through the years we often called each other about issues at our respective teaching assignments, commiserating over injustices and providing validation for each other's feelings. Many times she said to me, "I'm asking your opinion about this because I know you'll tell it to me straight. Is this a bad idea?" Our last visit was talking on the phone about the possibilities of her next adventure working with David Sloan. We chatted while she drove to visit Sloan just a few weeks before she died. Her death leaves a huge hole for everyone who knew her, and I am no different. She was certainly one of the rocks I counted on in my life.  

Maurine Beasley

I was horrified and so sorry to get the sad news.  I knew Pam for at least two decades.  She always was affirmative, exhibiting a love of life, teaching, and scholarship, a great friend to all in the media history community.  I never heard her say a cross word or encountered a harsh message from her.  I had no idea she was ill. We have lost a beautiful soul too soon.

Dianne Bragg

It is still difficult to fathom that Pam is no longer with us. I had met her through AJHA and the AEJMC History Division, but our friendship bonded during our time together as we edited Journalism History (along with Kim Mangun). Pam’s generous and supportive nature made that work rewarding, as she spent innumerable hours ensuring that the journal was something in which we could all take pride. Pam nurtured the authors, graciously navigated bureaucratic minefields, and maintained high academic standards that resulted in work that was always better because of her attention. But even more than that was her attention to people. Pam was an encourager and someone who looked for ways to build bridges between people rather than pull them down. She never ended a phone call without asking about me and my family. And, likewise, she would share news about her beloved family and her students, who all meant so very much to her. I will always regret that she was not able to join us at AJHA in Pittsburgh. We promised to get together soon, never dreaming that our communication a few weeks ago would be our last. In our loss, may we all strive to remember Pam by embodying her spirit, with an encouraging smile or word for someone. That would be our greatest testament to her and her life.

David Davies

Losing Pam is heartbreaking. She was an incredible friend, research partner, and scholar. She was unmatched in her dedication to her friends, her work, and her profession. Her loss is a huge personal loss as well as a loss to journalism and public relations scholarship.

While I have so many friends and colleagues deeply committed to their students, I've never known anyone who cared so deeply for her students as Pam. Her teaching and her students were so very important to her, and students returned her affection. She told me repeatedly that the relationships she forged with her students was the best part of her life as a professor.

Here's a few tidbits of background on Pam you more than likely already know but that I'll pass along just in case:

She finished her PhD at Southern Miss in Fall 2013 and had a book contract to get it published before her defense. For all of us on her committee, we had never had a student who worked as hard as Pam and who did such comprehensive, incredible work as a graduate student. She was one of a kind.

She led the way in founding the book series Women in American Political History with Lexington Books, recruiting an advisory board of leading scholars and me as co-editor. The seven books in the series are one more testament to her drive.

AJHA members David Sloan, Jinx Broussard, Erika Pribanic-Smith, David Davies, Debbie van Tuyll, and Parry met for dinner during the 2017 AJHA conference.

Elisabeth Fondren

Dr. Pam Parry was a giant in the field of government-press relations. We will cherish her memory and her important scholarship. Her warmness, her extraordinary peer-support, and her mentorship of early career scholars are an inspiration to all of us. We will miss Pam terribly and keep her family in our prayers. 

Michael Fuhlhage

I'm at a loss for words. Pam’s SEMO bio page lists this advice for students: “Be honest. Take responsibility. Do your best. Exude kindness and generosity. Repeat all of those things all day every day.” She lived every one of those. She was devoted to her students and to the discipline; she was a hardworking, careful scholar; and she was a meticulous, patient editor. Above all, she was a good, kind person.

Carolyn Kitch

Many people have noted how kind and supportive Pam was toward other researchers. It strikes me that that is what editorial and academic leadership really is -- having sustained faith that what we do in our research matters, deserves respect, makes a difference in our students' lives, and will have meaning for scholars of the future. Pam's genuine and unwavering belief in the value of historical scholarship -- and the value of the people who do such work -- is a model for the field.

Meg Lamme

Pam was all energy, loved history and teaching (we had many conversations about her book, Eisenhower: The Public Relations President), and worked so hard and so successfully to create and build the Lexington (now Bloomsbury) book series. She recruited and supported newer and established scholars to elevate their work, serving as a coach, a mentor, and an editor. 

Kim Mangun

Pam Parry called me in 2020 with an invitation: Would I consider teaming up with her and Alabama professor Dianne Bragg to edit Journalism History? I asked for a few days to think about it, but it really wasn’t a tough decision. Working on the journal with two terrific scholars and editors would be personally and professionally interesting and rewarding. And, being part of the publication’s upcoming 50th-anniversary celebration would be memorable.

Pam’s leadership style was one of inclusiveness and collegiality. She respected our opinions and suggestions and valued our service to the journal. The three of us quickly developed a close working relationship and a seamless process for reading, copyediting, and proofing accepted manuscripts on deadline. Pam worked closely with authors throughout this prepublication process to ensure that their best work appeared in Journalism History. Occasionally, someone would take the time to acknowledge her help in an email or a handwritten note; such gestures meant a lot to Pam. But, she knew that the journal would not exist without teamwork. Pam was unstinting in her praise and so very generous with compliments.

Pam, Dianne, and I collaborated for close to three and a half years. During our tenure we shared professional passions—for history, journalism, stellar research, teaching—and celebrated many family milestones, like births, weddings, and graduations. Pam often talked about her nieces and nephews, whom she was very proud of, and the service she did through her church community. She also was thrilled to tell Dianne and me about the invitation she received to deliver the keynote address at a gala at the Eisenhower Presidential Library in October 2023. In photos emailed to us after the event, Pam beamed with pleasure; the expert on Dwight Eisenhower was in her element with members of the Eisenhower family and community and political leaders.

Pam Parry was kind, thoughtful, and big-hearted. Pay someone a compliment today and remember our good friend and colleague.

Parry and Teri Finneman enjoyed a dinner celebrating their retirements from Journalism History during the 2024 AEJMC convention.

Will Mari

She was always so engaged and thoughtful, especially with junior scholars. I was fortunate to be able to work with her and learn from her kind and generous example.

Jon Marshall

Pam was one of the first people I met at my first AJHA conference in Birmingham. Since then I came to know her as a brilliant, kind, wise, and generous friend who was completely dedicated to the study of media history. Every conversation with her left me with a smile. She was an excellent editor who managed to be both rigorous and encouraging.

Cayce Myers

Pam Parry was a brilliant scholar and a truly kind soul who left us far too soon. She was generous with her time, her knowledge, and her encouragement, and I was fortunate to communicate with her as she shared her insights and inspiration. Her passion for her work was contagious, and she was not only a guiding voice but also a genuinely good person—good-natured, thoughtful, and always willing to help. It is heartbreaking to lose someone so bright and giving, and she will be deeply missed.

Erika Pribanic-Smith

I remember meeting Pam at the Birmingham AJHA conference in 2009; Dave Davies introduced us at the Thursday evening reception, and she was genuinely happy to be there. When I took over as chair of the PR Committee the next year, she enthusiastically joined the committee. That was the first of many opportunities I had to work closely with her, and I enjoyed being not only her colleague but also her friend. She would have been a stellar president. For that and many other reasons, her passing is a tremendous loss.  

Parry, Lexie Little, Rachel Grant, Lisa Burns, Amber Roessner, and Jason Lee Guthrie participated on a 2024 panel at the American Political History Conference in Nashville.

Amber Roessner

Pam's advice to her students was: "Be honest. Take responsibility. Do your best. Exude kindness and generosity. Repeat all of those things all day every day." She lived by those words.

Pam was the kindest and most constructive editor I have ever encountered both as editor of the Women in American Political History series and as editor of Journalism History. She was a consummate advocate of the scholarship in our field and so generous with her wisdom and her praise.

She offers an instructive example to live by. "Be honest. Take responsibility. Do your best. Exude kindness and generosity. Repeat all of those things all day every day." I will remember her words each and every day as I navigate the world, and I know our AJHA family will, too.

David Sloan

Pam was one of the most energetic media historians I’ve ever known. Even with all the projects she had going on, she recently took her school’s MLK holiday break to visit my wife and me. The roundtrip required a drive of twelve hours. The purpose was for Pam and me to discuss some research and publishing projects. It hadn’t been long since she had completed her tenure as editor of Journalism History, and at that time she had accepted a position on the editorial board of the journal Historiography in Mass Communication. She knew it was just an honorary position but required work. During her visit with me and Joanne, she talked enthusiastically about book-length projects she was working on.

With her work ethic, she combined the human graces of graciousness, genuineness, friendliness, and humility. When she talked about her research, it was never to boast but simply to share information about projects that excited her.

Parry, Vanessa Murphree, Jinx Broussard, Willie Tubbs, and Dianne Bragg at the 2015 AEJMC Southeast Colloquium.

Willie Tubbs

Pam, who I met at my first academic conference in 2014, was the best colleague a person could hope for and a scholar of immense skill. I can't recommend her book, Eisenhower: The Public Relations President, enough. Media history at its finest. On a personal note, I sincerely would not be where I am as a faculty member without Pam. She invited me to contribute chapters to one of her books, involved me in numerous service opportunities, advocated for me to become an editorial board member of an academic journal, and served as one of my external reviewers when I went up for tenure. She stood to gain very little from helping me; she just had a heart for people and helped everyone she could. It's my hope that I can one day do for some of my students and younger colleagues what she did for me.

Debbie van Tuyll

Pam was more than just a colleague; she was a true friend, someone I could rely on for honest opinions and ideas. I will truly miss her positive energy and lovely presence. She was one of those people who I looked forward to seeing every year at AJHA

Kimberly Voss

Pam was one of the most significant mentors I ever had. I worked with her on two books and was starting a third. She was a wonderful editor - helpful with revision ideas and gentle with criticism. We shared a love of the Kansas City Chiefs and often exchanged messages about the team. She will be dearly missed.

By: Wendy Plotkin

Are AJHA members typical of their communication colleagues in their appreciation for history? In answering this question, most members would probably cite the unwillingness of their colleagues to read much of the scholarship produced by journalism historians. This lack of enthusiasm for communications history is attributable, in part, to the divide between AJHA members and their colleagues on another issue: the inclusion of communications history courses in undergraduate and graduate media programs. In its 2019 publication, “History in the Curriculum” and the “Statement of Principles on History in the Curriculum,” AJHA articulated its commitment to the principle that all graduate communications programs and undergraduate majors in communications should require at least one communications history course. It also offered data on the relatively low proportion of existing programs conforming to this principle, revealing the huge gap between AJHA’s goal and the situation at the time of publication.  

Another potentially important, but unrecognized, gulf between AJHA members and their colleagues is the indifference of most communicators, their employers, and their organizations toward the preservation of the raw materials needed to produce such history. At the most basic level, this includes print and digital newspapers, audio and video broadcasts, and Internet content such as websites and social media sites that are the fruits of their labor. At another level, this includes the process-oriented materials emerging from the organizations that create and influence these media—the media corporations, trade associations, labor unions, and advocacy organizations.  Can AJHA take it for granted that these sources will be available for their histories—especially sources in digital form that require different means of preservation from the print sources that are most familiar?

I came face-to-face with these questions when, in 2021, I (a retired historian) volunteered to serve as “historian” for a 75-year-old affiliate of a national organization that advocates for equal treatment of women in the communications industry. The position, established shortly after the organization’s founding in 1949, had been vacant for some time.

In this two-part article, I describe my surprise and concern that the organization seemed to accord little value to its history and the historical records that contained it. Its board was open to allowing me to work with its print records, but willing to sacrifice preservation when faced with the challenges of preserving its digitally created records. It also refused to allow me to use its history to strengthen organizational identity—at a time when it was experiencing a significant drop in membership and its 75^th anniversary was approaching.

I attempted to educate the board on the importance of its history to three audiences: the organization itself, young people considering communications careers, and historians of women and communications. Finding the board resistant to these arguments, I queried an archivist association for other examples of this phenomenon, and undertook research in the communications, history, and archival scholarship. They revealed an emerging concern within the journalism community about past and potential future losses of digitally created newspapers and broadcasts. However, articles about the preservation attitudes and practices of organizations that produced media or influenced its production did not surface.

Already an AJHA member, I joined the history division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC). An initial review of the flagship journals of the two organizations, American Journalism and Journalism History, provided two insights: little attention was paid to the problem of sources, and the articles contained few citations to the work of the affiliate I was serving or the national organization of which it was a part.

This was the genesis of my decision to describe my experience to AHJA members and to propose that AJHA establish a public history committee that would investigate the status of historical preservation and organizational history within today’s communications industry. With that information, it could propose, evaluate, and implement solutions if it found a problem existed. Since AJHA consists primarily of faculty of college and university media programs—many of whom had significant experience as working journalists—we have credibility commonly lacking among other historians who could be dismissed as intruders seeking to impose their own values upon the members of a discipline they do not understand. AJHA members are in a better position to determine the extent of the problem, and to discern whether AJHA is, indeed, the best organization to remedy the problem. Could this be better handled by the archival community?  I will deal with some of these issues in Part II.

About the Organization

The affiliate for which I volunteered was established in 1949. Early in its history, it established the position of “historian” and included this position within its by-laws. These historians’ efforts produced a file cabinet full of print records, scrapbooks, and periodicals stored at the office of the state’s press association, whose staff participated in the creation of the affiliate. Included were an abundant set of records about the organization’s founding left by its two principal organizers.

When I began my service as the organization’s historian, the affiliate’s president asked that I organize the files and find an archive to accept them. I indicated my desire to scan them prior to donating the documents to the state archive, an enthusiastic potential host. This request arose from my experience throughout my career with the high costs in time and money of undertaking research in physical archives.

The Fruits of Digitization, 2021 and 2022—Getting to Know the Organization

In 2021 and 2022, I focused on scanning the records, a task that put no demands on the busy board members. The affiliate had volunteered to host the national organization’s meeting in 2021, and when that meeting was cancelled for COVID-19-related reasons, they continued planning for a 2022 meeting. This was a huge effort undertaken by a small group within the board, and I chose to stay in the background.

During this period, I scanned the organization’s 1949-1959 records. The information derived from scanning these documents convinced me of their value for state and U.S. women’s and communications history—something I had not taken for granted when I first volunteered. On their own, the activities of the organization were mildly interesting, with details of arranging officer and board elections; assembling speakers, agendas, and places for quarterly membership meetings; developing categories and rules for communications contests (the most popular activity); and participating in state programs advocating for freedom of information.

These activities became more significant when combined with the names and backgrounds of the members undertaking them. The backgrounds were available in the major dailies and smaller weeklies within the state, many included in commercially available digitized collections.  These publications devoted substantial attention to the activities and staff of the state’s media and media organizations, including women and advocacy groups. Equally valuable, the magazine of the state press association (published continuously since the late 1920s and available in print and microfilm formats) proved to be a treasure trove for this type of information.

I concluded that, aside from revealing the evolving means by which the affiliate sought to empower women communicator over 75 years, its records served as the single best source for identifying women within the state who had served as publishers, editors-in-chief, managing editors, reporters, photographers, and similar positions in broadcasting and public relations from WWI through the 1980s. Few popular books and articles covered them, and they were largely absent from communication history scholarship. There is no doubt that the availability of the affiliate’s records would facilitate the “institutional history of women journalists” and the “enlargement of biographical studies” called for in 2001 by Maurine Beasley in “Recent Directions for the Study of Women’s History in American Journalism.”

Emerging Conflicts Between Favored Digital Distribution Formats and Preservation of Information in Distributed Documents

After the national conference had been held in the summer of 2022—thus freeing the board to consider my ideas—I broadened the scope of my activities. The 75th anniversary of our founding in June 2024 was approaching. I assumed that the board would allow me to add content to the existing history on our website and publish pieces in the quarterly digital newsletter. The newsletter editor expressed enthusiasm for this idea and encouraged me as I wrote a two-part article about the organization’s founder.

At this point, I was alerted to potential conflicts between newer digital formats adopted by the affiliate and the ability to preserve the information they disseminated. The problem was the choice of MailChimp to design and distribute newsletters. MailChimp is a free platform that offers a layered approach to the presentation of information in digital newsletters—emphasizing the visual appeal of short articles at the top layer, and the continuation of these articles via hyperlinks at subsequent levels. The newsletters are emailed to members, and metrics are produced on the number of members who open the emails and the time they spend reading them.

The organization’s newsletter could only be viewed while looking at the email. It could not be downloaded as a document, a feature that discouraged the inclusion of longer articles dealing with more complex topics. Affiliates wishing to encourage readers to learn of past activities could create a portal of these older email versions of the newsletters on their web page. These links would offer these readers the newsletter in the same non-downloadable format, denying them the ability to read the documents without going online to the website. The format also made it difficult to extract articles of interest and organize them by topic—features of prime importance to historians and others seeking to obtain a comprehensive view of the organization’s activities over time. I had put off consideration of how to preserve the affiliate’s digitally created documents, but the incompatibility of my history essays with the technology used to compose the newsletters brought the issue to my attention—and the affiliate’s response to my concerns widened the gap between us.

A subset of the board—whom I had contacted about these concerns—told me that these email newsletters were today’s standard for designing and distributing newsletters. I countered by noting that the national organization offered a compromise that preserved the favored email format without sacrificing the long-term preservation and use of the newsletters. It created a PDF version that email newsletter recipients could download if they did not wish to read the entire newsletter while viewing email. It also placed the PDF versions of newsletters back to 2016 on a “members only” portion of its website.

The group was not satisfied with this solution. It characterized the national organization’s inclusion of downloadable PDFs in the emails distributing newsletters as “old-fashioned.” PDFs were “out” and, they believed, adopting the national organization’s example would discredit them in communication circles. One member indicated that if it came down to a choice between design and preservation, preservation would have to go. Eventually, the group agreed to allow me to create PDF versions of the newsletters to put on the website but failed to follow through on this promise.

Strengthening Organizational Identity Through Organizational History– Or Not

The resistance to providing easy access to past newsletters, a reflection of the “presentist” orientation of the website’s content, also disturbed me because of the value of these newsletters in creating organizational identity. To my mind, there was a pressing need for this heritage-oriented material on our website. Our organization’s membership had plummeted from about 200 in the 1970s to about 40 in recent years, mirroring the experience of the other affiliates and the national organization. These membership declines led to a lack of turnover within the board and signs of burnout among its members. The number of organizational activities and events declined, reducing the appeal of the organization even more—at a time when rising membership fees and the multiplication of membership organizations created new competition for members.

I saw the 75th anniversary as an opportunity to turn members’ and potential members’ attention to the organization’s record of accomplishments over time, enhancing organizational identity at a time when the breadth of activities was shrinking. I believed that the reputations of legendary organizations such as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the League of Women Voters, and the American Civil Liberties Union added to their appeal, allowing members to share the prestige accrued from past efforts. This could help the organization maintain and increase membership and morale during times of organizational fatigue, provide the spark that would encourage members to volunteer for leadership positions, and create new stores of energy to expand organizational activities

The board disagreed. One board member expressed skepticism that organizational history mattered to members. The rest of the board demonstrated agreement with her belief by continuing to ignore my call to add several illustrated essays highlighting the organization’s history to the website.

In late 2023, I decided to design, print, and distribute a historical 2024 anniversary calendar to the organization’s members. I submitted it to the board for review on December 1. The board members initially ignored it but rallied when I said I was close to resigning. They not only improved the calendar with their factual corrections and design edits, but praised its quality, even reimbursing me for the costs.

This affirmation and the election of a new president led me to believe that I would finally be able to add historical materials to the web. However, nothing changed.  Failing to explain the board’s opposition to this request, the president offered me an opportunity to give a brief unrecorded talk about the organization’s history at an October 2024 membership meeting attended by, at most, 45 people. The president also criticized me for creating the calendar without obtaining prior permission and insisted that I cease all attempts to discuss history in the board correspondence.

I submitted my resignation as the organization’s historian, effective March 31, 2024.

Our 75th anniversary was celebrated in May 2024, at our annual awards luncheon, with a trivia contest on our history serving as the main recognition of our anniversary. 

Part II will address the likelihood that, to a greater or lesser extent, the attitudes of this board are shared by a large proportion of those working in the communications industry; the various causes (many structural) of these attitudes; and proposed solutions to be considered by an AJHA Public History committee to the resulting threats to valuable sources and failure to acknowledge the benefits of  history, including its use as a tool for organizational health.

Wendy Plotkin is a retired historian who is writing a biography of Dorothy Stuck, a respected editor of a southern weekly newspaper from 1950-1969, and an active contributor to a state association advocating equal treatment of women journalists. Plotkin taught upper level undergraduate U.S. history and history methods at Arizona State University from 2003 to 2009. In 1999, she received a Ph.D. in history from the University of Illinois at Chicago, focusing on racial discrimination in housing in her dissertation and in articles and encyclopedia entries.

How did you become involved with AJHA?

I was David Sloan's student at University of Alabama starting way back in 1989.  I went into grad school without a clue what grad school was.  But I saw a media history course on the schedule and JUMPED on it.  I had been a history (and English) major at Principia College and had spent the 1980s as a journalist, so it was obvious that Media History was meant for me!  David was my media history professor, and what a fortunate, fortunate situation for me—and for all of David's students.

He had a vision for bringing students along and furthering their careers in academia.  Most notably, he didn't make us rewrite our papers in his voice; he exercised a light hand as an editor.  He insisted on us submitting to conferences, and he showed us how to do it—he really guided us through the process.  In some cases, he asked students to write book chapters.  He even asked me to co-write a book, and then in another class, our entire class wrote a book. 

I came out of my master's degree and subsequent PhD as a veteran, almost, and of course by then I was part of AJHA, having completely dived into the deep end there.  David made sure we students submitted to AJHA, as he was one of the co-founders of our organization.

You have a regular speaking schedule and put on PowerPoint shows. How do those events differ from traditional research presentations? How have those shifted the way you present research in other settings?

I've written four popular history books, which is a childhood dream come true.  These are the ones I present to audiences via PowerPoint—but not just PowerPoint.  One format is a sort of interactive storytelling, where I recruit members of the audience to act out stories; another is a scripted one-woman show; three others are PowerPoint shows, although I take great pains to make them entertaining.  In one PowerPoint show, for example, I trick the audience into failing a quiz about the Wright Brothers, and by the time the show is over, they pass the quiz when asked again.  Don't I wish it would be that easy with my students!

These presentations differ from research presentations by length—I generally speak 45 minutes to 55 minutes as the entertainment for the group who asked me to speak.  I get bent out of shape when a group that meets over lunch wants a shorter speech... that's very hard for me.  These presentations also differ by audience—I speak mostly to non-academic audiences at public libraries, garden clubs, historical societies, and the like....  I do also like making academic presentations a little entertaining, maybe drawing a laugh or a sort of gasp, maybe.

Of course, those little sparks have to match the topic.  For example, I was presenting an academic presentation on the settlement literature that brought colonists to America to start with.  One of the prime writers of this over-the-top PR was John Smith, the one associated with Pocahontas.  So when I quoted John Smith's work in my AJHA presentation, I whipped out an action figure of John Smith from the movie Pocahontas and quipped, "...and we think of him as just a movie star."  I remember he fit nicely into the empty microphone holder on the podium.

You’ve described your writing style as having “the breezy storytelling quality of fiction, of course while staying true to history,” how did you settle on using that style?

I think I can call back the answer from my days as a general assignment reporter on The Sampson Independent, a small daily newspaper in the farm country of North Carolina.  The Independent is based in the happenin' town of Clinton, which in my day had about 7,000 residents—yet it was a big city and had a daily newspaper.  That tells you something about the rural nature of the area.

I decided early on that my writing shouldn't be done in a dry and "just-the-facts" Dragnet style; it should be interesting to read.  My thought was that many of my readers probably read only the paper, so they should be reading something fun to read.  Fortunately, I had lots of chances to write in an entertaining way, as I was given a column once a week (always fun to write!) and often wrote the Sunday Feature Page on more lighthearted topics.  Then there were the usual features.  Of course, we had some hard news, and I did write that seriously.

In every case, these things were written based on facts—OK, sometimes the column got fanciful.  But otherwise, I was writing the facts—but interestingly.  To me, truth is more interesting than fiction anyway; I get quite impatient with most novels because they aren't true.  So writing the truth in a readable way became my goal.  I easily transferred that goal to historical research and writing, since I have always read history for fun, anyway.  Since journalism and history are definitely related, I think both should be entertaining and readable, while also being true.

What is one piece of advice or lesson you have from your recent research or teaching?

My advice is pedagogical for any of us who feel like they're losing the battle of educating our students.  Every year about this time (I'm writing this at the end of the fall semester), I quote Miss Shields from the movie A Christmas Story as she (and I) grade papers:  "F!  F!  My life's work down the drain!" 

Sometimes I get very discouraged that "no one" among my students (as it seems momentarily) applied their lessons.  This year the issue was naturalness—my freshman English students are actually writing short media history papers, and I know their findings and analysis should be interesting... but this year they seemed to fall down before attaining that natural sound that everyone wants to read.  They tended to sound stilted and panicky to fit into a mold.  I told my husband that my lesson learned this year was to retire! ...  But NO!

I've come to realize that we professors and teachers are the nerds who followed the rules when we were students, got brave enough to apply the spirit as well as the rules, who stayed up late researching and writing and worrying about grades.  My students who made me become Miss Shields this semester are, simply, the ones destined for careers other than mine. 

An example:  During our final exam this year, three of my students who happen to be nursing majors took charge when a fellow student had a medical emergency.  One of those take-charge nurses was a real struggler in my class.  But wow, what a great nurse that student will make!  That's part of it—we're all heading to where we need to be.  I remind myself that I can only launch them into their sophomore year with my fingers crossed that they'll get their feet under them and come to the realization that writing isn't a series of rules, but a natural telling of what you know.  And I admit a good number of my students did break through this semester (despite Miss Shields' lament) and wrote some readable research that was fun to hear about.

So my advice is:  Don't be discouraged.  We all feel like Miss Shields sometimes, but when you pull out of that nosedive, you'll see that some of the students' work is very interesting indeed.  

What hobbies or activities do you enjoy outside of academia?

Gosh, is there any time outside of academia?  Actually, I swim all summer and have just taken up swimming in the school year, too, when I can.  I love traveling to see our grown sons, one in Chicago and one in Los Angeles (I'm in Birmingham, Alabama)—and I love traveling to the ocean and swimming in it.  It's also a great and relaxing challenge for me to shop with a laser focus for bargains, my goal being to be able to get gifts for my large childhood family on the cheap.  My husband accuses me and my sisters of bragging about how little we spent whenever we give a gift, and I think he's right!  But it's so much fun to find those bargains!

Julie Hedgepeth Williams teaches part-time at Samford University, where she's delighted that her freshman English class can be taught as media history. She's also a part-time writer of popular history books which all started as AJHA papers. She won AJHA's Sidney Kobre Award for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism History in 2021.

• Don’t be afraid to push back to ensure the cover design reflects the book’s thesis. The Press initially designed cover art that featured a photograph of Nixon holding a press conference. Although apropos, it omitted the shadowy, threatening nature of the Nixon era captured so well by Porter’s original. I wanted to emphasize the theme of the book—the ominous nature of government attacks on a free press. I was delighted when the Press produced a new layout.

  

• Block Quotes. Ask the editor/typesetter to use the same spacing as the regular text, to avoid the appearance of an impenetrable slug. Some style editors insist on a block quote based on a number of lines, but others avoid them (because no one reads block quotes, they contend). Weave in what you can to protect the narrative flow, but ask for more space to invite the reader to engage a blocked passage.

• Snag URLs Now! Some online sources permit a single view of an article and then require a subscription. If an essay seems important, Export the article as a PDF to your research files when you first encounter it. Copy the URL and paste it with the date accessed directly into your PDF.

• 

• Photo Rights and Text Licensing. Find out the class of rights/licensing the publisher desires before you engage the rights holder, to avoid having to undo an agreement and re-sign for worldwide rights. 

Tom Mascaro is professor emeritus in the School of Media & Communications at Bowling Green State University and a documentary historian.