The American Journalism Historians Association invites paper entries, panel proposals, and abstracts of research in progress on any facet of media history for its 38th annual convention to be held Oct. 3-5 in Dallas, Texas.

The deadline for all submissions is June 1, 2019.

More information on the 2019 AJHA convention is available at https://ajha.wildapricot.org.

The AJHA views journalism history broadly, embracing print, broadcasting, advertising, public relations, and other forms of mass communication that have been inextricably intertwined with the human past. Because the AJHA requires presentation of original material, research papers, research in progress, and panels submitted to the convention may not have been submitted to or accepted by another convention or publication.

Research submitted for the conference must be significantly different from previous work, meaning the submitted research would represent new archival research, interviews, or content analysis that has not been presented before at a conference and represents a new departure from prior presented or published work. Research that previously was presented as a research-in-progress presentation at an AJHA convention or the Joint Journalism and Communication History Conference, however, may be submitted as a research paper. Each author may submit at most one paper, one research in progress, and one panel.

RESEARCH PAPERS

Authors may submit only one research paper. They also may submit one research-in-progress abstract and one panel proposal on a significantly different topic than the paper. Research entries must be no longer than 25 pages of text, double-spaced, in 12-point type, not including notes. The Chicago Manual of Style is recommended but not required.

Papers must be submitted electronically as Word attachments. Please send the following:

 An email with the attached paper, saved with author identification only in the file name and not in the paper.

 A separate 150-word abstract as a Word attachment (no PDFs) with no author identification.

 Author’s info (email address, telephone number, institutional affiliation, and undergraduate student, graduate student, or faculty status) in the text of the email.

Send papers to ajhapaper@gmail.com. Authors will be notified in mid-July whether their papers have been accepted.

Authors of accepted papers must register for the convention and attend to present their research.

Accepted papers are eligible for several awards, including the following:

• David Sloan Award for the outstanding faculty research paper ($250 prize).
• Robert Lance Award for outstanding student research paper ($100 prize).
• Jean Palmegiano Award for outstanding international/transnational journalism history research paper ($150 prize).
• J. William Snorgrass Award for outstanding minority-journalism research paper.
• Maurine Beasley Award for outstanding women’s-history research paper.
• Wally Eberhard Award for outstanding research in media and war ($50 prize).

Research Committee Chair Erin Coyle (ekcoyle@lsu.edu) of Louisiana State University is coordinating paper submissions. Authors will be notified in mid-July whether their papers have been accepted.

PANELS

Preference will be given to proposals that involve the audience and panelists in meaningful discussion or debate on original topics relevant to journalism history.

Preference also will be given to panels that present diverse perspectives on their topics.

Entries must be no longer than three pages of text, double-spaced, in 12-point type, with one-inch margins. Panel participants must register for and attend the convention.

Panel proposals must be submitted electronically as Word attachments. Please include the following:

 A title and brief description of the topic.

 The moderator and participants’ info (name, institutional affiliation, student or faculty status).

 A brief summary of each participant’s presentation.

Send proposals to ajhapanels@gmail.com.

No individual may be on more than one panel. Panel organizers must make sure panelists have not agreed to serve on multiple panels. Panel organizers also must secure commitment from panelists to participate before submitting the proposal.

Moderators are discussion facilitators and may not serve as panelists. Failure to adhere to the guidelines will lead to rejection of the proposal.

Panelists may submit a research paper and/or research in progress abstract.

Rob Wells (rswells@uark.edu) of the University of Arkansas is coordinating the panel competition. Authors of panel proposals will be notified in mid-July whether their panels have been accepted. Panelists must register for the convention and attend.

RESEARCH IN PROGRESS

Each author may submit only one research in progress. The research-in-progress category is for work that will NOT be completed before the conference. Research in progress must be significantly different from previously presented or published research.

Participants will give an overview of their research purpose and progress, not a paper presentation, as the category’s purpose is to allow for discussion and feedback on work in progress. RIP authors may also submit a research paper on a significantly different topic.

For research-in-progress submissions, send a blind abstract of your study. Include the proposal title in the abstract. The abstract should include a clear purpose statement as well as a brief description of your primary sources. Abstracts must be no longer than two pages of text, double-spaced, in 12-point type, with 1-inch margins, excluding notes.

Primary sources should be described in detail in another double-spaced page.

Entries that do not follow these guidelines will be rejected.

The AJHA research-in-progress competition is administered electronically.

 Proposals must be submitted as Word attachments, saved with author identification ONLY in the file names and NOT in the text of the proposal.

 Each proposal must be submitted as an attachment, with author’s info (name, project title, telephone number, email address, institutional affiliation, and student or faculty status) in the text of the email.

Send research in progress proposals to ajharip@gmail.com. Authors will be notified in mid-July whether their proposals have been accepted. Authors of accepted proposals must register for the convention and attend.

Authors whose work is accepted must register for and attend the convention.

Keith Greenwood (greenwoodk@missouri.edu) of University of Missouri is coordinating the research in progress competition.

The Center for Intercultural Dialogue announces its second annual video competition, open to students enrolled in any college or university during spring 2019. 

Intercultural dialogue (ICD) is “the art and science of understanding the Other.” ICD can include international, interracial, interethnic and interfaith interactions, but it is always active (“a matter of what someone does”) rather than passive (“a matter of what someone knows”). Typically, people assume that ICD requires face-to-face interaction. This competition asks: “How do social media influence intercultural dialogue?” Entries must be between 30 seconds to 2 minutes in length and will be accepted May 1-31, 2019, at the URL to be posted to the CID website by May 1. Longer videos will be disqualified.

You are invited to discuss intercultural dialogue in a class, perhaps showing winning entries from 2018, and to suggest students produce videos as their responses. Please encourage students to be creative, show off their knowledge and skills, and have fun with this topic.

The top award winner will receive a $200 prize. All award-winning entries will be posted to the CID YouTube channel and highlighted on the CID website, LinkedIn group, Facebook group,and Twitter feed, through posts describing the creators and highlighting each of their videos. Perhaps most important to student learning, all entries will be sent comments from the judges. Winning entries last year came from not only the USA, but also Italy, the UK, and Peru.

For more information, visit https://centerforinterculturaldialogue.org.

Contact Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, CID director, with any questions at intercult.dialogue@gmail.com.

By Natascha Toft Roelsgaard, Ohio University

Back in 2006, I spent nearly four weeks driving through the southern states with my family. From the back of a rental van, I took in the view of the open plains and tattered shotgun houses that Hurricane Katrina had ripped apart, as we drove through Louisiana toward Mississippi. To say that I was overwhelmed by what I saw would be a complete understatement. For a teenage kid coming from Denmark, a small Scandinavian country who invented the concept of “hygge” to sustain the long and dark winter months, natural disasters were something that belonged on TV, not in real life.

As we witnessed the aftermath of the hurricane, I recall being captivated by the journalists who went out of their way to report on the people that Katrina had left behind, who were now facing displacement and poverty. I realized then the importance of journalism as a means for these people to tell their stories and voice their concerns; that the work and grits of these reporters were essential in telling the rest of the world what was going on. It took me nearly ten years, and a rather windy road, to realize that I wanted to be a journalist myself, and that I too wanted to tell the stories often untold. It hit me the first time I walked into Mike Sweeney’s office, who had by chance—and to my luck—been assigned as my academic adviser when I came to Ohio University for an exchange semester in 2015. There he was, amongst stacks of papers, books, and colorful oil paintings, leaned back in his chair with his eyes closed, telling me about his life as a journalist and historian. Sweeney’s passion and guidance steered me toward a master’s degree in journalism. It has been more than three years since I first walked into his office, and I am now in my first year of pursuing a doctoral degree in journalism at E.W. Scripps. His mentorship and guidance—including his wicked Trivia knowledge—has been a source of inspiration and motivation for me to get where I am today. He was also the one who encouraged me to submit my work to AJHA.

When I attended AJHA in Salt Lake City this fall, I was amazed by the kindness and camaraderie I encountered there. I had been told ahead of time that the organization would be extremely welcoming and that it was more like an academic family than a formal conference, and oh how true it was! Being amongst a group of fellow historians, whose work I have been admiring for years (Maurine Beasley!), watching them do their magic and share my work with them was both intimidating and humbling, but most of all, extremely uplifting.

AJHA is a wonderful opportunity for graduate students to interact with historians from all across the country. It is without a doubt intimidating to present your work in front of your academic heroes, but their willingness to share their experience and research was overwhelming. The support and advice I received after presenting my work at the conference is invaluable to my further studies, and it has allowed me not only to broaden my research scope, but furthermore opened doors for potential collaboration with fellow historians in the future.

I left the conference feeling inspired and supported by my newfound academic pack, and I cannot wait to go back and see everyone again.

The American Journalism Historians Association seeks applications for its annual Joseph McKerns Research Grant Awards.

The research 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 upon review and recommendation of the Research Grant Committee. McKerns Research Grant Awards may be used for travel or other research related expenses, but not for salary.
 Awardees must submit a brief article to the Intelligencer newsletter about their completed research by Sept. 1, 2019, discussing method, findings, complications, significance.

Eligibility

All current AJHA full members with a minimum of three years' membership at the time of application are eligible. The research must be related to mass media history. Awardees are expected to continue their membership through the grant period. Members may apply for a McKerns Research Grant once every five years.

Application requirements:

— An application form.

—  A 1- to 3-page prospectus/overview of the project, including a budget (which should include a listing of amount and sources of other support, if appropriate), timelines, and expected outlets for the research.

—  If appropriate, include Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval from the applicant's university.

— A shortened curriculum vitae (no more than 3 pages). Grant applications must be submitted via email to Research Grant Committee Chair Erin Coyle at ekcoyle@lsu.edu. Materials may be submitted as PDF files or Word documents by June 1, 2019.

Proposal

Please complete this form and send it with electronic versions of your vita and proposal by June 1, 2019, to the email address below.

Proposal Title:

Name:

Title:

Address:

Phone: (home) (cell)

Email:

Number of years as AJHA member:

Year of any previous AJHA grant:

Name, title and address of college/university official to notify if you receive a grant:

For questions regarding the grant application or process, contact Erin Coyle, AJHA Research Grant Committee Chair, via email at ekcoyle@lsu.edu.

By June 1, 2019, send the form, your proposal, vitae, and any other pertinent documents as email attachments to ekcoyle@lsu.edu.

The AJHA Research Grant Award is designed to provide research assistance to qualified members. Up to four grants for up to $1,250 each will be awarded each year.

All current AJHA full members with a minimum of three years' membership at the time of application are eligible. The applicant must be the principal investigator of the research project. The research project must be related to mass media history. Awardees are expected to continue their membership through the grant period.

Proposals may be returned to applicants with requests for additional information.

DEADLINE: June 1, 2019

AEJMC’s History Division announces the 35th annual competition for the Covert Award in Mass Communication History.

The $500 award will be presented to the author of the best mass communication history article or essay published in 2018. Book chapters in edited collections also may be submitted.

The award was endowed by the late Catherine L. Covert, professor of public communications at Syracuse University and former head of the History Division. 

An electronic copy in .pdf form of the published article/essay/chapter should be submitted via email to Dr. Sheila Webb, sheila.webb@wwu.edu, by March 1, 2019. The publication may be self-submitted or submitted by others, such as an editor or colleague.

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.