The American Journalism Historians Association will have an electronic election in September to fill three open positions on the Board of Directors. Ballots will be emailed to all members and also will include approval of the 2019 General Member Business Meeting Minutes and three proposed amendments to the Constitution and Bylaws.

We will not have an election for second vice-president this year. Given the unprecedented global health crisis that forced AJHA to opt for a virtual conference this fall, the membership agreed to pause the presidential leadership chain for one year. Donna Lampkin Stephens will remain president. Aimee Edmondson will remain first vice-president, and Mike Conway will remain second vice-president.

Members nominated the following three scholars for the three open board seats. The electronic ballot will include a space for write-in votes.

Julien Gorbach

Boston native Julien Gorbach is an assistant professor in the School of Communications at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. His book The Notorious Ben Hecht: Iconoclastic Writer and Militant Zionist was published by Purdue University Press in March 2019, and it earned the National Jewish Book Award “Finalist” prize for Best Biography. His chapter “Not Your Grandpa’s Hoax: A Comparative History of Fake News” appeared in Fake News! Misinformation in the Media (LSU Press, June 2020), and his studies have been published in American Journalism, Journalism History and Literary Journalism Studies. He currently serves as the chair of AJHA’s Public Relations Committee. Gorbach earned his doctorate at the Missouri School of Journalism in 2013. Before that he worked as a newspaper reporter for ten years. His articles have appeared in the Boston Globe, The Boston Phoenix, Time Out New York, The San Francisco Bay Guardian, and the New Orleans Gambit.

What AJHA has meant to me and why I want to serve: AJHA has been my scholarly community for more than a decade, since I presented my first study at our March 2008 joint conference. The association has provided peers who are now among my closest friends, and extraordinary mentors like Berkley Hudson, Ross Collins, Kathy Roberts Forde, Mike Sweeney, Ford Risley, and Donna Lampkin Stephens. AJHA has taught me not just methods and insights into historiography; it also instilled in me the ethos of our field and has shown me why our work is so important. The association has been a constant source of support, encouragement and collegiality, and our members all appreciate how much that means whenever we find ourselves buried deep in the archives, or in the tenth draft of a particularly thorny study. This past year was my first opportunity to contribute service as chair of our public relations committee. I would be honored to help further build and strengthen our organization by serving on our board of directors, so that we can assist our seasoned scholars in expanding upon their achievements and invite the younger scholars on board, just as the association so graciously did for us.

Jennifer Moore

Jennifer E. Moore is an Associate Professor of Journalism at the University of Minnesota Duluth. She received her Ph.D. from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. Her research interests include journalism history, visual communication, participatory news practices and digital news preservation. Moore’s work on the nineteenth-century illustrated press appears in issues of Journalism History and several chapters in media history collections, including Sensationalism: Murder, Mayhem, Mudslinging, Scandals, and Disasters in 19th-Century Reporting (Transaction Publishers, 2013) and After the War: The Press in a Changing America, 1865–1900 (Transaction Publishers, 2017). An essay about her participatory news scholarship appears in the forthcoming Journalism Research that Matters (Oxford University Press). From 2014 to 2016, she served as a co-coordinator for the Joint Journalism and Communication History Conference. Her research awards include funding from the National Association of Broadcasters and two National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Scholar Awards. She teaches courses in media history, digital journalism, social media, and media ethics. Prior to academia, Moore worked as a radio reporter and as a digital content producer and manager.

What AJHA has meant to me and why I want to serve: I will never forget the first time I attended AJHA as a graduate student and was pleasantly surprised to receive a stipend to offset my travel expenses. It's that kind of commitment to developing and supporting scholars that has kept me involved. As a former co-coordinator for the Joint Journalism and Communication History Conference (JJCHC), I am excited by an opportunity to be in service to our discipline again as an AJHA board member. I want to continue the work of those before me who have helped communicate the importance of journalism history, not only among scholars but also to a general audience. Our work as journalism and media historians is more important than ever. What we do as scholar-teachers is needed to help understand our current moment as we negotiate both a global health pandemic and efforts to dismantle systemic racism in the U.S. 

Rich Shumate

Rich Shumate is an assistant professor in the School of Media at Western Kentucky University and holds a Ph.D. in mass communication from the University of Florida. His research centers on historical political communication, specifically news media coverage of U.S. political conservatism in the 1950s and 1960s. He was the winner of AJHA’s Margaret Blanchard Award for Outstanding Dissertation in Journalism History in 2019, and he is currently proceeding to publication with a book based on that work, The Liberal Bias Rebellion: How Coverage of Goldwater Made Conservatives Hate Media, which will be published by Lexington Books in 2021. Prior to moving into academia, Shumate worked for more than 25 years as a professional journalist on newspapers in North Carolina and Georgia and spent 10 years as a news editor and web writer at CNN’s world headquarters in Atlanta. He is also the founder and editor of ChickenFriedPolitics.com, a blog covering politics across 14 Southern states.

What AJHA has meant to me and why I want to serve: I first became aware of AJHA when I was in graduate school at the University of Arkansas-Little Rock and working as a research assistant for Sonny Rhodes, who introduced me to the organization and spoke highly of it. My first convention was in St. Petersburg, where I, literally, drove through a hurricane to attend; my first presentation as a faculty member came in Salt Lake where I regaled people with details of the 1959 cranberry panic. I have enjoyed making friends and connections at AJHA with people who share my passion for media history, and I come away from conferences stimulated not only with ideas for research projects but ideas for the American news media history class that I created and teach at WKU. In 2017, I also signed on as AJHA’s web editor, taking over a smooth-running operation so ably constructed by Erika Pribanic-Smith, and have enjoyed working with the various committees to put together the convention micro-sites. I am interested in serving on the board because I believe organizations only work effectively if members are willing to step up and contribute what they can. I have enjoyed my membership in AJHA and have gotten a lot out of the experience, so I’d like to give back.

The AJHA Board of Directors is proposing three amendments to the Constitution and Bylaws related to the committees that decide the organization's annual awards. The first renames the Awards Committee to the Service Awards Committee and clarifies its duties. The second formalizes the sub-committee charged with deciding the annual Book Award as its own committee. The third creates an addendum outlining what committee is responsible for each award, dividing them into Service, Teaching, and Research awards. [To review the current Constitution and Bylaws, see the Members Only page (login required).]

The Awards Committee has been responsible for deciding the Sidney Kobre Award for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism History and the Distinguished Service to Journalism History Award. A sub-committee of the Awards Committee has been responsible for the Book Award. Based on a proposal from Awards Committee Chair Tom Mascaro, the board voted to separate the two committees and specify their duties in two amendments to Section 4.06 of the constitution, which lists all AJHA committees and their charges.

First, the board proposes the change the language of 4.06(f), which currently reads:

(f) Awards. This committee will propose to the Board nominees for prizes, plaques, and certificates including the Kobre Award for distinguished service to the profession of journalism history.

This wording is inaccurate because other AJHA committees propose nominees for a majority of the organization's awards (as outlined in proposed Addendum B, below). Furthermore, the Kobre Award and Distinguished Service Award are two separate awards.

The proposed new language is as follows:

(f) Service Awards. This committee will recognize outstanding service to the field of journalism history by selecting recipients for the Sidney Kobre Award for Lifetime Achievement and the Distinguished Service Award.

Second, the board proposes creating a new entry formalizing the Book Award Committee as a separate committee. The formatting of this new entry would be consistent with other committees listed in section 4.06, as follows:

(o) Book Award. This committee will seek to celebrate scholarship in the field of mass communication history by advertising and conducting the annual competition for the best book on a topic in mass communication history.

Finally, the board proposes adding the following sentence to Constitution Section 1.02 (b): See Addendum B for a full list of awards and the committees responsible for selecting them.

The following then would be added to the end of the Constitution and Bylaws as Addendum B:

AJHA Awards for Service, Teaching, and Research

The following listing outlines the awards given by the American Journalism Historians Association. In addition to being separated according to whether the award primarily recognizes service, teaching, or research, the awards are organized according to the entities within AJHA that select the award recipients.

I. Service Awards

A. Service Awards Committee

1. Sidney Kobre Award for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism History: The Kobre Award is AJHA's highest honor, recognizing individuals with an exemplary record of sustained achievement in journalism history through teaching, research, professional activities, or other contributions to the field of journalism history.
2. Distinguished Service to Journalism History Award: The Distinguished Service 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. 

B. Local Host Committee

1. Local Journalist Award for Substantial Contribution to the Public Interest: American Journalism Historians Association annually bestows its Outstanding Local Journalist Award to a journalist local to the convention city whose work has had a positive impact on the community.
2. Donna Allen Luncheon Honoree: The annual Donna Allen Luncheon celebrates contributions of women to the field of journalism. American Journalism Historians Association invites a woman journalist local to the convention city as its honored guest and featured speaker for the luncheon.

C. AJHA President - President's Award for Sustained and Meritorious Service: The President of the American Journalism Historians Association may select up to two members each year who have gone above and beyond in their service to the organization to receive the President's Award.

II. Teaching Awards

A. Education Committee - National Award for Excellence in Teaching: The annual AJHA Award for Excellence in Teaching honors a college or university teacher who excels at teaching in the areas of journalism and mass communication history, makes a positive impact on student learning, and offers an outstanding example for other educators.

NOTE: The Kobre Award (detailed in I.A.1. above) also recognizes recipients' record of teaching.

III. Research Awards

A. American Journalism (academic journal)

1. Rising Scholar Award: The Rising Scholar Award is intended to provide research assistance of up to $2,000 for a junior faculty member who has not yet achieved tenure.
2. Best American Journalism Article Award: The Best Article Award recognizes the outstanding article published in American Journalism during the previous year.
   

B. Blanchard Prize Committee - AJHA Margaret A. Blanchard Doctoral Dissertation Prize: The Blanchard Prize is awarded annually for the best doctoral dissertation dealing with mass communication history. Up to three honorable mentions also may be selected.

C. Book Award Committee - AJHA Book of the Year Award: The Book Award recognizes the best book in journalism history or mass media history published during the previous calendar year. Up to two honorable mentions also may be selected.

D. Research Committee

1. Joseph McKerns Research Grants: The McKerns Grant is intended to provide research assistance and to recognize and reward the winners. Up to four grants for up to $1,250 each will be rewarded annually upon review and recommendation of the Research Committee.
2. Research Paper Awards: The Research Committee rewards outstanding research papers submitted to the annual AJHA convention with the following awards.

a. Wm. David Sloan Award for outstanding faculty research paper.

b. Robert Lance Award for outstanding student research paper.

c. Jean Palmegiano Award for outstanding international/transnational journalism history research paper.

d. J. William Snorgrass Award for outstanding minority-journalism research paper.

e. Maurine Beasley Award for outstanding women’s history research paper.

f. Wally Eberhard Award for outstanding research in media and war.

NOTE: The Kobre Award (detailed in I.A.1. above) also recognizes recipients' record of research.

By Kimberly Voss, Ph.D.

Professor, University of Central Florida

Journalism Halls of Fame often mirror the histories of journalism where the stories of white male trailblazers are widely lauded and institutionalized. Left in the margins or footnotes are women and people of color. When the portraits and busts that populate these shrines are primarily male, the echo chamber grows and these groups are forgotten or ignored by history.

Nominating important but overlooked journalists to these halls of fame is a way of engaging in public history.

Public history is largely defined as using historical methods outside of the academic world. Typically, it is the audience that differentiates the public historian’s work from more traditional historical fields. (This, of course, does not mean that researchers won’t use the information. One of the fashion editors I study, Madeleine Corey, has only been referenced in the Rhode Island Journalism Hall of Fame.)

Two examples of women I’ve successfully nominated to state journalism halls of fame are Marjorie Paxson and Roberta Applegate, though the process is not easy. Both took repeated nominations before gaining entrance.

Marjorie Paxson

Paxson was a groundbreaking journalist who covered hard news for a wire service during World War II (an unheard of opportunity prior to the war) before being forced back into the women’s pages during peacetime – where she helped change the definition of women’s news. By the time she retired from journalism more than 50 years later, she had been one of the first female U.S. newspaper publishers and established the National Women and Media Collection (NWMC). She also was editor of Xilonen, the eight-page daily newspaper published for the United Nations World Conference for International Women’s Year held in Mexico City in 1975, played a significant part of the 1976 governmental report To Form a More Perfect Union and in 1963 was elected president of Theta Sigma Phi (now known as the Association for Women in Communications).

She was the fourth female publisher in Gannett — first at the Public Opinion in Pennsylvania (1978-1980) and then the Muskogee Phoenix in Oklahoma (1980-1986). In Muskogee, she used her power to change her newspaper’s editorial stance that had been previously opposed to the Equal Rights Amendment and changed newsroom policy to allow women to wear pants — something that had been prohibited. She made a difference for female employees and women in her community.

Despite all the accomplishments throughout her journalism career, she was not a member of the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame, which I sought to correct. It took five years to get her inducted. (She would have been officially inducted posthumously in a March event but the virus postponed it. She will be officially honored in the fall.)

Roberta Applegate

Several years ago, I nominated women’s page editor (and later Kansas State University journalism professor) Roberta Applegate into the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame. Her father, Albert A. Applegate, was a longtime journalism professor at Michigan State University, and had been inducted into the Hall of Fame years earlier. It took two nomination attempts to get Roberta inducted, but when she was, it marked the first father-daughter combination in the hall. Along with her brother, I had the honor to speak at her induction ceremony.

After earning a master’s degree in journalism, Applegate covered the Michigan statehouse during World War II and went on to become one of the first women to be a press secretary to a governor. She then wrote for the top women’s pages in the country – at the Miami Herald. Ultimately, she became a journalism professor at Kansas State University where she subscribed to the leading women’s pages to help her students improve the sections.

Her inclusion in the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame means that Roberta Applegate is an official part of journalism history. She needed two nominations before earning her recognition. Part of the process was to submit numerous letters of recommendation – which is no easy feat considering that she died when I was in middle school. Luckily, she saved everything and the NWMC included her reference letters from the World War II era.

Marie Anderson

Fingers are crossed that legendary Miami Herald women’s page editor Marie Anderson gets inducted into the Florida Journalism Hall of Fame. Anderson’s section won so many Penney-Missouri Awards — the top recognition for the sections — that she was retired from the competition. She was a groundbreaking editor and became a regular speaker for newspapers across the country who wanted to improve women’s page news. 

I recently turned in the nomination paperwork for Anderson. Several more nominees will be sent in soon. It’s a way of making marginalized women visible. If you know of a woman or person of color who is a part of local journalism lore but has been left out of the historical record, consider engaging in an act of public history and nominate him or her to their state or regional journalism hall of fame. But be prepared to do it more than once — but it will be worth it for its contribution to public history.

In light of COVID-19, the 2020 AJHA national conference, scheduled for October in Memphis, will be a condensed virtual conference Oct. 2-3 with no registration fee.

Deadlines for research submissions are extended until July 1, 2020: https://ajha.wildapricot.org/2020papercall/.

AJHA will resume the full, in-person conference Oct. 7-9, 2021, in Columbus, Ohio, and will return to Memphis from Sept. 27-Oct. 1, 2022.

Because AJHA confirmed the revised Memphis dates recently, AJHA did not incur a financial penalty from the hotel.

More details will surface as they become available.

Dr. Teri Finneman, a member of the AJHA board, was granted tenure and promotion to associate professor at the University of Kansas.

Dr. Debra Reddin van Tuyll, professor of communication at Augusta University, is co-editor of a new book that will be published in June by Syracuse University Press.

The book, Politics, Culture, and the Irish American Press: 1784–1963, also is edited by Mark O'Brien and Marcel Broersma

Van Tuyll is the 2019 recipient of the AJHA Kobre Award for lifetime achievement in journalism history.

Dr. Erika Pribanic-Smith and Dr. Tracy Lucht recently joined Dr. David Sloan as editors of the 11th edition of the textbook The Media in America: A History.  

The Media in America was first published 30 years ago. 

Dr. Pribanic-Smith is the co-author of Emma Goldman’s No-Conscription League and the First Amendment. She has written a number of book chapters, and her articles have been published in American Journalism, American Periodicals, Journalism History, Kansas History, and Media History Monographs. 

Dr. Lucht is the author of Sylvia Porter: America’s Original Personal Finance Columnist and co-author of Mad Men and Working Women: Feminist Perspectives on Historical Power, Resistance, and Otherness. Her articles have been published in Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, American Journalism, and other journals. 

Dr. Pam Parry will be the next editor of the journal, Journalism History, a peer-reviewed publication of the History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC).

Parry, a professor of public relations at Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau, where she teaches media history, is the author or co-editor of eight academic books. She is the author of Eisenhower: The Public Relations President (Lexington 2014) and has a forthcoming book, Eisenhower and Women: Changing the Face of Politics. She is also co-editor of the book series Women in American Political History.

Parry will serve as an apprentice under current editor Greg Borchard (University of Nevada, Las Vegas) beginning in August and then begin her three-and-a-half-year term as editor in August 2021.

Dr. Melony Shemberger, associate professor of journalism and mass communication at Murray State University, recently earned the Quality Matters Teaching Online Certificate. 

To earn the certificate, seven classes were required by Quality Matters, a global assurance program for online teaching. It is considered the gold standard in online pedagogy.

Mark Holan presented at the 2019 AJHA National Convention in Dallas about Ruth Russell in Revolutionary Ireland. He closed with the issue detailed in the below link from his blog.

As can seen in the bottom photo on the blog page, Ruth's name has been added to the gravestone with her sister, Cecilia.

https://www.markholan.org/archives/7822

Elisabeth Fondren, of St. John’s University, published a chapter on “News Editing and the Editorial Process” in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication (Oxford University Press). The entry traces the historical origins of international editing practices (Europe, Asia, North America), professionalization in the 20th century, changes in copy editing technology, and digital gatekeeping in the online news environment. 

Here is the citation:

Klein, T., Fondren, E., & Apcar, L. News Editing and the Editorial Process. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication. Oxford University Press. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.802

In addition, Fondren was recognized in November 2019 with a faculty award by the Phi Eta Sigma National Honor Society for her commitment to student success. 

Jon Marshall, assistant professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School, had an op-ed, “Like Watergate All Over Again? In Some Ways, Yes, but There Are Stark Differences,” published Sept. 25, 2019, in the Chicago Tribune.

Dr. Melony Shemberger, associate professor of journalism and mass communication at Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky, was selected for the first cohort of the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education's Faculty Advisory Network. This new group of 12 faculty across Kentucky will convey faculty perspectives on state-level policies and initiatives and advise the CPE president on matters of interest to the faculty. In the 2019-20 academic year, the network will focus on closing achievement gaps, responding to current business needs, and enhancing academic quality. 

In addition, Shemberger graduated Oct. 18 from the Bluegrass Academic Leadership Academy in Kentucky. She was among five faculty to represent Murray State University in the academy.

A special issue of TMG - Journal for Media History will focus on transnational journalism history.

Transnational journalism history acknowledges that cultural forms are produced and exchanged across borders. It focuses on the interactions between agents, ideas, innovations, norms and social and cultural practices beyond national boundaries, as well as the way these interactions affect the incorporation and adaption of new ideas, concepts, and practices 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 level or context among a range of others, instead of being the primary frame for analysis.

This special issue aims to critically interrogate and go beyond the national frameworks within which historical developments of journalism are generally studied. Due to its institutional organization and topical focus, journalism historiography has traditionally been confined to national boundaries. This holds true for studies restricted to the development of journalism in one country, like most press histories, as well as studies that take nations as units for comparative research. Differences and, to a lesser extent, similarities in professional practices and news coverage are usually discussed as autonomous developments and ascribed to national peculiarities. The special issue intends to bring together papers that open new venues for research that move beyond this national boundary. Articles are invited that relate to transnational journalism that (particularly, but not exclusively) focus on one of these areas:

• Theoretical and methodological reflections on transnational journalism.
• Transnational journalistic networks.
• Journalists or publishers who were influential “transfer agents."
• Transnational impact on journalistic genres.
• Adaptation of foreign examples in a national context.
• Case studies of transnational reporting.
• Case studies that rely on digital humanities methods (for example, text mining or network analysis).

Guidelines

Those interested should submit an abstract of maximum 350 words that clearly outlines a research question, relevance of the topic, a theoretical/historical framework, justification of research material and approach, and main argument.

Send proposals to the editors: Frank Harbers (f.harbers@rug.nl) and Marcel Broersma (m.j.broersma@rug.nl). The deadline is Jan. 15, 2020. Authors will be notified of acceptance by the end of January 2020.

Tentative timeline

The authors of the accepted abstracts will be invited to contribute a full article (maximum 8,000 words, excluding references and bibliography). The deadline for the full papers is May 29, 2020. It is also possible to contribute a non-peer reviewed piece (between 4,000-6,000 words).

TMG - Journal for Media History is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic journal, published in the Netherlands. Its aim is to promote and publish research in media history. It offers a platform for original research and for contributions that reflect theory formation and methods within media history. For more information and author guidelines, see: https://www.tmgonline.nl/.

The fifth annual conference on Transnational Journalism History will be held May 28-29, 2020, at Augusta University in Augusta, Georgia.

Papers that study historical transformations in journalism from a transnational perspective are being sought. The deadline to submit papers is Feb. 1. 

Conference organizers welcome papers that discuss theoretical or methodological issues as well as empirical case studies from all parts of the world. Specifically, here are possible contributions:

• the transfer of norms, practices, genres, 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.
• theoretical perspectives/interpretations/applications of transnational journalism history.

Submissions

Abstracts of maximum 500 words (for research-in-progress), full papers (for completed projects) and panel proposals (max. 4 papers; 400-word panel description and 150-word abstract of each paper) should be submitted to dvantyl@augusta.edu by Feb. 1, 2020. Submissions will be blind reviewed.

Conference fee is still being finalized but should be around $75 and will include coffee/tea breaks, lunches and conference dinner. Keynote speaker will be announced in the next months.

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

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

Book project

The conference organizers are working toward the publication of a Companion to Transnational Journalism History. Submissions for the conference will also be considered (in adapted form) for publication in the handbook, and discussions during the conference will be geared toward preparing the publication.

About Transnational Journalism History

Transnational journalism history acknowledges that 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 is institutionally and topically still confined primarily to national boundaries. This holds true for studies restricted to the development of journalism in one country, like most press histories, as well as studies that take nations as units for comparative research. Differences and, to a lesser extent, similarities in professional practices and news coverage are usually discussed as autonomous developments and ascribed to national peculiarities. Transnational journalism history critically interrogates these national paradigms and provides new ways forward.

By Bailey Dick

At every AJHA conference I’ve been to, I’ve spilled something on myself.

In 2017, it was coffee. In 2018, it was an entire hot tea. On both occasions, it was right down the front of whatever business casual, but neither too business nor too casual outfit I’d picked out to wear. And on both occasions, it was on the last day of the conference, right before the awards ceremony.

The good people of AJHA have been kind enough not only to provide me with a few certificates to cover my clumsiness with, but also were nice enough to not point out the fact that I was covered in my caffeinated beverage of choice two years in a row while receiving them. In a way, that’s what my time in AJHA as a graduate student so far has been about: Seeing those who I look up to champion the work of graduate students, and being warm and welcoming to us as we learn to be historians ourselves.

As a master's student, and now a doctoral student at the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University, I’ve had the honor to learn from Dr. Mike Sweeney and Dr. Aimee Edmondson, who are the embodiment of what AJHA is all about. They both believe in me and my work more than I believe in myself, and are what we Ohioans call “good people.” Both of them told me that I’d find AJHA to be full of people who are genuinely interested in my research, people who aren’t competitive or territorial, people who want me to succeed as much as they want to succeed themselves.

And it’s true. At every AJHA conference I’ve attended so far, I’ve had conversations with people whose books I’ve read, whose research I’ve cited in my own work, whose faculty bios I have bookmarked on my web browser so I can look through their work. And they’ve wanted to hear about my work. Not because it’s particularly amazing or because I’m particularly aggressive in wanting to talk about myself (it actually makes me deeply uncomfortable). It’s all because these are scholars and teachers who want to see others love history, love this field just as much as they do. And that’s a sign of mature, selfless scholarship.

AJHA has been a space where graduate students like myself are welcomed not only by faculty, but by other graduate students. It’s a solid network of people doing the same kind of work I am, and who care about history just as much as I do.

I know AJHA conferences have helped bolster my own confidence in my work as a journalism historian, and that’s thanks in no small part to the warm, welcoming atmosphere cultivated by both faculty and other graduate students. I’ve found it to be a group of people who will still root for you, even after you’ve spilled something on yourself. Twice.

By Ross F. Collins, AJHA president 2018-19

One of my goals as this year’s AJHA president has been to strengthen our connections with journalism history groups internationally. While it appears AJHA is the world’s oldest organization focused on the discipline of media history, newer groups in France and Britain have certainly demonstrated a high level of enthusiasm and scholarship. Previous columns have considered France. This column considers Britain. But this time I had an opportunity to do more than correspond by email. As I was going to England to present at another conference, I arranged to meet with the directors of the Centre for the Study of Journalism and History, housed at the University of Sheffield.

The center is barely a decade old—launched in 2009—but scholars there have already  established an impressive body of research. Most recently co-directors Adrian Bingham and Martin Conboy published a history of the British popular press, Tabloid Century (Peter Lang, 2015). I had the opportunity to chat with them over coffee on a sunny afternoon outside the university cafeteria.

Considering journalism history as part of the larger discipline of history, Adrian emphasized a need to rethink the scholarship to a more general level. “Historians of journalism need to be more ambitious in engaging with the big questions of the discipline, political, social, and cultural” he said, and they need to be less defensive about the field. “I consider myself to be a social and cultural historian of modern Britain, first and foremost.”

Martin agreed, noting journalism historian conferences should become more inclusive, reaching out to allied disciplines. “Try to incorporate journalism history into the larger area of history by considering it as social and cultural history.”

In his article “The Paradoxes of Journalism History,” (Australian Journalism Review 32), Martin wrote that journalism history needs to establish common research approaches. “In order to best create methodological links between journalism history and other areas of interest,” he wrote, “we need the sort of textual analysis which book history has developed and which, within journalism history, might well be served by some sort of historically grounded discourse analysis.”

The co-directors warn against journalism historians falling too strongly toward the traditional focus on biography of famous journalists and newspapers. Not that this work has no value, Adrian noted, but “if they are to avoid being pigeonholed as players in a relatively minor field, then journalism historians, I think, need to be more ambitious.” Conboy in his article acknowledged that American scholars such as David Paul Nord and James Carey also have addressed this, but added that scholars in other disciplines could benefit from greater understanding in how journalism historians analyze texts. “Journalism history,” he said, “ is a reference for social and cultural change in society.”

Adrian said as well that today’s journalism historians can be more ambitious in exploiting sources in new and more sophisticated ways, based on material now available online. The center offers an online archives for journalism historians accessible at the university, and encourages international scholars to research and study there in the discipline. “We currently have a student here interested in Chinese journalism history,” Adrian noted. The center actively seeks postgraduate students, and schedules conferences “from time to time,” most recently 2017. When they launch the next one, Adrian added, we in AJHA will hear about it. Check out the center at sheffield.ac.uk/journalismhistory.