How did you become involved in AJHA?

My advisor, Richard Kielbowicz, now retired from the University of Washington, encouraged me to get involved, along with AEJMC’s History Division and ICA’s Communication History Division—now I try to encourage all of my students, in turn, to get involved with these and other organizations. You’re stronger together and that goes with the weird twists and turns of any academic career—better to do it with friends and colleagues along the way. And it’s easier to pass good stuff onto the next generation when you’re part of an institution such as AJHA, AEJMC or ICA.

What’s with this interest in the “materiality” of media history? And transitions? And why books?

I’m really interested in the “things” of media history, as explored by the work of scholars such as Brian Creech, Susan Keith, Florence Le Cam, Juliette De Maeyer, Rachel Plotnick, Michael Stamm, Perry Parks, and others. As part of that, I’m interested in the messy nitty-gritty of analog-to-digital transitions and their impact on news workers, and the related fate of technology tools, from software to hardware. I’ve written A Short History of Disruptive Journalism Technologies, which is about the computerization of the newsroom in the 1960s through the 1990s, The American Newsroom: A History, 1920-1960, which is a social history of that space, along with very early analog-to-digital precursor technologies, as well as Newsrooms and the Disruption of the Internet, which is about, well, the internetization of the newsroom from the 1990s through the 2010s. I’m happy to email anyone a PDF copy of my books, I feel that books can help researchers tell more nuanced (and think thus more true) stories and I suspect that this is a reason why so many media historians write them. But articles are important, too, as they can be where single incidents, people, processes or particular technologies can be explored in depth.

How do you fund your research? Where would you point grad students or early-career scholars toward, resource-wise?

I try to keep a close eye on H-Net and its various announcements, as there are archival grants advertised there. I try to look at a particular library and its collection and see if there’s a fund for outside researchers to visit—you’d be surprised how many of the latter are out there and how easy it is to apply to them (from places that are private like BYU and Duke to public like the NYPL and here at LSU). It’s good, too, to apply to institutional opportunities like AJHA’s McKern or the Cokie Roberts Research Fund for Women’s History—the only way not to get something is not to apply! I’d try to not let a letter get in the way of an application, either—I’m happy to write one for anyone wanting to come down to LSU.

What’s one thing you wish your fellow scholars knew about media history?

I really want the actual, and positive, reality that media history is a growing, healthy field to be front of mind. It’s easy to get discouraged in the academy, with the fate of one’s discipline, but as the former chair of the Media History Division at AEJMC and someone who’s been active in both AJHA and ICA, along with other organizations, such as the Radio Preservation Task Force, this is a great time to be studying, teaching, and publishing about media history—take heart, people!

What hobbies/interests do you have outside of academia?

My family and I love to go hiking, camping and Ruth and I love to go dancing with friends; Ruth’s field work brings us to fun places, and so we also enjoy traveling as a family (and whenever possible, we bring our dog, Roux, along—and you may have seen him with us from time to time).