By Scott Burgess, Wayne State University

To me, archives are a lot like churches. Both hold ancient texts; both operate in hushed silence; and both have too few visitors. During my career as a journalist, I had visited a few archives, but more to poke around and see what might be there, hoping to stumble upon something I could use for a story. Good research, however, requires more than just groping in the dark for a light switch. Good research tries to figure out where to look before the flailing begins. 

As a doctoral student, I rediscovered both my reverence for archives and artifacts and the pure excitement behind realizing you just may have found something important. Under the demanding but kind hand of Wayne State University’s journalism historian Dr. Michael Fuhlhage, I began a project that examined how the United Auto Workers used the media to recruit African-American workers in 1940s. Over the course of the semester, Dr. Fuhlhage patiently helped me hone my skills to comprehensively and meticulously pour through documents filed away that rarely see sunlight. Wayne State’s Walter P. Reuther Library houses all of the UAW’s archives and contains a staggering amount of material ranging from internal memos and handwritten notes to meeting minutes and various campaign flyers. However, as I’m sure many historians know, finding these documents and determining their significance remains is no easy task.

Combining my journalism skills and carefully plotted instructions that showed me how to organize my findings (and later interpret them), I folded away my personal belongings in a hallway locker and entered the archive’s examination room with just a list of boxes I hoped to view, a pencil, and my camera. I set up at a large oak table and took in the cathedral-like atmosphere. A few other scholars quietly worked around me, combing through files. I opened one reserved box and was hit by that sweet pungent smell of damp paper and began my exploration. I worked for more than two weeks – and having strategically invested in cookies for the archivists on a few days -- found the documents that brought to life the first paper I would have accepted at any academic conference – the 2017 American Historical Journalism Association’s national conference in Little Rock, Arkansas.

I had only a vague understanding of how many hours I spent in the Reuther because it was so easy to lose focus on the task at hand and start reading everything. Six banker boxes waited for me when I walked in the first day and every day after that there would be between eight and 10 sitting on library carts. Walter Reuther, a founding member of the UAW, made famous when Henry Ford’s team of thugs beat him outside of the Rouge River plant, had more than one hundred feet of documents. Telegrams from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, letters for dignitaries, and Reuther’s handwritten edits on onion skin drafts of speeches that would embolden union members to continue their work were now in my hands. Another box from another UAW official had notes about how all of the union leaders carried guns because of the constant threats made against them, and how on one night, the second president of the UAW and Reuther’s brother, Viktor, almost killed each other in a dark alley. It was easy to lose myself in the history I was physically holding.

But I did have a paper to finish, and I resisted the urge just enough to discover the first bulldog edition of the UAW’s weekly newspaper that was printed exclusively for African-Americans. While I have never found a reference to this paper in previous literature, the paper was sitting right out in the open in a bounded edition of the papers. The only difference was that every photo in the eight-page tabloid paper included African Americans and the stories were written about and for African Americans. As it would turn out, the UAW’s role in recruiting African Americans would have a profound impact at other unions and throughout the automotive world. It would still take decades before the civil rights movement would take hold – something the UAW would eventually join – but many strategies first employed by the UAW would be used by African Americans fighting for civil rights. 

As part of a different historical research team led by Dr. Fuhlhage, I assisted with a second paper accepted at the 2018 AJHA national conference examining how newspapers around the country in 1860 wrote about succession and the editorials that followed. We traced the exchange programs and examine how stories moved around the country more than 150 years ago. Anyone who immerses themselves in those papers immediately understands that any argument that suggests that the Civil War was not about slavery has only a loose grip on reality. A sharp focus and insight into the past certainly crystalizes what is happening today in ways that will continue to produce fascinating research on the human’s race inability to learn from its own mistakes. 

While I began my academic career strictly as a political communication scholar who loves journalism, it is through AJHA and the Dr. Fuhlhage’s infectious excitement in journalism history that has broadened the scope and depth of my scholarship. At the end of the day of researching, having dug through dozens of boxes, hundreds of files, you can judge how hard your worked by how dark the ink stains are on your hands. It’s immensely satisfying. Especially after you have on your camera pictures of a brochure created by the UAW in 1941 and used exclusively to recruit African Americans into the union that changed the course of the future. Those little discoveries continue to build up for me, and I understand yet another church-archive similarity. When you find something meaningful, even an atheist like me realizes that there just might have been divine intervention. 

G. Scott Burgess is a second-year doctoral student at Wayne State University. A former paratrooper and journalist, Scott has been a reporter, editor, war correspondent, and automotive critic. Scott’s scholarship includes political communication, incivility, new media and journalism history.

The editors of American Journalism, the peer-reviewed quarterly journal of the American Journalism Historians Association, have announced Dr. Susan E. Swanberg of the University of Arizona’s School of Journalism as the winner of the 2018 Rising Scholar Award.

Swanberg received this honor in recognition for her ongoing research titled “Spinning Science: Journalism’s Role at the Interface of Science and Public Policy During the Birth of the Atomic Age.” "I'm honored and thrilled to be the recipient of an AJHA Rising Scholar Award,” Swanberg said. “With this award I'll be able to visit archives crucial to my research on journalism’s role at the interface of science and public policy during the birth of the atomic age. I look forward to sharing the untold history of science journalism in the early years of the Atomic Era.

“I've found AJHA members to be supportive, collegial and inclusive colleagues as well as wonderful scholars. Thank you AJHA for your support! I will use this award wisely and well."

Swanberg’s research will examine not only the impact of journalism on science policy in the mid-20th century, but also the lasting effect of the work of key scientific journalists on today’s scientific landscape.

Dr. Vanessa Murphree, associate editor of American Journalism and professor at The University of Southern Mississippi, said this trajectory distinguished Swanberg’s research from the field of Rising Scholar Award candidates. “Dr. Swanberg has developed an important and timely research agenda that examines the knowledge gap between scientists and the public,” Murphree said. “She further examines how this lack of information influences expertise influences policy development in important areas such as energy, climate, public health, space exploration and other important scientific matters.”

The Rising Scholar Award winner is chosen annually by the editors of American Journalism. The award is designed for scholars who show promise in extending their research agendas.

Jean Folkerts, former dean and alumni distinguished professor emeritus at UNC-Chapel Hill, reports, "I have a collection of materials regarding the history of journalism, public relations and advertising education history. It probably would fill a small box movers use to move books. If anyone is interested in having this collection, I’d be happy to ship it to them for the cost of shipping. If you are interested, please contact jfolktns@gmail.com.

Second Vice President: Tom Mascaro, Bowling Green State University

Dr. Thomas A. Mascaro is a documentary historian and the author of Into the Fray: How NBC’s Washington Documentary Unit Reinvented the News (Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2012), which won the 2013 James W. Tankard Award for Best Book on Journalism given by the Standing Committee on Research of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), honorable mention from the American Journalism Historians Association (AJHA), and recognition from the Frank Luther Mott-Kappa Tau Alpha Journalism and Mass Communication Research Award. His articles and reviews appear in American Journalism, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Journalism History, Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, and the Journal of Popular Film and Television. His analysis on “The Benjamin Report” earned Mascaro the Annual Covert Award in Mass Communication History for best article of the year (co-winner, 2006, AEJMC History Division). Dr. Mascaro earned his Ph.D. in Radio-TV-Film from Wayne State University (1994) and Master of Arts Degree in Communication Studies from the University of Michigan (1990). He is a professor in the School of Media & Communication (SMC) at Bowling Green State University, where he was a finalist for the Master Teacher Award in 2013. Dr. Mascaro is the Advisor to the SMC Documentary Minor and teaches undergraduate courses on documentary history before/after 1968, film-TV-videogame criticism, and media history. He co-founded the Documentary Division of the Broadcast Education Association (2004) and was its first chair, 2005-2008. He teaches graduate classes on Critical Media Analysis, Philosophical Foundations of Communication Theory, and Documentary Studies and has been on dissertation committees dealing with documentary ethics, practices, and fandom, and media depictions of gender. He is also researching a project on documentary ethics and standards and working on the sequel to Into the Fray titled Hard Truths: Documenting America’s Social/Global History from Johnson to Reagan.

Board of Directors: Gerry Lanosga, Indiana University

Gerry Lanosga's research and teaching revolve around the practice of journalism from both contemporary and historical standpoints. In particular, his interests include the development of journalism as a profession, prize culture in journalism, and journalism's intersections with public policy through investigative reporting and the use of freedom of information laws. Lanosga completed his Ph.D. in 2010 at Indiana University and taught for three years at Ball State University before returning to IU. Previously, he spent nearly two decades as a print and broadcast journalist. He worked nine years as an investigative producer at WTHR-TV, the NBC affiliate in Indianapolis, where his work won numerous state, regional and national honors, including the duPont-Columbia award, the George Foster Peabody award, Sigma Delta Chi’s public service award, and the Freedom of Information medal from Investigative Reporters and Editors. Before that, he was a reporter and columnist for The Indianapolis News and The Indianapolis Star. A frequent speaker and writer on issues relating to open government, Lanosga serves on the boards of several non-profit organizations working in that arena – the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting, the Indiana Coalition for Open Government and the Indiana Debate Commission. In addition to his scholarly work, he is a regular contributor to the Indianapolis Business Journal's Indiana Forefront political blog. Lanosga is married and has three sons.

Board of Directors: Willie Tubbs, University of West Florida

Dr. Willie Tubbs is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at the University of West Florida. His expertise in communications is broad and includes interactive media, message design, journalism and media relations. Tubbs’ primary area of research is media history with a focus on 20th Century American media. In addition to his academic and teaching career, Tubbs has worked as a journalist, magazine editor, writer and reporter. Tubbs has served in numerous volunteer capacities. His affiliations include the American Journalism Historians Association and Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. For his work in academia, Tubbs has won numerous awards for teaching, presentations and papers. Tubbs received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Louisiana College, master’s degree in interactive media from Quinnipiac University and a doctorate in mass communication from the University of Southern Mississippi. Tubbs enjoys spending time with Mary Beth, his wife; Scarlet, his Pomeranian; and Charlie, his cat. He is also a fan of traveling, reading classic works of fiction and weight lifting.

Board of Directors: Ken J. Ward, Lamar University

Ken J. Ward is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Lamar University. His research explores both historical and contemporary dimensions of journalism with an emphasis on the relationship between journalism and community. Current projects include an exploration of the impact of past and present trends in journalism on social capital in the United States.

He currently serves as registrar of AJHA and a member of the 2018 AEJMC Presidential Task Force on Building Connections, and he is a charter advisor to the Lamar University chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. His research and teaching have received numerous awards, including the Excellence in Teaching Award from the Midwestern Association of Graduate Schools, and he is an inductee of Kappa Tau Alpha.

Ken’s research appears in such peer-reviewed publications as Journal of Media Law and Ethics, Journal of Media Ethics, and Journal of Magazine and New Media Research. 

The American Journalism Historians Association has selected Steven Casey of the London School of Economics and Political Science as the winner of its Book of the Year Award for 2018 for The War Beat, Europe: The American Media at War Against Nazi Germany (Oxford University Press).

The award, which recognizes the best book in journalism history or mass media history published during the previous calendar year, will be presented at AJHA’s Annual Convention Oct. 4-6 in Salt Lake City, Utah.

“Our panel of judges agreed that Steven Casey’s work once again established that good history at its best should be good reading,” said Aimee Edmondson from Ohio University, chair of the book award committee. “They also agreed his book provides a landmark work for scholars, an engaging and compelling account of journalists dedicated to reporting the Allied campaigns to dislodge the German forces from Europe.”

Casey is a professor of international history who specializes in U.S. foreign policy. His book—based on hundreds of manuscript collections, many previously unpublished—provides the first comprehensive account of how American war correspondents reported World War II.

Two authors also will be given honorable mention for the award: Carolyn Edy from Appalachian State University for The Woman War Correspondent, the U.S. Military, and the Press: 1846-1947 (Lexington Books), and Julia Guarneri from the University of Cambridge for Newsprint Metropolis: City Papers and the Making of Modern Americans (University of Chicago Press).

 “Typically we name one winner, but this year’s competition included so many wonderful works, judges agreed we should award two honorable mentions,” Edmondson said.

The American Journalism Historians Association announced today that Dr. Mike Sweeney of Ohio University has won the organization’s 2018 National Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Sweeney has been on faculty at Ohio University since 2009, having previously worked from 1996-2009 at Utah State. He will receive his award at the AJHA National Convention, which will take place Oct. 4- 6 in Salt Lake City.

“I am honored to join the ranks of some truly great teachers of journalism history – the ‘Mount Rushmore’ of professors -- previously recognized with this award,” Sweeney said. “In accepting, I would like to say that an effective professor recognizes the rich, two-way nature of communication required for deep learning in the classroom, and so I would like to say ‘Thank you’ to my excellent students.”

AJHA’s education committee, the members of which judged all entries, noted Sweeney’s consistently strong course evaluations, creative course and project designs, and engagement with his students. Sweeney’s work with aspiring media historians has also translated into several of his doctoral students participating in annual AJHA national conventions. “The level of mentoring it takes to guide student research projects, and then to oversee the presentations of the projects at a major professional conference, seems to me to separate out Sweeney’s accomplishments," one of the judges’ ballots read.

Kaylene Armstrong, chair of the education committee, said the committee received excellent applications for the award, making the job of the judges particularly difficult this year. "I think we would have been comfortable awarding this honor to any of the applicants," she said.

Call for Papers

Symposium on the 19th Century Press, the Civil War, and Free Expression

November 8–10, 2018

The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Deadline: August 27, 2018

The steering committee of the twenty-sixth annual Symposium on the 19th Century Press, the Civil War, and Free Expression solicits papers dealing with US mass media of the 19th century, the Civil War in fiction and history, freedom of expression in the 19th century, presidents and the 19th century press, images of race and gender in the 19th century press, sensationalism and crime in 19th century newspapers, the press in the Gilded Age, and the antebellum press and the causes of the Civil War. Selected papers will be presented during the three-day conference in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, November 8–10, 2018. The top three papers and the top three student papers will be honored accordingly. Due to the generosity of the Walter and Leona Schmitt Family Foundation Research Fund, the winners of the student awards will receive $250 honoraria for delivering their papers at the conference. 

The purpose of the November conference is to share current research and to develop a series of monographs. This year the steering committee will pay special attention to papers on the Civil War and the press, presidents and the 19th century press, and 19th century concepts of free expression. Papers from the first five conferences were published by Transaction Publishers in 2000 as a book of readings called The Civil War and the Press. Purdue University Press published papers from past conferences in three distinctly different books titled Memory and Myth: The Civil War in Fiction and Film from Uncle Tom’s Cabin to Cold Mountain (2007), Words at War: The Civil War and American Journalism (2008), and Seeking a Voice: Images of Race and Gender in the 19th Century Press (2009). In 2013, Transaction published Sensationalism: Murder, Mayhem, Mudslinging, Scandals, and Disasters in 19th-Century Reporting, and in 2014, it published A Press Divided: Newspaper Coverage of the Civil War. In 2017, Transaction (now Routledge/Taylor & Francis) published After the War: The Press in a Changing America, 1865–1900.

The symposium is sponsored by the George R. West, Jr. Chair of Excellence in Communication and Public Affairs, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga communication department, the Walter and Leona Schmitt Family Foundation Research Fund, and the Hazel Dicken-Garcia Fund for the Symposium, and because of this sponsorship, no registration fee will be charged.

Papers should be able to be presented within 20 minutes, at least 10–15 pages long. Please send your paper (including a 200–300 word abstract) as a Word attachment to west-chair-office@utc.edu by August 27, 2018. For more information, please contact:

Dr. David Sachsman

George R. West, Jr. Chair of Excellence in Communication and Public Affairs, Dept. 3003

The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

615 McCallie Ave.

Chattanooga, Tennessee 37403-2598

(423) 425-4219, david-sachsman@utc.edu

Jon Bekken has been promoted to full professor of communications at Albright College. His entry on “Unions of Newsworkers” is forthcoming in the International Encyclopedia of Journalism Studies. An article on “Incorporating Class into the Journalism and Mass Communication Curriculum” appears in the new issue of Teaching Journalism & Mass Communication (Vol. 8, no. 1). Also, his “Toward a Democratic Journalism” will appear in the next The American Historian as part of a special section on journalism and democracy.

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Sidney Kobre Award winner Hazel Dicken-Garcia died May 30, 2018. Bill Huntzicker has written a tribute to her on page 29 at: http://history-jmc.com/Home_files/Historiography%20vol.%204-4%202018.pdf. An obituary in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune by Kelly Smith, headlined, “Hazel Dicken-Garcia Journalism professor: At the U, she set standard for study of media history, ethics,” reads:

“Hazel Dicken-Garcia’s impact in life is measured in the hundreds of former students who now fill newsrooms and university lecture halls nationwide.

“Hailed as a trailblazer, she helped shape the study of journalism history and ethics and was an author, including of a well-known book on journalistic standards. But it was her work as a University of Minnesota professor for 30 years that she may be remembered for most.

“‘She was a towering figure in journalism history,’ said Kathy Roberts Forde , a former U colleague who is now an associate journalism professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. ‘In her generation, she was one of the top journalism historians. Her legacy lives on not only in her work, but in her students.’

“Dicken-Garcia died May 30. She was 79.

“Born in a log house in rural Kentucky in 1939, she grew up in poverty, the second-oldest of five children. She quickly found an escape through education, voraciously reading every book in her one-room school by the eighth grade.

“‘She’d have a dish rag in one hand and a book in the other,’ said her sister, Letha Amonett of Albany, Ky. ‘She wanted to do better. She wanted to become somebody.’

“Her high school classmates saw that, too, voting Dicken-Garcia the most likely to succeed. And she did, graduating from Berea College by working her way through school. She then spent five years working for the American Friends Service Committee in India and in the U.S. before landing a job as a part-time reporter in Ann Arbor, Mich. But she was drawn back to the classroom.

“‘She loved school all of her life,’ Amonett said.

“After getting a master’s degree and a doctorate, Dicken-Garcia taught in Wisconsin, Iowa, Maryland, Washington, D.C., Michigan and Massachusetts. By 1979, she landed a job at the U’s School of Journalism and Mass Communications teaching mass media history, law, theory and ethics courses.

“She also wrote and co-wrote several books including “Journalistic Standards in Nineteenth-Century America,” which won the Frank Luther Mott Kappa Tau Alpha research award in 1989. And in 2006, she was given the American Journalism Historians Association’s Kobre Award for Lifetime Achievement.

“‘She was widely known,” said Bill Huntzicker, a friend and former colleague. ‘She cared a lot about her students.’

“In fact, even after retiring in 2008, Dicken-Garcia continued to supervise graduate students on their dissertations. She was also a mentor to colleagues like Forde.

“‘She just gave so much to so many,’ she said.

“Outside school, Dicken-Garcia loved being part of book clubs, gardening and walking Como Lake — her rural Kentucky childhood cementing a love of the outdoors. Joe Scovronski, a friend and neighbor, would join her on many of those walks, Dicken-Garcia quietly listening to him share life stories before weighing in with her wise advice. It was that generosity, he said, that he will never forget.

“Neither will her former students, who, one by one, traveled from across the U.S. to Dicken-Garcia’s St. Paul home or sent her notes when she was diagnosed with liver cancer in February after being treated for Crohn’s disease for many years.

“‘This is not a time for sadness …,’ she wrote, adding that she is ‘grateful for the life she feels fortunate to have lived ... and of the many, many ennobling people who, by example, teach us all simply and elegantly while contributing indelibly to the world, making it a better place.’

“Along with her sister, she is survived by her brothers Clifton , Clayton and Lee Dicken, all of Albany, Ky. A memorial will be held at 2 p.m. June 22 at Unity Church-Unitarian in St. Paul.”

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One of Julie Hedgepeth Williams’ AJHA papers has grown up to become a book. Three Not-So-Ordinary Joes (NewSouth Books, 2018) started as a paper presented many years ago in 2002.  Julie writes, “Now, much expanded, it's a book about the three journalists named Joe who stuttered and staggered their way to starting Southern literature. The first and third Joes are familiar to many of us. The first was Joseph Addison, the famous British journalist and publisher of The Spectator in the early 1700s. The second one you probably haven't heard of, although he was named for the first one. He was Joseph Addison Turner, a Civil War-era editor and plantation owner whose great goal in life was to start Southern literature. The man was persistent. He tried magazines, how-to books, short stories, histories, plays, poems, all in an effort to inaugurate Southern literature, as he often stated in his publications. He failed, failed, failed until at last during the Civil War, it occurred to him he could put up an outbuilding on his plantation, buy a press, hire a printer, and publish a newspaper, which he named The Countryman, and which he hoped would launch Southern literature. He had figured out his trouble with his prior efforts, and it was all in his name: He announced his newspaper would copy Addison's Spectator in size, look, and language. Turner even published Addison's rules for writing in The Countryman. As far as is known, this was the only newspaper ever published on a plantation. And at last Turner had his hit! The Countryman was one of the most widely read newspapers in the Confederacy. But the war didn't go the way Turner had anticipated. The South lost. Turner's plantation collapsed. He died a few years later, thinking he had failed in his lifelong quest to start Southern literature. But in 1862, Turner had hired the third Joe, a teenager named Joel Chandler Harris, as The Countryman's printer's devil. Turner not only taught fatherless, poverty-stricken Harris to do newspaper work, but he turned him loose in the vast Turner library and taught the boy to write. By the time the war was over, the boy had direction and a career. He worked all over Georgia in newspapers until he at last landed at the Atlanta Constitution. There he was ordered to take over the popular "Negro column," which was written in the dialect of the former slaves and was meant to be humorous, but also in the spirit of the New South, it was a meant to bring the concerns of the former slaves into view for white readers. Faced with what he considered a difficult assignment, Harris went back in his memory to his time on Turner's plantation, when he and the Turner children would go to the slave cabins at night and beg the slaves to tell them stories. Harris perceived these stories as metaphors for how the slaves used their wits to get what they wanted out of their masters every time -- and that's how he wrote them. These "Uncle Remus" stories, as he called them (the prime storytelling character being Uncle Remus) were a huge hit, so much so that a New York editor turned them into a book. The book was a worldwide sensation, influencing writers such as Mark Twain, Beatrix Potter, and Rudyard Kipling. Most importantly, the Uncle Remus books shifted attention of American belles-lettres from New England writers and New England stories to the South and Southern stories. Thus Joel Chandler Harris became the first widely acclaimed Southern writer, and the Uncle Remus stories, the first wildly popular Southern literature. So I argue that Joseph Addison Turner -- in modeling Addison and teaching Harris to write the Addisonian style and exposing him to the slave stories -- really was the father of Southern literature after all, as he had so earnestly wished to be. He just didn't live long enough to see it.”

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Christina Littlefield, Pepperdine University, has been promoted to Associate Professor and granted tenure. She reports that thanks to the Rising Scholars grant, her work continues on a project looking at the muckraking of social gospel leaders in England and the United States. 

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Linda J. Lumsden in May 2018 was promoted to full professor at the School of Journalism, University of Arizona.

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Jennifer Moore, University of Minnesota at Duluth, was selected to participate in the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Scholars program "Visual Culture of the American Civil War and Its Aftermath." This is a two-week summer institute (July 9-20, 2018) in New York City. Part of the description from the web site: "The institute will focus on the era’s array of visual media—including the fine arts, ephemera, photography, cartoons, maps, and monuments—to examine how information and opinion about the war and its impact were recorded and disseminated, and the ways visual media expressed and shaped Americans’ views on both sides of and before and after the conflict. Participants will hear lectures by noted historians, art historians, and archivists and attend hands-on sessions in major museums and archives."

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Lori Amber Roessner, University of Tennessee, and Brian Creech’s, Temple University, “Declaring the Value of Truth: Progress-era Lessons for Combatting Fake New,” recently was published in Journalism Practice. Roessner and Jodi Rightler-McDaniel’s, South College, have published an edited volume, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Political Pioneer of the Press: Her Voice, Her Pen, and Her Transnational Crusade for Social Justice, in Lexington Books’ “Women in American Political History” series in July. The volume features the work of notable AEJMC history division members such as Norma Fay Green (Columbia College), Joe Hayden (Memphis) Jinx Broussard (LSU), Chandra Clark (Florida A&M), and Kathy Roberts Forde (UMass-Amherst). Special thanks to series editors Pam Parry (Southeast Missouri State) and Dave Davies (University of Southern Mississippi).

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The Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama in June approved the “David Sloan Journalism Graduate Student Endowed Scholarship.” The university president wrote, “Because of David Sloan, our deserving students have been provided opportunities that otherwise may not have been possible.” The scholarship will be offered for the first time for the 2018-19 academic year. Dianne Bragg and Rick Bragg initiated the effort to establish the scholarship as well as the fund-raising efforts to support it. Sloan taught at Alabama for 28 years before retiring in 2011.

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Dane S. Claussen, editor of the Intelligencer, effective July 16, resigned his position as James Pedas Professor of Media, Communication and Public Relations (full professor rank) and Executive Director of the James Pedas Communication Center, at Thiel College, where he had been since July 2015. He may or may not stay full-time in higher education, so stay tuned. In any case, Claussen continues as an irregular Visiting Professor of International Journalism at Shanghai International Studies University and Editor of the Newspaper Research Journal.

The American Journalism Historians Association has announced Dr. Eugenia M. Palmegiano, emerita faculty in the St. Peter’s University Department of History, as the recipient of the 2018 Kobre Award for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism History.

Palmegiano, a lifetime member of AJHA, was nominated by Dr. Wm. David Sloan with additional letters of support from 18 distinguished members of the American Journalism Historians Association, including former AJHA presidents and Kobre Award winners.

“I am honored to have been chosen as the recipient of the 2018 Kobre Award and shall do my best to live up to the high standards set by my predecessors,” Palmegiano said. “I see this award as an opportunity to publicize the fine work of my colleagues in the American Journalism Historians Association, especially at this critical moment in press history.”

The Kobre Award recognizes 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. Palmegiano’s accomplishments in the field of history are many and varied, as are her contributions to the organization. She’s written six books, one monograph, and dozens more refereed articles, books chapters, book reviews, and conference presentations.

Palmegiano has served as AJHA president and twice been a member of the AJHA board of directors. During her first term on the AJHA Board in 1996, Palmegiano worked with then AJHA president Tom Heuterman to establish AJHA as an affiliate society of the American Historical Association.

Since 2016, Palmegiano has funded the American Historical Association’s annual prize for best journalism history book. Palmegiano also funds the annual AJHA award for best research paper on international/transnational journalism history.

The Sidney Kobre Award for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism History is the American Journalism Historians Association's highest honor. The late Dr. Sidney Kobre was a renowned media historian who served as a professor at Florida State from the 1940s through the 1970s and penned 16 books in his career.

By Caitlin Cieslik-Miskimen

University of Wisconsin at Madison

Becoming a media historian was not part of my plan as an undergraduate. As a journalism major, I had my sights set on magazine writing, and pursued that dream with dogged determination until my senior year, when I decided somewhat on a whim to write an undergraduate honors thesis. The topic was celebrity gossip columns in the first half of the 20th century – a subject I had longed harbored an intense interest in. Given the freedom to spend my time reading about Charlie Chaplin, Rudolph Valentino, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, I poured myself into the project. By the time I had finished, I knew that I needed to change course, and started the process of applying for graduate programs specializing in media history. 

When I entered the graduate program at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, I knew what to expect. My undergraduate mentor and graduate advisor, James L. Baughman, had encouraged me to reach out to many individuals in the field for their advice, and to get a sense of what it would take to be a successful media historian. Get ready for long hours in the library and sitting in front of a microfilm reader, they said. Make friends with archivists, they advised. Read the acknowledgment sections of books you like, they noted. Be ready to be surprised and challenged by what you find when researching, they warned. Go into your projects with open eyes, and be open to have your assumptions tested. And get ready for some curve balls. 

They also warned me that media history – and the study of any historical field – can be a lonely pursuit. The long hours in the library, in front of books and in front of the microfilm reader, is isolating. Finding colleagues and collaborators that shared your love of history was key to success. During our check-ins, Prof. Baughman pushed me to maintain connections with others in the field. He was quick with contacts to reach out to based on my current interests or questions I had about the historiography of a topic. I leaned on this network for input and guidance that helped shape my research questions and projects and helped me grow as a scholar. 

Several pointed me toward AJHA. The organization strongly supported graduate students and would be a great venue to present my research and ideas. Importantly, they noted, I could meet other graduate students and scholars like myself – individuals passionate about journalism and history, and ready with tips on archive collections, databases, and secondary reading. And I’d be able to find a group that could empathize with the arduous process of writing historical research and of being the lone historical wolf in a journalism and mass communication department. With this advice in hand, I steadily followed my expected path in graduate school. I wrote a thesis, finished coursework, and started prepping for my preliminary examinations. 

But graduate school often comes with twists and turns that can be hard to navigate, no matter how prepared you are. It threw me a curve ball the spring before I was to begin prepping for my preliminary examinations, when Prof. Baughman passed away unexpectedly. As the dust began to settle, and I realized what I had lost in terms of an advisor and mentor, I realized how important the network of support I had been building would be. Without a media historian in the department, I would need to rely even more heavily on those outside my program. 

At my first AJHA conference, I initially felt intimidated. Here was a room of scholars whose books and articles I had read, who taught media history courses at universities and colleges across the country, and had won awards for their research and teaching. And there I was, a graduate student and the lone representative from the University of Wisconsin, wondering how to go up and introduce myself. But within the first few moments I immediately felt at ease. Everyone I met was friendly and eager to chat about all topics related to media, journalism, and history. And more important for me as a graduate student, they were incredibly interested in what I was working on and ready to offer feedback. 

AJHA has been incredibly valuable for me because it has helped find a network of individuals passionate about what I study. It has helped me connect with other graduate students in the field, and also provided a model of what to do as a professor. And at a time where I felt lost and untethered in my own program, it provided me with a number of new history mentors whose camaraderie has provided the support to drive me toward completing my dissertation. 

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Cieslik-Miskimen is  a  doctoral  candidate  at  the  University  of  Wisconsin-Madison,  completing  her  dissertation  examining  the  impact  of  modernity  and  progress  on  the  conception  of  community  and  identity  in  a  small  city,  via  its  print  communication  channels.