(Editor’s Note: Prof. Pete Smith presented his paper, “‘A Lady of Many Firsts’: Press Coverage of the Political Career of Mississippi’s Evelyn Gandy, 1948-83,” at the October 2016 AJHA Convention in St. Petersburg. The Intelligencer asked Smith to tell us more about how he got interested in Gandy, what his research about her means, and why it’s important.)

By Pete Smith, Mississippi State University

I recently found myself in a spur-of-the-moment conversation with a couple of friends about the recent presidential election. I listened carefully as they presented their cases—including the idea that Clinton, against campaign advice, did not show enough emotion in her public appearances. As I quickly pointed out, Clinton has been dogged by a cruel double standard: show even a tiny bit of emotional vulnerability and be perceived as weak, portray a more serious tone (as her male counterparts have and do), and be criticized as being cold and unapproachable. 

In fact, the academic literature in this area reveals that men are often framed according to the political issues they champion, while women politicians are judged on their images—their marital statuses, physical appearances, or specific personality or emotional traits.(1) However, this research, while focusing on women of national reputation, mentions very little about women politicians of state and local importance. 

In an attempt to fill this gap in the scholarly literature, I spent my 2016 spring sabbatical examining, among other projects, the press coverage of Mississippi’s Edythe Evelyn Gandy (1920-2007), whose tenure in state politics stretched over three decades. After being elected to a term in the Mississippi House of Representatives (1948-52), Gandy served as a state assistant attorney general in 1959, two terms as state treasurer (1960-64, 1968-72), state commissioner of public welfare (1964-67), and commissioner of insurance (1972-76). Her political career hit its peak when she was elected lieutenant governor (1976-80), an office she held before making two unsuccessful bids for the state’s highest office in 1979 and again in 1983. 

I didn't remember the details of Gandy’s career, but I have flashbulb memories of seeing TV interviews and political ads about her statewide campaigns. Those scant memories had real staying power, in any case; three decades later, I set out, using some forty scrapbooks from the Evelyn Gandy Papers (located in the McCain Library & Archives at the University of Southern Mississippi), to investigate how Mississippi’s local newspapers, the AP and UPI wire services, and several regional publications (e.g. the New Orleans Times-Picayune) portrayed Gandy’s image over a 35-year period.

I brought home some 2,000 photocopied pages for analysis, including countless news articles and editorials, political cartoons and photographs, and discovered three significant press frames: First, a “first” frame, which presents women’s political contributions as a novelty; Second, frames emphasizing stereotypical, feminine characteristics, whether that be Gandy’s physical appearance (e.g. her height, weight, dress, or her facial features), her manner of speaking (e.g. being “soft-spoken”), or the titles assigned to her (e.g. “lady”); and, Third, an “iron magnolia” frame, which creates the perception that the woman candidate is either too feminine or too masculine.

The “first” frame, as I call it, was the most persistent of Gandy’s career, beginning with her election as assistant attorney general: “Assistant Attorney General to Be Woman for First Time,” read the awkward headline from a January 1959 issue of the Memphis (Tenn.) Commercial Appeal, as the paper’s male editors attempted to describe something outside of their sense of “normal.”(2) As the press struggled to define Gandy’s success as an elected official, it consistently framed her in the most feminine, and patronizing, of terms: “The attractive Forrest County native appeared in a black dress,” a May 1963 UPI photo cutline noted in reference to Gandy’s appearance during her swearing in ceremony as state welfare commissioner.(3)

Whether referencing her wardrobe or the way she carried herself in public—her “always eloquent style,” as one journalist observed—news coverage of Gandy consistently made the point that she was, above all else, a proper southern lady.(4) For instance, a UPI report published shortly after her 1960 election as state treasurer made reference to Gandy’s “ladylike answer” when she refused to reveal her age.(5) In fact, the moniker of “lady” was perhaps the most consistent of feminine labels used to define Gandy’s image—as a September 1978 headline from the Memphis (Tenn.) Commercial Appeal (published during Gandy’s first gubernatorial campaign) confirms: “The Lady of Jackson and Her Smile.”(6)

Building upon the perception of Gandy as a “gentle lady”—as longtime political columnist W.F. “Bill” Minor referred to her in August 1978—the press used an “iron magnolia” frame to describe her image during the final stages of her political career.(7) In particular, this frame made note of Gandy as a “tough” political opponent, but continued to over-emphasize the same traditional feminine characteristics that defined her as a conventional southern woman. “With a new wardrobe, a new hairdo and a firm handshake,” Jack Elliott of the Jackson (Miss.) Daily News said in a March 1983 editorial, “Evelyn Gandy is on the [campaign] road again.”(8)

In Gandy case, these three press frames were part of the hegemonic process that took into account Mississippi’s history, its culture, and the local and regional press as contributors to the state’s lack of progress. In a broader sense, the results of this analysis (which is forthcoming in a future issue of American Journalism) reveal the value of media history in understanding recent political circumstances—including the idea that powerful women like Hillary Clinton must navigate a much more difficult set of cultural standards if they are to win the day.

References

1. See, for example, Diana B. Carlin and Kelly L. Winfrey, “Have You Come a Long Way, Baby? Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and Sexism in 2008 Campaign Coverage,” Communication Studies 60, no. 4 (September-October 2009): 326-43; Yasmine Dabbous and Amy Ladley, “A Spine of Steel and a Heart of Gold: Newspaper Coverage of the First Female Speaker of the House,” Journal of Gender Studies 19, no. 2 (June 2010): 181-94; and Karrin Vasby Anderson, “‘Rhymes with Blunt’: “Pornification and U.S. Political Culture,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 14, no. 2 (2011): 327-68.

2. “Assistant Attorney General to be Woman for First Time,” Memphis (TN) Commercial Appeal, 2 January 1959, Edythe Gandy Papers (hereafter abbreviated as “Gandy Paper”), Box 1, Scrapbook 1, University of Southern Mississippi, McCain Library & Archives, Hattiesburg, MS.

3. “Miss Gandy Takes Welfare Office Post,” Mobile (AL) Register, 19 May 1963. Gandy Papers, Box 4, Scrapbook 1.

4. Phil Mullen, “Pisgah Folks Enjoy PTA Banquet, Miss Gandy Gives Inspiring Talk,” Madison County (MS) Herald, no date. Gandy Papers, Box 3, Scrapbook 1.

5. “Woman Treasurer Prepares to Take on Man-Sized Job,” Jackson (MS) Clarion-Ledger, 22 September 1959. Gandy Papers, Box 1, Scrapbook 1.

6. James Young, “‘The Lady’ of Jackson and Her Smile,” Memphis (TN) Commercial Appeal, 10 September 1978, Gandy Papers, Box 32, Scrapbook 1.

7. Wilson F. Minor, “Eyes on Mississippi: Gandy on the Spot Over Ousting Burgin,” Jackson (MS) Reporter, 3 August 1978, Gandy Papers, Box 31, Scrapbook 1.

8. Jack Elliott, “Evelyn Gandy’s Just Itching to Show Off Her New Running Shoes,” Jackson (MS) Daily News, 6 March 1983, Gandy Papers, Box 40, Scrapbook 1.

(Editor’s Note: The Intelligencer spotted the paper, “The History Gap: Collective Memory, Journalism and Public Discourse on Racial Achievement Disparities in Progressive Communities,” by University of Wisconsin-Madison doctoral student Caitlin Cieslik-Miskimen and Prof. Sue Robinson at the November 2016 National Communication Association convention held in Philadelphia, and asked them to tell us more about what why they did this research, what it means, and why it's important.)

The History Gap

By Caitlin Cieslik-Miskimen

           The story of the difficulties facing contemporary journalism is well worn: consistent budget cuts, which have led to the elimination of pages and positions, which has led to less column inches devoted to matters of local concern, which has also created less room for in-depth, contextual reporting. But missing in this narrative is a consideration for the impact these cuts have on journalism’s ability to construct and maintain a community’s historical memory. This was the subject of research myself and Dr. Sue Robinson undertook last summer—an unexpected offshoot from a larger project that examined the public discourse about achievement disparities in progressive communities in the United States.

We wanted to find out how people talked about issues related to the achievement gap and how reporting on this topic helped or hindered efforts to close the gap. We spoke with more than 20 community leaders and activists, parents of public schoolchildren, politicians and school superintendents and administrators, and read more than 2,000 media texts and comments spanning the last five years. The reality of life in these cities for minorities—high unemployment and low high school graduation rates—is often the product of cultural, economic and political forces with a much longer history than public discussion acknowledges.

As a media historian, I view the world through a certain lens, one that constantly searches for the appropriate historical analogy, historical parallel, or historical tidbit that helps to better explain a current situation. But increasingly, in the interviews collected for this project and the newspaper articles analyzed, we began to notice that often discussions about how best to solve these issues happen with a certain present-mindedness that obscures history. 

Take, for example, the situation in Evanston, a northern Chicago suburb that prides itself on its educational offerings, public commitment to diversity, and progressive ideology. In 2010, the superintendent of the Evanston high school district announced a detracking initiative. This bold move would eliminate freshman honors classes in the humanities, with plans to eliminate all freshman-level honors courses. The goal was to boost the number of minority students in honors and AP classrooms, but the plan was met with strong resistance from the community. As these conversations continued, those on the school board realized there needed to be a larger, more detailed community discussion about race and Evanston’s history. Equally difficult in getting the city to understand the achievement gap as a historical problem was confronting the contradictions in how Evanston residents thought of their city and its history. 

Interviews and articles cited Evanston’s progressive stance on education, specifically mentioning as a point of pride the fact that it was the first Northern city to desegregate its schools in September 1967. But missing in the conversation was the acknowledgment that the 1960s was also the genesis for academic performance differences, primarily because the Black population was impacted disproportionately through the closing of community-building institutions.

“This goes way back,” said a school official in an interview. “And you know, nationally, that’s overwhelmingly what happened. We didn’t close the White schools and bus the White kids into [Black] communities. That’s just not the history of this country. And Evanston...the same thing happened there.”

Another top school official added, “And we closed the institutions. We closed the Y. We closed the hospital in the heavily concentrated African American ward, the fifth ward.”

These interviews revealed something missing in community conversations, and in newspaper articles covering these issues: history. The city of Evanston wasn’t alone in its historical blind spot. In the course of an interview with an Ann Arbor school board member who had made addressing and eliminating achievement disparities a central feature of her tenure the subject of history popped up—or, rather, the lack of history.

“[Newspapers have] gotten rid of longtime journalists, or have longtime journalists move on so there’s not necessarily the institutional memory about the district,” she lamented. “And so when the -- you know, they’re going to a meeting and they’re reporting on something, you know, reporters don’t necessarily have the knowledge that, you know, this is a discussion they had 10 years ago, this is a discussion they had six years ago.”

Anyone who wants to effect institutional change is, to a certain extent, beholden to history. All people and institutions are historical products, and whether they are aware of it or not, they make use of historical narratives when making choices about the present and future (Tyack & Cuban, 1997). Historical memory plays a central role in how a community knows itself. It helps a community understand the past, explain the present, and make predictions for the future. Communication is key to the process of remembering, and journalism has often acted as key agent in forming memory. Consequently, the collective memory surrounding education issues at the local level has become thin without the necessary historical context that would be useful in understanding to resolve these disparities.

The achievement gap is “one of the most entrenched challenges of American society,” in part because it represents the confluence of a number of social, cultural and economic forces. The problem is many layered, and any solution to eliminating the achievement gap, must acknowledge the historical elements at play. Walter Lippmann acknowledged the allure of oversimplification in Public Opinion, writing that it “tends to preserve us from all the bewildering effect of trying to see the world steadily and see it whole.” We hope that this study furthers the conversation about the essential role history plays in contemporary conversations by helping see these problems whole, and the issues that arise when journalism neglects to include it. For without access to accurate historical maps, solving these types of issues becomes harder, lengthier, and more frustrating.

References

Lippmann, W. (1922). Public Opinion. 

Tyack, D. and Cuban, L. (1997). Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

About the authors

Caitlin Cieslik-Miskimen is a PhD student in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and studies media history. Dr. Sue Robinson is an associate professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UW-Madison.

(Editor's Note: Tim Nickens, Editor of Editorials at the Tampa Bay Times, represented and spoke about Lucy Morgan at the 2016 AJHA Convention in St. Petersburg on the occasion of Morgan receiving the AJHA's 2016 Local Journalist Award. He pointed The Intelligencer to a transcript of an interview with her [http://ufdcimages.uflib.ufl.edu/UF/00/00/55/34/00002/LucyMorganchapter2wpd.pdf], and also to a 2005 profile about her in the St. Petersburg Times, by Jeff Klinkenberg, which appears below.)

"Hey, Lucy!"

A lobbyist driving on College Avenue shouts at her from his Jeep.

"You doing something bad?" she hollers back.

"No, ma'am!"

"Tell me something I'm not supposed to know."

"Not me, Lucy."

In Tallahassee, nobody calls her Ms. Morgan, or Mrs. Morgan, or even "that Lucy Morgan," though she knows some folks describe her as "The Bitch."

She is just plain Lucy. Perhaps it is the spectacular drawl that goes back to her Mississippi roots that invites informality. Or the fact she sometimes is observed knitting doll clothes for her grandchildren _ while listening to testimony at a murder trial. Anyway, Lucy doesn't object to "Lucy." Nor does she mind being addressed as "darlin'," "sweetie" or "honey."

"Ah have always liked to be unner-ahstimated," she says in a raspy voice that sounds like she has been munching acorns. Subtitle: Lucy is happy when somebody important underestimates her, when somebody thinks she is not as smart as she actually is. "To be a Southern woman in a cap'll full of good ole boys is an advantage. When they fand ayout A'hm serious it's too late."

Princess with a poison pen

If Lucy were a character in a Puccini opera it would have to be "Turandot." Lucy loves opera, Puccini especially. Frankly, Turandot is her kind of gal. Turandot is a fetching though calculating princess who over the years has lured many a prince to his doom.

Lots of princes have tried to win Turandot's favor. But the femme fatale enjoys toying with her suitors. She tells her latest beau she will marry him if he can provide the answer to three trick questions. A prince who answers wrong is not sent packing _ he is beheaded.

In Florida, where Lucy retires this year after nearly four decades of reporting for the St. Petersburg Times, lots of politicians, lobbyists and sheriffs begin massaging their throats nervously the instant Lucy starts asking questions.

They know Lucy's pen indeed is as mighty as the sharpest of swords.

Want to see some heads?

In 1982 she was Pulitzer Prize finalist for exposing a drug-smuggling ring in Dixie and Taylor counties that resulted in 250 people going to jail, including government officials. In 1985 she and another reporter, Jack Reed, won the big enchilada for investigating big problems in the Pasco County Sheriff's Office. Her Pulitzer hangs on an office wall.

For two decades, she has headed the paper's Tallahassee bureau, covering governors, legislators, judges, sheriffs and lobbyists, including some who actually intended to make the state a better place. Not all of them, of course. Frequently she caught a dunderhead doing something stupid, embarrassing or illegal and felt the need to tell her readers all about it.

Cue up Turandot on the CD player!

Off with their heads!

"I would rather have an enema than be interviewed by you," Jack Latvala, former Republican senator from Pinellas County, once barked after a trying day.

"There was once a great Green Bay Packer offensive guard named Jerry Kramer," says Democrat Bob Graham, the former governor and U.S. senator. "He was asked about his coach, Vince Lombardi. Kramer said, "Coach Lombardi treated all his players democratically. He treated us all like dogs.' I would say Lucy was a very democratic reporter."

A scary quote. Lucy always liked Graham. She thought he was that rare, honest public servant.

She is going to miss him, though perhaps she won't have to. Her reign might be over, but she aims to work part time for the newspaper, maybe do an investigative piece or two, nothing terribly big, though heaven knows what she could turn up. Perhaps she will get a chance to put the straight-laced Graham on the hot seat one last time.

Hell's bells.

She ain't dead yet _ she is only 65. A few drops of poison must be left in that trusty old pen.

Underestimate at your peril

"Hey, Alan," she shouts to an insurance lobbyist whose ear is glued to his cell phone. "You doin' somethin' bad?"

He grins and nods in the affirmative.

"You want to confess?"

He grins and nods no.

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained," Lucy mutters, ambling away.

A walking contradiction, this Lucy woman. She is the wife of an old-fashioned guy who owns what might be the last flat-top haircut in the state. Mother of four grown children, grandmother of eight with one great-grandchild, she can cuss like a cowboy with hemorrhoids. Then she quietly gets back to her knitting.

She has seen operas all over the world. Pavarotti is her favorite. Loves ballet, too. She is glad she got to watch Baryshnikov in tights. "Nice tush," she says.

She is a wine connoisseur who eats with elbows on the table. She likes to be the center of attention and frequently interrupts whoever else has grabbed the spotlight. "Lucy, let me finish," her husband says calmly.

A shopaholic, she loves buying new clothes when her husband isn't paying attention, though she inevitably dresses casually, part of her "go ahead and underestimate me" strategy. She shows up at work in a modest blouse and stretch pants tugged over her farm woman's sturdy frame. No heels, just sneakers.

Walking with a limp, surrounded by an intoxicating cloud of Estee Lauder, she is breathless while hobbling up the hill toward the state House and the people's business.

So innocent and huggable! Lucy, why aren't you home baking an apple pie?

Duck! For God's sake, duck!

"Look," she has been known to advise a self-important rookie senator. "You don't have to be a horse's ayass. You can be straight with me."

Perhaps he is too shocked to reply just then. No matter. Sooner or later he will learn about his responsibilities, his reason for being, and answer Lucy.

"Lucy was relentless," says Rob Hooker, a Times deputy managing editor who worked with Lucy on her celebrated stories in west-central Florida in the 1980s. "She has wonderful people skills, the uncanny ability to get people to talk to her and tell her things they shouldn't have."

Nervous evildoers tapped her phone and pawed through her garbage looking for dirt while she investigated them. They followed her car and threatened her _ anonymously, of course _ over the phone at midnight. They scared her children and grandchildren. They put out a bumper sticker: "Screw Lucy Morgan." They menaced her sources; sometimes Lucy felt compelled to meet sources in a Belk Lindsey department store in New Port Richey. While Lucy tried on clothes in a changing room they'd pass crucial information about the Pasco County Sheriff's Office under the door.

In 1973 an ambitious district attorney wondered where she was getting information about corruption in Dade City and dropped a subpoena on her lap.

"I would go to jail rather than reveal a source" was Lucy's credo.

A judge sentenced her to eight months because she wouldn't tell.

"I was prepared to go to jail," she tells people now. "I thought I might finally get some serious reading done."

At the bookstore she purchased the complete works of Lord Alfred Tennyson, the Victorian poet best known for The Charge of the Light Brigade.

"Just always wanted to read him," she says.

Alas, the Florida Supreme Court ruined her chance for some absorbing reading. Overturning her sentence, the court also granted reporters at least a limited right to protect sources.

Starting at the bottom

She was born on Oct. 11, 1940, in Memphis but moved to Hattiesburg, Miss., before blowing out even a single birthday candle. Her mother Lucile divorced her father, Thomas Alin Keen, an alcoholic, when she was a baby. Lucy credits her personality, and her success, to being raised by a strong mother, grandmother and aunt.

"Mother never remarried," Lucy tells people. "She had a serious suitor once, but she always said she had never met a man to whom she would cede her closet space."

Her mother ran a pharmacy, listened to opera, sang in the choir, once chased a purse snatcher and regularly booked passage on tramp steamers bound for the South Pacific. She took pride in her two smart daughters, Kay and Lucy.

Kay got a doctorate in psychology from Harvard.

Lucy graduated from high school.

"Mother was disappointed when I got pregnant and got married at 17," says Lucy, who never finished college.

She married a coach and moved to Crystal River. The marriage failed after nine years and three children.

"It wasn't a good situation," Lucy says. "I was a single, stay-at-home mom with three kids under the age of 6 and negligible work experience."

One day an editor from the Ocala Star-Banner called. He was looking for someone to cover news in Citrus County.

"She was looking for a part-time reporter and got my name from the local librarian who told her I read more books than just about anyone else. The editor figured that a good reader might be able to write."

She could.

Sometimes, at a midnight fire, Lucy showed up accompanied by her three toddlers.

Lucy loved firefighters. She loved cops. They were sweet on her, too.

"It wasn't like it is today," Lucy says. "I'd be at the scene of an arrest and a cop would yell, "Lucy, grab the handcuffs and give 'em to me.' "

Occasionally a male officer asked her to check on a female inmate lying passed out in a pool of vomit in the drunk tank.

"It was actually a lot of fun."

When chaos, order collide

Lucy was hired at the St. Petersburg Times in 1967. Her first boss was an old-fashioned guy who wore his hair in a flat top. He was Richard Morgan, perhaps the most detail-minded editor in the history of the company _ the kind of manager who handed an anxious reporter three excruciating pages of instructions on her first day of employment. Instructions typically might cover the 480 official minutes in the workday and suggest the reporter sleep close to the phone in case she was needed to cover a fire.

Their marriage, in 1968, had to be kismet. She thrives in chaos. He is all about order and stability. "Lucy has the patience of a lit firecracker," he says on his way to making the bed while wearing pajamas that look suspiciously like he might have ironed them.

In 1979, when her teenage son Al was killed in an auto accident, Richard was a comforting presence. After all, one of his children from a previous marriage had been killed in an accident, too.

Today they live in a sprawling five-bedroom, north Tallahassee home surrounded by pine trees, camellias and azaleas.

Lucy, who learned many lessons from her mother, allows her husband one little closet. "You ought to look in her closets," he whispers. "She's like Imelda Marcos. I've never seen so many shoes. What does she have, 75 pairs? One day I'm going to count those shoes."

"We will stop talking about my shoes and my closets this minute," Lucy orders from across the room.

At 74, Richard is retired and looking forward to Lucy staying home, if only because he needs help with the housework. He is among the few people on earth who regularly has the courage to tell Lucy things she does not want to hear. Recently he was delighted to send her an e-mail pointing out an embarrassing spelling error in one of her stories.

They share their bed with two Siamese cats, Lewis and Clark. Shellshocked lobbyists who have been grilled by Lucy ought to listen as she babytalks those spoiled cats. On the den wall hang 30 photographs, paintings and weavings portraying felines.

Patrolling the state Capitol, visiting offices, Lucy knows who is a cat person and who is not.

"Jeb sleeps with a Siamese," Lucy purrs, though hopefully she only has his word for it.

Even so, she says she has frequently been disappointed by Gov. Bush's desire to conduct the people's business outside the presence of reporters, namely her.

"I felt like you put me over your knee and spanked me," he complained after an especially critical story.

Sounding exasperated, he now says, "We still haven't figured out where she gets all her sources."

One time Lucy cooked him supper at her house. She has a good recipe for chicken amandine.

The source, not the story

With retirement pending, she is worried about the future of journalism.

Sometimes reporters are too quick to confront, too quick to chase the "gotcha" story. Lucy prefers quiet investigations. She prefers to examine public records and read the fine print _ before dropping the guillotine blade.

"You don't want to shoot rubber bands," she says. "When the time comes you want a loaded gun."

She tells young reporters to value a good source more than a good story.

One of her best sources ever was an alcoholic named George, who mopped floors at the Pasco County jail. He liked Lucy because she always stopped to chew the fat. "You treat me like a human being," he told her.

He often called her with tips he had gleaned from eavesdropping at the Sheriff's Office.

"The sheriff one time got tired of the leaks and made everybody on his staff take a lie detector test," Lucy says. "Everybody but George."

One Christmas George knocked on her door carrying a jar of his grandmother's jelly. George had long hair and a rough demeanor, but Lucy wasn't afraid to welcome him into her home.

"The trouble with reporters today is they avoid people like George," she says. "A good reporter should be comfortable with all kinds of people _ not just people exactly like them. If you don't want to talk to someone like George you might as well be an editor."

Friends, lobbyists and opera

In a few weeks Lucy will officially yield her job as Tallahassee bureau chief to Steve Bousquet, a veteran political writer. He says he is nervous about replacing a legend.

She is nervous about it, too, though not for the same reason. She says she won't miss counting paper clips, but fears being out of the loop.

Last spring senators named the press gallery after her. She can't imagine not sitting in her regular chair next time the Senate is in session. How could state government go on without her?

Well, she still has a few days left.

In her office, she is listening to a selection from a Verdi opera, "Libiamo, ne lieti calici," the drinking song from La Traviata. Anna Moffo and Richard Tucker have such beautiful voices! As she listens, head bobbing, she quietly is investigating the lives of lobbyists.

Lobbyists like her _ "I have some good friends who are lobbyists" _ but mostly they fear her.

The late Dempsey Barron, a hard-drinking senator, enjoyed telephoning Lucy whenever his office was overflowing with lobbyists. "Come on over for a chat," he'd say.

When Lucy arrived, lobbyists scurried out of the office like cockroaches fleeing the bathroom light.

"Until later,' not "goodbye'

Five years ago she shattered her right ankle in a fall. In January, when she is officially retired, she plans to submit to surgery No. 8, this time at Mayo Clinic.

When her bones knit, she hopes to do a little part-time work. There are a few people who need investigating. Also, she is considering writing a memoir.

She and her husband own a lovely cabin on a mountain in North Carolina.

Mountain cabins are isolated places. They are good places to think and to listen to opera and to pet cats and to knit doll clothes and to drink wine and to write memoirs.

Of course, a mountain cabin is a perfect place for serious reading.

Lucy still has that Tennyson collection she hoped to read the time she was sentenced to jail for not revealing sources.

One of his famous poems was “A Farewell.”

Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea

Thy tribute wave deliver:

No more by thee my steps shall be,

For ever and for ever.

Flow, softly flow, by lawn and lea,

A rivulet then a river:

Nowhere by thee my steps shall be,

For ever and for ever.

But here will sigh thine alder tree,

And here thine aspen shiver;

And here by thee will hum the bee,

For ever and for ever.

A thousand suns will stream on thee,

A thousand moons will quiver;

But not by thee my steps shall be,

For ever and for ever.

(Editor's Note: Lucy Morgan was unable to attend the AJHA's 2016 Convention in St. Petersburg to personally receive the 2016 Local Journalist Award; she was represented there by Tim Nickens, Editor of Editorials, Tampa Bay Times. But The Intelligencer caught up with her since then and asked her to tell us more.)

I fell into journalism entirely by accident. I have never had a journalism course and I'm jealous of all of you who spent years at good schools learning things I have had to learn by trial and error.

I got my first job as a reporter with absolutely no experience. A woman knocked on my door in Crystal River, Fla., where I was a stay-at-home mother of three children.

Her name was Frances Devore and she was the area editor of the Ocala Star Banner, an afternoon daily in Central Florida. The local correspondent for the paper died in an auto accident a couple of weeks before her visit and she was looking for a replacement.

I asked how she found her way to my door because I had never written a news story except for a high school paper in Hattiesburg, Miss., many years before.

"The local librarian told me that you read more books than anyone else in town, so I thought if you read a lot you could probably write,'' she responded.

We needed money and it was the sort of job I could do from home so I signed up and started out by covering our local Rotary Club's meeting and the Crystal River City Council.

At my very first council meeting the Chairman nodded toward me and a few other correspondents for other papers and instructed us not to write about their discussion. They were talking about a new sewer system and the possibility of firing the police chief.

I had never faced this question before, but it didn't seem right, so I wrote about what they were doing.

The council was not happy with me. And in one way or another I've been in trouble with someone ever since.

Over the years it has been the stories no one wanted me to write that gave me the best feeling about journalism.

The ability to dig into the actions of public officials in Dixie and Taylor Counties where drug smugglers had literally taken over the area so they could bring loads of marijuana ashore each night without getting caught; sheriffs in other counties who abused their positions and state legislators who managed to eat and drink and travel at the expense of the lobbyists who wanted them to pass their bills.

All were fair game and I was fortunate enough to work at a newspaper -- then called the St. Petersburg Times -- that was more than willing to publish the stories.

One of my favorite projects involved a sheriff in Gulf County, Fla. (Port St Joe) who was forcing the female inmates in his jail to provide him with oral sex in his office at the jail.

Several women with drug and alcohol problems had complained to the county judge and he called the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate. When it became apparent that state officials were not going to prosecute the sheriff or even force him out of office, someone called me.

I believed the women. Individually they were not very credible, but their stories seemed real and very painful. I began writing about it. Federal authorities took over the case. Before it was over, 22 women testified before a federal grand jury, authorities found the sheriff's own semen all over the chairs and carpet in his office and the sheriff was convicted of violating the rights of the 22 women.

They carted him off to jail at the end of the trial and I drove back to my office in Tallahassee. When I walked in the office, there was a beautiful vase of red roses with a card that read, "From the women you believed.''

I don't know who sent the roses but I know that none of those women could have afforded them. It moved me to tears and remains one of my best moments as a reporter.

We do have the power to right wrongs and force public officials to do what they were elected to do.  

And there is no better feeling than getting a good story that does exactly that.

--Lucy Morgan

P.S. I still have never had a journalism course, but I do have a Pulitzer in investigative reporting--the first ever given to a woman.  And every now and then I still find a good story and write it.

(Editor's Note: Morgan's biography from the 2016 AJHA convention program reads: "Lucy Morgan started her newspaper career in 1965 at the Ocala Star Banner, moving up to the St. Petersburg Times in 1968, where she covered crime, government and politics. She was chief of the Times capitol bureau for 20 years. She grew up in Hattiesburg, Miss., and attended Pasco Hernando Community College in New Port Richey and the University of South Florida but never took a journalism course. In 1973, Lucy was jailed for eight months after refusing twice to divulge a source's identity. In 1976, the Florida Supreme Court overturned the sentence and granted reporters a limited right to protect confidential sources. This landmark case continues to provide protection for reporters who refuse to identify sources. In 1985, Lucy shared the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting with Jack Reed for a series that led to the ouster of the Pasco County Sheriff. In 1982, she was runner-up for the 1982 Pulitzer in local reporting. In 2015, the Bob Graham Center at the University of Florida named her Florida Citizen of the Year. Lucy is married to Richard Morgan, who retired in 1991 after a 30-year career with the St. Petersburg Times. They have three children, eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren."

(Editor’s Note: Dawkins in Professor in the Scripps Howard School of Journalism and Communications, Hampton University, the author of several books, and a former print and online journalist.)

I believe I have a duty to make American Media History relevant to students who are aspiring journalists, communicators, and, consumers of information who should be civically engaged. I set out to accomplish my goal by meeting students on shared ground: I require of them effort, reading comprehension, narrative writing and participation, whether it is team projects or classroom discussion. Meanwhile, the students should appreciate me if I use technology, including digital media and video in order to bring history to life.

Early in each semester I make the case that the Colonial Era reveals the DNA of journalists and communicators. Benjamin Franklin was a printer, a gifted and playful writer who as a teenage apprentice wrote under a pseudonym, Silence Dogood. Samuel Adams, first cousin of future president John Adams, was a celebrated brewer, and, a journalist. Thomas Jefferson perhaps wrote the greatest editorial of all time, the Declaration of Independence. I play the National Public Radio dramatic reading of that document in class. Thirteen British colonies defeated a superpower, not only with firearms, but largely with ink and paper. Indeed, journalism matters.

My attempts to engage and influence students moves on to the 19^th century and the Penny Press era. New York’s most recognized landmarks, Times and Herald squares, are the hallowed grounds of dynamic, visionary newspapers, the New York Times and the New York Herald [the latter which by the next century merged with an equally significant competitor, the New York Tribune]. Also during the early 1800s in New York, Freedom’s Journal was remarkable because black people could not vote, own property in most places, and were not citizens, nevertheless they could create their media and demonstrate for freedom and equality. 

Indeed, journalism matters.

After getting to know the students for a few weeks, I make it their turns to share what they have learned, and, believe. I task them to read about and then write essays about Colonial-era media makers, whether they are well known – Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, Thomas Paine and, New York Post founder Alexander Hamilton – or are important and deserving wider recognition, i.e. Anna Zenger, wife of printer John Peter Zenger, who continued to publish the New York newspaper while her husband was in jail, and Sarah Updike Goddard, a Rhode Island publisher.

The next round of essays are assigned about the time class will focus of the startups of electronic media – radio, film and television at the start of the 20^th century. This task is to write about modern-day journalists, people they see on cable news or read online. A recent trend has been that about a dozen notable African-American journalists have written memoirs or narrative non-fiction books. I have used this opportunity to craft a list of authors for the students to write about. Examples include Michele Norris of NPR and author of The Grace of Silence; Don Lemon of CNN, author of Transparent, and BTW a student favorite because of his relative youth and visibility, and Gwen Ifill of PBS author of The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama. [Ifill, 61, an iconic Washington correspondent turned anchor, died in November]. 

Philosophically, this assignment is crucial because I teach mass media at a historically black university. It is important that students truly understand and appreciate the contemporary journalists who came before them.

Usually by the midterm, the students are fully immersed in the class and the routines: lectures integrated with multimedia, discussions, weekly quizzes and writing assignments. At this point I task students to choose their three-member teams in order to work together to produce 10-minute end-of-semester multimedia projects on topics that mostly relate to television, film or digital media since that trio of topics is our focus in the second half of the semester. 

I remind the students that for most of the semester I have dictated what I believe they must learn and know in a survey of 325 years of American Media History from 1690 and the publication of Publick Occurrences, Both Foreign and Domestic, to the utility of 21^st century social media networks. Now I say, it’s their turns to show me and their peers what media is relatable and important in their lives. 

I will also get to assess students’ varied talents as I observe them present in teams: Some are bookish scholars, others are showmen and women, and still others are behind-the-scenes producers and directors. 

In the end the variety makes for what I believe is a shared learning experience.

By Gerry Lanosga, Indiana University

In 2015, AJHA members voted to convert the History in the Curriculum Task Force into a permanent standing committee. The decision reflects the reality that, in the face of our discipline’s digital turn, journalism historians must continue to vigilantly guard the place of historical study and research.

In programs that have a professional mission, there is an ever-present risk that instruction in conceptual areas such as history and ethics will be marginalized. Many of us have seen this firsthand with the relentlessly increasing emphasis on technical skills. Several recent Intelligencer articles have addressed the challenges of teaching history in schools where many do not see it as a priority.

Beyond the anecdotes, a review of the literature about the pedagogical priorities of journalism and mass communication programs yields some depressing results. In a 2012 survey of journalism program heads, for example, only 28 percent named history as a course they thought all of their majors should take. 

But the literature also some bright spots. Just last year, Journalist’s Resource at Harvard University surveyed about 300 journalism instructors on the importance of journalism history in the curriculum, and about three-fourths of the respondents said they think it is very or extremely important.

Such data animates the work of our committee, whose mission is to identify and implement strategies to communicate the value of history as part of the core curriculum in both graduate and undergraduate settings. Last year, the committee determined that our task to do that would be greatly aided by fresh data about the state of journalism history education. 

The first part of our data gathering – a member survey – is now complete. The online survey, conducted last fall, garnered 105 responses (about 43 percent of AJHA’s active membership) from faculty at 92 different colleges and universities. Thanks to all who participated! Some of the key takeaways:

*47% of the respondents work in ACEJMC-accredited programs

*25% said their programs had lost a media historian within the past five years, and a fourth of those respondents said the position was not filled with another historian.

*80% come from programs that regularly offer an undergraduate course dedicated to journalism or media history. Only about 28% of the programs require the course, but another 14% require a course that includes history as an element.

*About 44% of programs that have graduate degrees include a course dedicated to journalism or media history, but only about a third of those have offered the course within the last two years. About 8% of the graduate programs represented in the responses require a history course, and another 5% require a course that has history as an element.

It’s clear from the data that, even at schools where our members work, we face challenges in maintaining commitments to history in the curriculum.

Now that we have an updated snapshot of our own membership, the committee hopes to follow up in 2017 with a broader survey of deans and chairs of journalism and mass communication programs to get fresh metrics on the status of history in the curricula. Once we have that data in hand, we can use it in a variety of ways to promote history in the broader conversations now taking place about the future of journalism education. Specific initial activities could include publication of the survey data and follow-up contacts with program directors.

Beyond that, we hope that having comprehensive new data will help us prioritize renewed efforts to advance our committee’s mission. In reviewing previous work of the task force, it is clear that many strong ideas have been discussed yet never implemented. They include a mentoring program for grad students, posting information about publishing opportunities, an annual conference panel on teaching, maintaining a list of schools offering coursework in history, preparing a brochure or section of the website to promote successes of schools and scholars specializing in historical work, and even considering some type of accreditation or recognition of programs that have strong journalism history offerings.

Implementing even a few of those ideas will take hard work, but it’s the work of the angels! If you’d like to join the committee and help out, we would love to have you. Or if you just have an idea to share, please let me know. You can reach me at glanosga@indiana.edu.

One thing you can do right now to help is answer two questions that will provide information we can use to further our work. We distributed these questions at the conference in St. Petersburg but received only a few responses. If you have some time soon to send me your answers, we would be most appreciative. The plan is to use the information we gather to enhance the materials on the AJHA website. Here are the questions:

Please list 3-5 of your favorite/most useful online research resources.

Why do you think it is important for students to study history in general, and journalism/media history particularly. If you are willing to have your name associated with you answer, please so indicate.

Please send your answers directly to me at glanosga@gmail.com. 

Thank you for your support, and best wishes for a Happy 2017!

The Journal for MultiMedia History (JMMH) accepts multimedia history submissions for peer review and possible publication. Videos and films, hypertext, computer based and internet projects, or blends of media as ancient as theater and as new as interactive mobile technology are welcome. Projects covering any and all topics of history are welcome. Submissions can be entered via links on the sidebar of the main page of the JMMH at http://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/jmmh/.

The Journal also welcomes scholarly analyses of the field of multimedia history. Scholarly analyses would typically be peer reviewed by the JMMH. The JMMH also welcomes reviews of works relevant to multimedia history (reviews of multimedia history projects or of books relevant to the field, and so on). Reviews can be submitted to the link above for consideration by the editor for possible publication. Reviews and analyses can take text or multimedia form.

The Journal for MultiMedia History is the first peer-reviewed electronic journal that presents, evaluates, and disseminates multimedia historical scholarship.  Begun in 1998, the JMMH has undergone a recent revitalization and is accepting submissions for forthcoming issues. The JMMH is a history journal, guided by the same principles as the discipline of history overall. The JMMH, though, takes as its starting point the idea that different forms can enhance or even revolutionize how we question, pursue, experience, understand, and portray history. Therefore, the JMMH promotes, showcases, and examines the field of multimedia history.

As noted, submissions can be entered via links on the sidebar of the main page of the JMMH at http://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/jmmh/. However, if there are any questions about how to submit a multimedia history project to the JMMH, please follow directions on the website, including how to email the editor directly. Submissions must be original and should not have been published previously or be under consideration for publication while being evaluated for publication in the JMMH.

Dates: Submissions are accepted on a rolling basis.  For inclusion in the first revitalized issue, submissions should be made before March 15, 2017. Publication date of all approved submissions to be determined by the Editor.

Contact Info: Kwinn Doran, Editor

Contact Email: kdoran@albany.edu

URL: http://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/jmmh/

The Georgia Historical Society in Savannah will host the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute, Recognizing an Imperfect Past: History, Memory and the American Public. College and university instructors are invited to apply. The institute will explore how Americans recognize, remember, and memorialize controversial people and events in our past. Through lecture, discussion, and site visits, participants will engage with leading scholars in exploring topics such as slavery, the Confederacy, the Jim Crow era, lynching, and the Civil Rights movement. The institute will be held June 11-23, 2017. Applications are due March 1, 2017. Visit http://www.imperfectpastinstitute.org/ for more information.

Contact Info: 

For more information, please contact Elyse Butler at nehinfo@georgiahistory.com. 

Institute for Public Knowledge, New York University

May 11-13, 2017 

Organizer: Meghan Forbes, NYU and UT-Austin

Keynote Speaker: Jenna Freedman, Barnard

The printing and distribution of the avant-garde magazine, illustrated weekly, and underground zine have developed in the twentieth century in tandem with technological advancements in printing and access to these technologies in various regions, gaining traction in different parts of the world at different times based on economic, social, and political conditions. At its best, the magazine is an efficient, relatively affordable (for both publisher and consumer) vehicle for the artists and intellectuals it represents, and has the capacity to innovate with new technologies and engage in pressing social, political, and artistic issues.

This is even more true now, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, as we observe new models for content, design, and distribution of the periodical or magazine published on-line, which has the potential to involve an even wider audience, and host a variety of multi-media content. The magazine thus continues to be a leading platform for social and political engagement, and artistic innovation.

Corresponding to a turn towards the digital, the field of Periodical Studies has gained traction as it situates the magazine as a cultural product that incorporates text, image, and graphic design toward various political, social, artistic, and pedagogical ends. With large scale projects dedicated to digitizing print based magazines, such as the Blue Mountain project at Princeton University or the Modernist Journals Project at Brown, and a concurrent turn towards digital mapping and data visualization, periodicals that were once sequestered in the archive now have the capacity to reach a wider audience, and make visible previously overlooked networks and connections enacted within and across the magazines.

The Symposium on the Periodical, Printed Matter, and Digital Archiving, to be held at the Institute for Public Knowledge at NYU invites publishers, editors, artists, and scholars from the Social Sciences and Humanities to come together around various methodologies and archival practices, and explore the following topics and questions:

• Politics of language and translation in multilingual or internationally circulated publications.
• Trans-networks: serial print culture as an intersectional axis for place, culture, genre, language, race, gender, sexuality.
• Does printed matter “translate” digitally?
• How does the library intervene in its archived periodicals through systems of cataloging, binding, and preservation? How does this affect the accessibility of these collections for researchers?
• Gaps in the archive: what periodicals and other printed ephemera have been left out? What can be done to source and preserve historical periodicals originally not held in collections?
• Likewise, what historical print magazines have not been digitized? What geographic-linguistic regions, gender, cultural, religious, and racial orientations are neglected?
• Effective strategies for making visible and accessible digitized collections through Open Source platforms, as well as data visualization and digital mapping projects. Distant versus close reading strategies. Possible pedagogical applications.
• The role and relevance of the print-based mag in our highly digital moment.
• How does the digital magazine correspond with or subvert the conception of periodical as a material product and cultural form?
• How do zines, comics, and avant-garde publications resist the potential for the periodical to be simply an inevitable by-product of consumerist, capitalist culture? Do they?

All panels and the keynote address will be held at the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University. Site visits to relevant periodical collections at the New York Public Library and Barnard Zine Library, as well as the library of the Museum of Modern Art, have also been arranged.

Those interested in participating should submit a CV and abstract of no more than 300 words by e-mail with the subject heading: IPK SYMPOSIUM ON THE PERIODICAL to organizer Meghan Forbes <mlf269@nyu.edu>, Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Public Knowledge no later than Friday, February 3, 2017.

Supported by the Institute for Public Knowledge, Center for the Humanities and the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU, in partnership with Public Books, the DeWitt Wallace Periodical Room at the New York Public Library, the Zine Library at Barnard College, and the Museum of Modern Art Library.

Contact Email: 

mlf269@nyu.edu

May 23-24, 2017

Deadline for submissions: February 10, 2017

Media, Communication, and Film Studies Programs at Liberal Arts Colleges (MCFLAC) invites proposals for papers, panels, and exhibits for a two-day symposium, to be held at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. The symposium will bring together faculty engaged in the scholarly and pedagogical praxis of media, communication, and film studies in the liberal arts context for two days of resource sharing, student-work showcases, workshops, and panel sessions.

Building off the momentum of last year’s inaugural symposium, at Muhlenberg College, this year’s theme is “Revolutions.” We have chosen this theme in keeping with Colby College’s Center for the Arts and Humanities year-long focus, which is broadly conceived to encompass revolutions in the “political, literary, artistic, cultural, social, scientific, … conceptual,” and, we suggest, pedagogical and institutional realms.

We invite proposals (250 to 500 words) that engage with our theme, including:

* Revolutionary approaches to teaching
* Teaching about revolutions--past and present
* Revolutionizing the (increasingly neoliberal) institutional structures in which we are located
* Mobilizing theory and pedagogy to facilitate revolutionary thinking
* Analyzing the impact of ongoing revolutionary changes (sociocultural, economic, epistemological) upon our work in liberal education, including ideas for redirecting, capitalizing and/or adapting.
* Interrogating the “revolutionary” rhetoric around higher education, with the liberal arts college said to be ripe for “disruption”
* Responding to the Trump “revolution” and its reverberations on our campuses

Preference will be given to submissions that fit the symposium theme, but we welcome submissions on all topics reflecting MCFLAC’s unique emphasis on praxis in liberal arts settings. We seek to bring together a diverse group of teachers, scholars, and students, from different backgrounds with various life experiences, teaching styles, and intellectual orientations.

Presentation formats include:

* individual paper abstracts
* panel session abstracts (identifying three to four participants)
* student-work showcases (featuring scholarship, media work, and/or hybrids in digital or other formats)
* pedagogy workshops (on core assignments, capstone courses, and/or pedagogical techniques)
* research workshops (on projects, strategies, publishing models, and/or research/exhibit and tools)
* Additional formats considered

*** In addition to these formats, we invite submissions for 3-minute short cuts: lightning fast presentations in which participants give a quick run-down of innovative or useful tech tools, assignments, teaching strategies etc. The presentations are three minutes long and we ask you to use one slide per minute. Please label your “short cut” submissions accordingly.

Please include a brief bio and note any technology requirements with your proposal. Include your bio, proposal, and tech needs in one PDF document and attach to an email addressed to Beth Corzo-Duchardt, at bcorzo-duchardt@muhlenberg.edu If you are submitting a short cut proposal in addition to another proposal, please attach as a separate document.

Deadline for submissions: February 10, 2017
Questions? Contact Beth Corzo Duchardt, at bcorzo-duchardt@muhlenberg.edu
For more information mcflac.com