How did you become involved with AJHA?
Janice Hume got me involved with the organization almost twenty years ago. I was finishing my PhD at University of Georgia, and she thought I’d fit in with this particular network of scholars. She was absolutely correct. I haven’t been to the conference in several years for a variety of reasons, but I plan to start going again. I’ve got fall 2025 in Long Beach on my agenda.
How does your industry experience inform your teaching and/or research?
Most of my professional media experience was producing online content for TV networks, including American Idol, but this was many years ago. The web was much more primitive. I remember doing a Price is Right game, for the CBS website, and we had to make sure it would work on AOL dial-up access. That was quite limiting. 
In terms of research, my professional experience made me realize that any kind of big “innovation” is the result of many minds and many factors. My overall research focus is on the history of technology, so I’m always looking at technological changes, and I try to present a comprehensive, accurate picture. Historians and journalists tend to focus on singular moments of innovation, as if one person invented something. I try to avoid this tendency in my own research
In terms of teaching, my professional experience taught me that every single thing you do needs to be done with full accuracy and precision. For a time in the mid 90s, one of my tasks as an ABC News desk assistant was to write page numbers on a news script in big numbers, using a marker. The regular font wasn’t big enough to be read in a dark studio for middle-aged folks with fading vision. I learned the critical nature of that task the one time I put a “one” on page seven. That threw off a morning newscast for several minutes. So, I try to instill in students this kind of dedication. Even the most seemingly minute task needs to be done correctly, because you don’t know how your job fits into some larger work routine.
What topics or questions are you pursuing in your current research?
I did some serious archival research on wireless telegraphy for a few years. I remain fascinated by the twenty years of wireless communication before “radio” as we now use that term became a mainstream technology. Since 2020, I have been focusing on the history of radio in southwest Louisiana, or what I am calling “Cajun radio.” There used to be approximately twenty stations that broadcast in the local dialect of French, and there are still a handful that persist today. I am looking at the way this form of radio has continued, even though everyone in that region has spoken English for a few decades. You can still hear the rosary in French, for example, on a few stations.
A related goal with this project is an examination of the way Cajun culture has been celebrated and promoted via radio. There’s a tradition in that area to listen to Cajun music on Saturday mornings, for example. So even for folks who don’t speak French, including myself, at the very least, you will hear it on Saturdays with the traditional Cajun music. My own research is very specific to one ethnic group, Cajuns, but I see this project as relevant to any kind of under-represented or marginalized group. How do we maintain these identities in the midst of an increasingly commercialized, homogenized world, where algorithms dictate the programming?
What makes you most excited about teaching or research?
For research, I love the thrill of the hunt. Digging through old archival material and finding some incredible “smoking gun” document or interviewing someone and they casually drop a nugget of pure gold near the end of the recording. I live for those moments.
For teaching, I have to admit that I enjoy the spotlight. In front of a class, I adopt a performance mindset and weave humorous commentary into more serious thoughts on the topic at hand. I have taught some very large classes at San Diego State, over a hundred students for example, and when the lecture goes well, it’s a very positive feeling. It took me a few years to find the right tone, so that I am in fact educating and not just entertaining, but I think I have the balance now. I started recording lectures on video, during COVID-19, and have kept it up. Several students have told me that they show my lectures to roommates or boyfriends, for example, as they find them so engaging.
What hobbies or activities do you enjoy outside of academia?
My hobbies are so closely aligned to my research that it’s hard to see the difference. I collect old radios, for example, which is clearly related to studying radio history. I’ve also amassed dozens of Cajun and zydeco 45s, the more obscure and unknown, the better. This relates to my Cajun radio research, and some of my interview subjects are impressed at how well this “California professor” actually knows Cajun music. My other hobby is collecting old comic books, preferably pre-1980 genre comics (science fiction, horror, war, Westerns) and anything based on a TV show or film. When I go online or into a comic shop, to seek out some specific issue, this feels exactly like digging through a library or database trying to find some crucial information for my latest research project.
Noah Arceneaux is a professor in the School of Journalism and Media Studies at San Diego State University.
