The 43rd American Journalism Historians Association annual convention running October 3-5, featured an expanded program that introduced a high density session to the conference and celebrated exemplary members with 13 different awards.
Returning to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the convention kicked off in the Kimpton Hotel Monaco in downtown with a welcome message from AJHA president Tracy Lucht who recounted attending her first AJHA convention. Lucht highlighted important steps the organization has taken over the last year to create a balanced budget while reiterating a commitment to fund research microgrants for graduate students, early career members, and under-researched topics. Lucht also spotlighted the important role AJHA holds in supporting all members who face external challenges to the topics they teach or research, especially related to race in journalism history.
Attendees gathered throughout the convection to honor dissertation, life-time achievement, and book of the year award winners. The 2024 Margaret A. Blanchard Dissertation Prize session featured Christopher Schaefer’s award-winning dissertation “Covering the World with the International Herald Tribune” chronicling the transnational history of the publication over the last two centuries. Honorable mentions for the award went to Anna E. Linder’s research on news coverage of rebellions in Spanish colonial Cuba, Karen D. Russell’s project uncovering the identities of popular Nashville radio DJs in the mid-twentieth century, and Carey Kelley’s examination of pioneers of gender equality in broadcast newsrooms starting in the 1960s.
In remarks accepting the 2024 Sidney Kobre Award for Lifetime Achievement, Joe Campbell referred to the friendships and acquaintances he forged among AJHA members over the years, recalled having attended his first AJHA convention in London, Ontario, in 1996, and thanked the organization and its awards committee for granting him an “exceptional honor.”
Campbell, a professor emeritus at American University in Washington, DC, also offered the following seven recommendations for “enhancing high-quality research in journalism history”:
- keep in mind the critical importance of addressing the “so what?” question in scholarly research;
- know there is no shame in gentle if persistent self-promotion.
- strive to share your research with popular audiences;
- inject even-handed rigor in your work, and avoid the temptation to treat research papers as polemics;
- embrace and encourage viewpoint diversity in research and in the classroom;
- impose, or self-impose, a limit of 150 words in writing negative reviews about convention research papers; and,
- support the AJHA endowment, as a way to help ensure the organization’s longer-term financial health and stability.
The AJHA Book of the Year Award session featured a talk from 2024 winner Aniko Bodroghkozy for “Making #Charlottesville: Media from Civil Rights to Unite the Right” which examined the resurgence of White supremacy amid the 2017 “Summer of Hate” in Charlottesville, Virginia, by comparing events to key moments in the Civil Rights movement. Katherine Rye Jewell, Josh Shepperd, and Ken Ward all received honorable mentions for their newly published monographs.
Amidst those award sessions, the program offered nine panels and 11 paper sessions including a new high density paper session. Key panels included the president’s panel on “Effective Leadership in Times of Turmoil” exploring best practices for faculty and administrators during difficult cultural or political times. A second panel on current issues facing academia discussed the opportunities and challenges artificial intelligence poses to accurate and ethical scholarship, especially when working in digital archives.
Two panels highlighted the role of Pittsburgh journalists in shaping modern news coverage in the twentieth century and The Pittsburgh Courier’s reporting on Black activism in the city and beyond. The Donna Allen Roundtable Luncheon featuring a conversation with Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporter Paula Reed Ward and the Local Journalist Award Reception honoring Rod Doss, publisher of the New Pittsburgh Courier, and Pittsburgh sports broadcaster Bill Hillgrove introduced attendees to contemporary Pittsburgh journalists. The reception also included a live auction facilitated by auctioneer David Davies supporting the Mike Sweeney Graduate Student Travel Stipend which raised over $1,600 across the live and silent auction.
Between sessions, attendees explored Pittsburgh during a tour of the Heinz History Center, a walk through and dinner in the Strip District, and mini-tours from many of the local convention goers and former Pittsburgh residents.
In closing remarks during the annual business meeting, Lucht thanked outgoing board members Erin Coyle, Matthew Pressman, and Yong Volz along with outgoing American Journalism editor Pamela Walck. She thanked new convention sites manager Aimee Edmondson and new research chair Jennifer Moore for their work organizing the convention alongside local hosts Walck and Katrina Jesick Quinn. Walck and Lucht celebrated incoming American Journalism editor Amber Roessner. Lucht led a video message on behalf of all attendees welcoming incoming AJHA president Debra van Tuyll.
After recent conventions in the midwest and on the east coast, the event is headed to the west coast next year with Long Beach, California playing host to the convention starting September 25, 2025.
