How did you become involved in AJHA?
I first became involved in the AJHA in 2014. After finalizing the revisions for my article in American Journalism titled “Reporting the Revolution: Margaret Fuller, Herman Melville, and the Italian Risorgimento,” my editor at the time suggested that I consider submitting my next project for presentation at the upcoming AJHA meeting. I followed this advice, presented at the next conference, and since have remained affiliated with AJHA.
How does media history factor into your research on digital media?
History frames every chapter in Immersive Longform Storytelling: Media, Technology, Audience (Routledge, 2019) and Podcast Journalism: The Promise and Perils of Audio Media (Columbia University Press, forthcoming in 2024). The brief yet fierce evolution of digital media forms of journalistic storytelling are best understood as emerging from cultural discourses and production practices within publishing industries and creative networks that thrived long before the digital revolution. For example, one study (with Subin Paul) published in a special issue of Digital Journalism dedicated to journalism history examines the role of digital archiving as a form of social protest among India’s lowest caste, which endures chronic oppression and marginalization. In another example, my study on right-wing podcasting’s impact on the January 6 insurrection is historically framed with discussion of how the current discourse of incendiary hosts such as Dan Bongino modeled their approach after 1990s talk radio firebrand Rush Limbaugh.
What areas of nineteenth-century journalism history do you think deserve more attention?
Scholars have only begun to fully comprehend the profound impact of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s philosophy on the antebellum periodical press. In Emerson’s Newspaperman: Horace Greeley and Radical Intellectual Culture, 1836-1872 (Journalism and Communication Monographs, 2017), I explore these issues with respect to Emerson’s impact on the thinking and editorial policy of Horace Greeley, the iconic editor of the New York Daily Tribune. I am hoping to pursue future work connecting Emerson’s thought to the importance of local journalism, tentatively in collaboration with Jonathan D. (“Fitz”) Fitzgerald. Fitz, by the way, published a wonderful book in 2023 titled How the New Feels: The Empathic Power of Literary Journalists on antebellum and Progressive Era women writers’ influence on the rise of literary journalism, a movement with a long history prior to Tom Wolfe and the New Journalists of the mid twentieth century.
What do you think is the best title of all time among books dedicated to journalism history?
That’s easy—Froth and Scum: Truth, Beauty, Goodness, and the Ax Murder in America’s First Mass Medium, by Andie Tucher. My echo of the stylistics of this title can be heard in the title of my 2019 book, A Delicate Aggression: Savagery and Survival in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (Yale University Press), but it’s nowhere close to Andie’s boldness, verve, and precision.
What hobbies/interests do you have outside of academia?
My wife, daughters, and son spend each summer in Boulder, CO where we enjoy hiking, biking, and running the Front Range. As a former competitive distance runner, I have trained and raced at a variety of distances, from 5K to the marathon. My fondest memories, however, are of completing three triathlons with my oldest daughter Jackie (who just earned her PhD from Caltech in chemistry) and a half marathon with her younger sister Eveline, who is working on a PhD in Political Science at UC Davis.
David Dowling is a Professor in the University of Iowa School of Journalism and Mass Communication. His work in digital media and journalism studies centers on developments in publishing industries that drive markets and cultural production.
