The American Journalism Historians Association invites nominations for two awards honoring significant service to the study and understanding of media history.

Kobre Award

The Sidney Kobre Award for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism History is the organization's highest honor. The Kobre Award recognizes individuals with an exemplary record of sustained achievement through teaching, research, professional activities, or other contributions to the field of journalism history. Award winners need not be members of the AJHA. Nominations for the award are solicited annually, but the award need not be given every year. Those making nominations should present, at minimum, a cover letter that explains the nominee's contributions to the field and a vita or brief biography of the nominee. Supporting letters for the nomination are welcome and encouraged. For a list of past winners, see https://ajha.wildapricot.org/kobre.

Distinguished Service to Journalism History Award

The Distinguished Service to Journalism History Award recognizes contributions by an individual outside our discipline who has made an extraordinary effort to further significantly our understanding of, or our ability to explore, media history. Nominations are solicited annually, but the award is given only in exceptional situations. Thus, it is not awarded every year. Those making nominations for the award should present, at minimum, a cover letter that explains the nominee's contributions to the field and a vita or brief biography of the nominee. Supporting letters for the nomination are welcome and encouraged.

Deadline: The deadline for submitting nominating materials for both awards is May 15, 2019.

Submissions: Electronic submissions are preferred via email to Tom Mascaro, Professor, Bowling Green State University, mascaro@bgsu.edu.

Alternatively, postal submissions may be sent to the following address: Tom Mascaro, AJHA Service Awards Chair, 33905 LaMoyne St., Livonia, MI 48154.

Scholars may nominate and submit their own work or the work of others. A national panel of experts will judge the contest. 

The recipient of the award will receive a plaque and $1,000 and must present the scholarship in a featured address at the Media & Civil Rights History Symposium in March.

Email PDF of submission by Jan. 7, 2019, to the following:

Dr. Kenneth Campbell, Chair
2019 Farrar Award in Media & Civil Rights History
School of Journalism and Mass Communications
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208
Email: kcampbell@sc.edu

The new Journalism History podcast launched by Teri Finneman (Kansas), Nick Hirshon (William Paterson) and Will Mari (Northwest) is now live with several episodes available. The team encourages you to incorporate episodes into your spring syllabi as homework assignments for students.

Episodes are available on iTunes, the purple Podcasts app on iPhones and at this website: https://journalismhistorypodcast.podbean.com/

We are looking for episode sponsors for our spring semester shows. Cost is $25. Authors can promote their books or universities can promote their programs.

Questions? Email Teri at finnemte@gmail.com.

By Gerry Lanosga, Indiana University

Scholars from around the country and even as far away as Germany came to Indiana University’s Media School in October for a symposium to mark the launch of IU’s new digital Roy W. Howard Archive.

Howard was an influential journalist who rose to run the United Press and the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain during the first half of the twentieth century.

IU has been home to an extensive collection of his papers since 1983, when his family donated them to the university. Last year, the family and the Scripps Howard Foundation provided funding to make the collection even more accessible. The grant allowed The Media School to hire a team to catalog and digitize more than 14,000 letters, photos, business records and other items in the archive.

The materials are now online in a free, searchable archive that covers Howard’s life and career from 1892 to 1960.

In the more than three decades before the collection was digitized, a number of historians visited IU to work in the physical archive, and several of those scholars returned to Bloomington to participate in the symposium. They included Gene Allen of Ryerson University, who studies the history of news services such as United Press, and Kirsten Bönker of Bielefeld University in Germany, who used the Howard materials in her studies of Cold War history.

The Howard archive contains correspondence between the publisher and numerous prominent figures, including U.S. presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and Philippine President Manuel Quezon. The enhanced searchability of the online archive opens up new horizons for researchers, who can now run keyword searches and discover specific documents in a way that wasn’t possible before. That advantage of digital archives was among the issues discussed by a panel of archivists during the symposium, and attendees also heard from scholars doing preliminary research in the new digital collection. Melony Shemberger from Murray State University (editor of the AJHA Intelligencer), for instance, spoke about her discovery of correspondence from Roy Howard in 1914 discussing a new strategy for getting news of World War I home to readers in the United States.

The goal of the Howard family in funding the digitization project was to give Roy Howard’s papers greater visibility. To that end, the archive is available to the public as well as scholars.

Journalist and author James Neff opened the symposium with a keynote talk focused on the value of archives for journalists. Neff, deputy managing editor of Philadelphia Media Network, has written five nonfiction books based to varying degrees on archival research.

The Roy W. Howard archive can be accessed for free at this link: http://mediaschool.indiana.edu/royhowardarchive/

The Center for Media and Journalism Studies at the University of Groningen will host the fourth annual conference on Transnational Journalism History.

The conference, which will be June 20 and 21, 2019, is seeking papers that study historical transformations in journalism from a transnational perspective.

Papers are welcome that discuss theoretical or methodological issues as well as empirical case studies from all parts of the world. Specifically, the conference organizers are seeking work that considers:

• the transfer of norms, practices and textual conventions from one country/region to another and their consecutive adaptation in national contexts.
• transnational networks of actors.
  
• biographical studies of transnational agents such as journalists or publishers.
  
• the transnational coverage of particular news stories.
  
• transnational audiences.
  
• the impact of (emerging) technologies on transnational journalism.
  
• different media such as television, radio, newspapers or magazines, and the intersection between them.

Abstracts (maximum of 500 words for research-in-progress), full papers (for completed projects) and panel proposals (max. 4 papers; 400 words panel description & 150-word abstract of each paper) should be submitted via journalismconferences@rug.nl by March 1, 2019. (Please note the deadline has been extended from the original call for papers because the conference dates are later than usual). Submissions will be blind reviewed.

Organizers are looking for submissions that might also be considered for publication in a new book, the Companion to Transnational Journalism History. The first book from the earlier conferences is presently under review at Syracuse University Press.

For those unfamiliar with transnational journalism history, it acknowledges that media and other cultural forms are produced and exchanged across borders. It focuses on the interactions between agents, ideas, innovations, norms and social and cultural practices, and their consecutive incorporation and adaptation into national frameworks. By moving back and forth between the national and transnational level, the connective and dialectic nature of these movements is emphasized. It thus treats the nation as only one phenomenon among a range of others, instead of being the primary frame for analysis.

This opens new venues for research because journalism history, which has been institutionally and topically confined primarily to national boundaries. Transnational journalism history critically interrogates national paradigms and provides new ways forward.

This year’s conference will take place on June 20-21 at the Centre for Media and Journalism Studies in Groningen, The Netherlands. Conference fee is € 75 (incl. lunches and conference dinner). Keynote speakers will be announced in the next months.

Questions may be addressed to Marcel Broersma or Frank Harbers via journalismconferences@rug.nl, Debbie van Tuyll (dvantuyl@augusta.edu) or Mark O’Brien (mark.obrien@dcu.ie).

This conference is sponsored by the Centre for Media and Journalism Studies at the University of Groningen, and the journalism and mass communication programs at Dublin City University, Augusta University and Concordia University.

The Joint Journalism and Communication History Conference (JJCHC),
co-sponsored by the American Journalism Historians Association and the
History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass
Communication, is now accepting submissions for the 2019 conference.

This one-day interdisciplinary conference welcomes scholars and graduate students with an interest in journalism or communication history. Innovative research and ideas from all areas of journalism and communication history and from all time periods are welcome. This conference offers participants the chance to explore new ideas, garner feedback on their work, and meet colleagues from around the world interested in journalism and communication history in a welcoming environment. Graduate students are encouraged to apply.

When:  Saturday, March 9, 2019, 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Where: Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, New York University 20 Cooper Square, 6th Floor, New York, NY

Cost: $55 online by Feb. 23, 2019; $65 regular registration (includes
continental breakfast and lunch)

Research, research-in-progress, and panel proposals are all welcome. Your proposal should include a 500-word abstract detailing your presentation topic and a compelling rationale as to why your research would interest an interdisciplinary community of scholars. Participants are limited to a single submission per category.

This year, JJCHC is returning to a new scholarly working group concept
called “Up to Ten in a Den.” These round-table meetings are designed to
foster intimate conversation among peers working with similar theories,
ideas, or methods, or in related subject areas. Scholars are encouraged to
propose meetings of any time length during the conference day with up to ten participants.

The deadline for submissions is January 5, 2019. Proposals must be submitted via Easy Chair at: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=jjchc2019.

For more information, contact conference research co-coordinators Brian
Creech at brian.creech@temple.edu or Pamela E. Walck at walckp@duq.edu 

Follow us!: Twitter: @JJCHCNYC

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/jjchcnyc/

Hashtag: #JJCHCNYC

Find us on the web (including past years’ programs):
http://journalismhistorians.org

Mark your calendar:

Meeting Dates: March 9, 2019, 8:30 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Submission Deadline: January 4, 2019

Acceptance Notice: February 2, 2019
Nick Hirshon and Pam Walck
Conference Chairs
JJCHC 2018

The American Journalism Historians Association elected a new second vice president and three new board members during its 37th Annual Convention in Salt Lake City, Utah. Dr. Aimee Edmondson of Ohio University will serve as second vice president during 2018-19, beginning a three-year tenure which will culminate in her serving as the organization’s president in 2020-21. 

Elected to the board were Dr. Gerry Lanosga from Indiana University; Dr. Will Tubbs from the University of West Florida; and Dr. Ken Ward from Lamar University. Noting that she would be president of AJHA when its annual convention comes to Columbus, Ohio, in 2020, Edmondson said she was “eager to help continue the important work of the AJHA, especially in advocating for the teaching of media history in our journalism and communications schools.”

“The work of the AJHA is more important than ever given that our profession has been under such heavy fire from this White House,” Edmondson said. “As media scholars, we must continue to educate our students and the public about the important role of the press throughout our history.”

AJHA’s new president is Dr. Ross Collins from North Dakota State University, who was initially elected to serve as second vice president in 2016 and served as first vice president from October 2017- October 2018. Dr. Donna Lampkin Stephens from the University of Central Arkansas now serves as first vice president. The new administrative secretary is Dr. Erika Pribanic-Smith from the University of Texas-Arlington, and Dr. Carolyn Edy from Appalachian State University continues as treasurer.

Scholars representing universities from across North America were recognized for their work on research papers at the American Journalism Historians Association’s annual convention in Salt Lake City, Utah, earlier this month.

Gwyneth Mellinger of James Madison University won the Wm. David Sloan Award for Outstanding Faculty Paper for “The AP and the Negro Identifier: An Ideological Battle for Journalistic Standards.” The runners-up in that category were Patrick S. Washburn and Michael S. Sweeney of Ohio University for “Francis Biddle and the Jennings Case in 1934-35: A Freedom of the Press Complaint that Sucked in Franklin D. Roosevelt, William Randolph Hearst, and Heywood Broun” and Debra van Tuyll of Augusta University for “The Transnational Paradigm as a Method of Analyzing Early Colonial American Journalism.”

The Robert Lance Memorial Award for Outstanding Student Paper went to Natascha Roelsgaard of Ohio University for “‘Let Our Voices Speak Loud and Clear’: Daisy Bates’ Leadership in Civil Rights and Black Press History.” The student paper runners-up were Bailey Dick of Ohio University for “‘We Females Have to be Contented with the Tales of Adventures’: Gender Conformity in Dorothy Day’s Early Reporting” and Sara Browning of the University of Maryland for “Answering the Chinese Question: Print Media’s Responses to 19th-Century Immigration.”

Roelsgaard also won the Maurine Beasley Award for the Outstanding Paper on Women’s History. Runners-up in that category were Dick as well as Pete Smith of Mississippi State University for his paper, “‘Raising Unshirted Hell’: The Journalism of Norma Fields, State Capitol Correspondent for the Northeast (MS) Daily Journal.”

Mellinger also earned the J. William Snorgrass Memorial Award for the Outstanding Paper on a Minorities Topic. The runners-up in that category were Browning as well as Linda Lumsden of the University of Arizona for her paper, “Don Sotaco Finds His Voice: Visual Rhetoric and Farm Worker Identity in El Malcriado, 1964-1967.”

Washburn and Sweeney took home the Wally Eberhard Award for the Outstanding Paper on Media and War. The runners-up in that category were Wayne State University’s Michael Fuhlhage, Tabitha Cassidy, Erika Thrubis, Darryl Frazier, Scott Burgess, and Keena Neal for “Spinning toward Secession: The Interplay of Editorial Bellicosity and Exchange News in the Press before the American Civil War” and Harlen Makemson of Elon University for “From Gibson Girl to Gibson Goddess: The World War II Illustrations of Charles Dana Gibson in Life Magazine.”

The Jean Palmegiano Award for the Outstanding Research Paper on International/Transnational Journalism went to van Tuyll. 

(Editor's Note: The paper, "Barry H. Gottehrer and a 'City in Crisis,'" was presented at the AJHA convention in Little Rock, Ark., in October 2017. Earlier this year, The Intelligencer asked its author to share with us how he got interested in this topic, why it's interesting and important, and what else about it his fellow historians might want to know.)

By Raymond McCaffrey

While working on a history project that involved a look at the interplay of sports and media in New York City at the end of the turbulent 1960s, I kept encountering a somewhat mysterious figure at the periphery of key events.

There he was in February 1968, as protestors stormed Madison Square Garden in an attempt to prevent athletes from competing in the 100th edition of a track meet sponsored by the restrictive New York Athletic Club, a protest staged by those who would organize demonstrations at the Olympic Games later that year in Mexico City. There he was months later, in April 1968, behind the scenes as the city's mayor, John Lindsay, tried to keep the peace on the streets of Harlem in the hours immediately after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis. He became involved with events such as the student protests at Columbia University in 1968; the demonstrations that erupted in 1969 after police raided the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village and prompted a backlash that has been heralded as the birth of the gay-rights movement, and the so-called “Hard Hat Riot” in 1970, when construction workers clashed with anti-war protestors in lower Manhattan.

Whenever I looked at a major event in New York City during this era, I generally found this figure about whom I knew virtually nothing: Barry H. Gottehrer.

So began a research project within a research project, one in which a peripheral character became the subject of a stand-alone paper. For it turned out that Gottehrer, who was commonly identified as a special assistant to the mayor, had emanated from the world of journalism. Moreover, Gottehrer had been a journalist of considerable note – he had won a prestigious George Polk Award for his work on a major investigative series that did a deep-dive into the troubles facing New York City in the 1960s, and ended up ousting the sitting mayor. Gottehrer eventually went to work for the new mayor, Lindsay, not as press officer, but as the coordinator of a task force that attempted to quell civic unrest and violence.  

Researching the background of such an obscure yet important figure proved challenging. I did not find a wealth of primary-source material waiting. Gottehrer boldly emerged on the scene in the mid-1960s and disappeared into the shadows just as quickly as he appeared. The paper trail revealed that he had gone from the Columbia Journalism School to a job with a small Massachusetts newspaper, the New Bedford Times, then ended up working for a number of national publications, including Sport magazine and Newsweek, before ending up at the Herald Tribune. His work on the award-winning “City in Crisis” series certainly put him on the journalistic map, but his role as Lindsay’s chief peacekeeper earned him much wider acclaim. The New York Times devoted considerable real estate in its Sunday magazine in September 1968 to a profile of Gottehrer, whose job was described as “keeping the city cool.” (A interesting tidbit that had no real place in my paper concerned the identity of the author of the profile: Nicholas Pileggi, who would go on to author a book about organized crime that Martin Scorcese used as the basis for his movie, "GoodFellas," and also eventually marry another famous director, Nora Ephron.)  Yet, by the time Gottehrer was referenced in another New York Times article in 1984, it was clear that the author--the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anthony Lewis--thought he was writing about a faceless Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company executive who had distributed a pamphlet that was sharply critical of the ethical standards of journalists. 

How did a journalist who had won one of the profession’s highest honors decide to abandon the cloak of objectivity and cross the lines to try to make a difference in government in a bold and distinctive way--and why did that same journalist become a virulent press critic after he disappeared into obscurity? 

The answers to these questions had not been explored in depth in any research that I could find. But not surprisingly Gottehrer turned up in the margins of some in-depth works of history that focused on Lindsay and New York City during the 1960s, as well as a hefty book about the New York Herald Tribune, which was formed in 1924 and represented the merger of two noble journalistic bloodlines dating back to century before: James Gordon Bennett’s New York Herald and Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune. 

Ultimately, Gottehrer provided the best primary-source material about himself. There was a memoir, “The Mayor's Man,” which focussed on his years as the city’s peacekeeper, but offered little discussion of his years as a journalist. An early book, a history of the New York Giants football franchise, did little to suggest the investigative prowess that would later be displayed. A scholarly paper titled, "Urban Conditions: New York City,” published in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science in 1967, showed his ability as a thinker. Perhaps the best primary-source material was the “City in Crisis” stories, which conveyed hard facts with the kind of strong writer’s voice common at the Herald Tribune, known as a launching pad for such “New Journalism” practitioners as Tom Wolfe. 

But Gottehrer left that world of journalism behind when he went to work for Lindsay, and just as readily as he retreated from the spotlight when he gave up government work. His name pops up sporadically in the press during a brief time working as a top executive for Madison Square Garden after leaving City Hall; then he effectively disappeared. There was the mention by Lewis in the article about Gottehrer's attack on the press. Then his name only appeared in occasional newspaper or magazine stories looking back at Lindsay and the city he ran during the 1960s. Gottehrer’s professional life was lived in the shadows with scarce clues: Imdb.com lists him working as consultant from 1996 to 1998 for the TV show, Spin City, about a fictional New York City mayoral administration. 

Finally, when Gottehrer died of pancreatic cancer in 2008, there was an expansive Times obituary, as well as a posthumous tribute entered by a Congressman into the Congressional Record, that tied some of the loose ends together, focusing on the curious story of the award-winning journalist who took to the streets in the 1960s to try to keep the peace. 

As with any project, I was left wanting to know more about my subject. The trouble is that as I continue to look at sports and media in New York City in 1960s, I keep encountering other figures at the periphery. There is the TV executive who brought “happy talk” to one local TV news station and helped create a nationwide phenomenon. There is the Madison Avenue adman who brought bold images to the cover of Esquire magazine, such as the one showing Muhammad Ali--dethroned as heavyweight boxing champ because of his draft resistance--riddled with arrows like the martyr, Saint Sebastian. And how did Marshall McLuhan end up in the middle of all this as a visiting professor at Fordham University, eventually mulling the significance of the relatively new mass phenomenon, the Super Bowl, after Broadway Joe Namath made good on his guarantee to win one with the New York Jets. 

In other words, there are too many other stories to tell, too many other figures at the periphery.

Raymond McCaffrey, Ph.D., is assistant professor and director of the Center for Ethics in Journalism, School of Journalism & Strategic Media, University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.