By: Earnest Perry

In the 50^th anniversary edition of Journalism History, I discussed the importance of scholars participating in the peer review process. In the time since that article posted online, I have been asked to review two submitted articles and various conference papers. I must admit that I turned down a few. My administrative job and family obligations keep getting in the way. When former Intelligencer editor, Autumn Linford, asked me to address the issue in an issue of the newsletter, I said yes, but immediately thought, “what more could I say that would convince my fellow scholars to participate in the peer review process?”

I cannot stress enough how reviewing has helped me keep up with the latest research. I get excited when I read newly discovered material from archives that have not been explored or comments from oral histories that provide a unique perspective to historical events. I get the opportunity to engage with research that moves the scholarship forward, but also keeps me grounded in the present.

As a civil rights scholar, my goal has been to connect the complex history of the Black Press to the communities it served and the relationship it fostered with others fighting the long struggle. The more recent manuscripts I have reviewed challenged many of the conclusions I and other “seasoned” scholars have espoused in our careers. This is a good thing. It has provided me with ideas for future research and materials to be used in the classroom. This is not a benefit I saw coming from the peer review process, but I will gladly take it.

In the current environment where history is being challenged and, in some cases, restricted, it is comforting to see that the research continues. As a reviewer, I see the first drafts of scholarship that connects the past to the present. It also provides a glimpse into possible futures based on evidence, something that practitioners desperately need. Journalism educators spend a lot of time teaching the Who, What, When, Where and How, but the Why gets little attention. I see a lot of the Why in the manuscripts I review. It reminds me of the importance of what we do as history scholars and educators. As reviewers, we help strengthen the scholarship. It is another reason to participate in the peer review process.

Participating in the review process not only provides access to the latest research, but it can also lead to knowledge of the editorial process. I had the privilege of co-editing a special issue of Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly. That opportunity came about because of the relationship I forged with the journal editor and my co-editor as a manuscript reviewer and author. I learned a lot about the editorial process after the reviews are in. The experience has helped me to be a better reviewer and appreciate the work it takes to actually publish the research we produce.

As a young scholar, I initially focused more on why my work was not good enough “as is” than the advice provided to make it better. Conversations with the journal editors changed my perspective. It also led to me becoming a reviewer, serving on editorial boards, being elected to and serving as chair of both the research and publications committees of AEJMC. Being a reviewer has made me a better scholar, teacher and mentor. It has been one of the most beneficial service roles of my career.

Earnest L. Perry Jr., Ph.D. is Professor and Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Research at the Missouri School of Journalism.

By: Tom Mascaro

When Donald Trump supercharged his campaign against journalism, I immediately thought of Bill Porter’s class, Assault on the Media: The Nixon Years (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1976). Porter was my professor at Michigan in the mid-1980s. I wrote to the press and suggested they reissue and update the book to address 21^st century threats to democracy.

I am happy to report that book is coming out this month (June 2024), and I’m honored to appear as Porter’s co-author. Porter, who died in 1999, was an old hand at covering the “awkward dance” of presidents and reporters. But he was adamant in his defense of journalism as an institution of democracy. Using that thesis, I revisited his book, analyzed his findings and concerns from a half century ago, added new history, and expanded the original “Documents of Significance” to include memos of Patrick Buchanan and H. R. Haldeman, primary sources revealing Nixon’s illegal mission to scuttle LBJ’s peace initiative in October 1968, the GOP’s plan to create a television network in the White House, and excerpts from academic papers and court cases. I curated Haldeman’s diary entries to reveal the gatekeeping, framing, and agenda setting practices of the Nixon administration, hoping to prod some new scholarship that pairs media studies with presidential/government studies employing the same theories.

Assault on the Media can be purchased from the University of Michigan Press website and the publisher is offering a 30% discount when code UMS24 is used at checkout. Exam copies or copies for media reviews are also available.

Tom Mascaro is professor emeritus in the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University. He currently serves on the board of directors for the AJHA.

We have reached some of the best months of the academic calendar—summer break. This May to September stretch is full of vacations, family events, and getting back to that book you started reading last fall. It is also chocked full of study abroad courses, conferences, research trips, and completing the final edits on your latest manuscript—all of which your fellow AJHA members want to hear about.

Has your research led to an exciting revelation or brought you new challenges? Do you have fascinating stories from a recent archive trip or tips on navigating research? Maybe you just published a book or have one upcoming that you would like to promote. Or, are you retooling a syllabus for a class this fall or tried a new lesson in the classroom this year that helped students understand media history in a new way (or was not as successful as you hoped)? The Intelligencer wants to publish your research essays, book announcements, and reflections on teaching. Have another idea? Send your pitches, completed essays, or questions to the publication’s editor, Karlin Andersen Tuttle, at kja30@psu.edu.

An upcoming conference in Ghent, Belgium will examine the lives and work of lesser-known journalists whose careers shaped the industry and reported on some of the world’s biggest news stories. Liberas, an archive organization based in Belgium and dedicated to the history of liberalism, will host “Forgotten Journalists: Lived experiences and professional identities in the past” on June 6 and 7, 2025, in conjunction with Ghent University, the Laboratory of Journalistic Practices and Identities, and the Center for Archives on Media and Information. The conference aims to “make visible those whose work has been underestimated, or whose journalistic (or partly journalistic) careers have been neglected.” The two-day event will also include keynote presentations from scholars including Noah Amir Arjomand (University of California), Marie-Eve Thérenty (Université de Montpellier III), and AJHA member Will Mari (Louisiana State University). Abstracts are due on August 30, 2024, and travel grants will be provided to two early career researchers attending the conference from outside of Europe. More information about the conference is available on the Liberas website.

The American Journalism Historians Association is seeking nominations for three board positions and second vice president.

Board members serve for three years. The second vice president will ascend to first vice president after one year and then to president the following year. Board members and officers are expected to attend board meetings at the annual convention.

A nominee to the Board of Directors or to any officer position must be a member of the AJHA for at least one calendar year immediately preceding the date of the election. No more than one person from an institution can serve on the Board at one time.

To make nominations and to vote in an election, an individual must be a member of AJHA.

Those who wish to nominate candidates may do so by sending an email with the nominee's name, contact information, and affiliation to Election and Nominations Committee Chair Cathy M. Jackson, cmjackson@nsu.edu.

Please confirm the candidate's willingness to be nominated before sending the name to Cathy.

You should send a brief bio and photo of the nominee along with a statement of why the person wants to serve.

The deadline for nominations is 5 p.m. ET, August 1, 2024.

This year, voting will occur electronically, which means members do not have to come to the convention to vote. A write-in option will be available.

By Tracy Lucht, AJHA President

Grades are posted. Graduates have walked. Gowns have been hung. That can only mean one thing: It’s time to gear up for AJHA’s annual conference. I am eager to see the papers, panel proposals, and research in progress everyone submits by June 1. Don’t forget about grants and awards. The local committee is on their game, and Dave Davies is doing vocal warmups.

Last year’s auction, led by Jon Marshall, was a smashing success and raised a record $2,758 for the Mike Sweeney Travel Stipend. This year, Jon and committee have set a fundraising goal of $3,000. Can we do it? I think we can.

The first step is to donate items or packages. Use this form, which will ask you to describe your item, upload a photo, and suggest a starting bid. You may use your name or remain anonymous. Help us promote the item by telling us what is special about it or why people should bid.

As you start thinking about what to donate, consider packaging smaller items together around a common theme. The hope is the sum will be greater than the parts. The idea is not to spring-clean our shelves or closets but to think about what will excite bidders. I haven’t finalized my package yet, but I have a theme in mind. For larger items, consider how you will get the item to Pittsburgh and how a winning bidder will get it home. AJHA does not ship items (although you could offer to do so as part of your donation). Larger items should be distinctive enough to stand alone.

Over the summer, the auction committee will upload items to Give Butter, the same app we used last year. You’ll be hearing about auction items in the weeks before the conference. The final step is to download the app, if it’s not already on your phone, and bid away. Like last year, a couple of the items will be live-auctioned, but all other bidding will happen on the app.

Bid early, bid often, have fun.

When I am asked about this organization, one thing I always mention is our mentoring and support of emerging scholars. Most of us can personally attest to the value this group has added to our careers. The convention is where the magic happens, and we certainly don’t want graduate students to miss out. Let’s hit that $3,000 goal and show our support.

On other matters:

I want to thank the board and committee chairs who have worked hard this year to move forward with some important messages and initiatives. AJHA issued a statement opposing state legislation that censors the teaching and learning of history. Many of us work at public institutions in states where DEI programs, scholarship, and concepts are under attack. Please know AJHA sees, supports, and values you.

In addition, we hosted a webinar for graduate students on turning a class project or thesis into a conference paper submission, and the public relations committee launched a new social media strategy to increase our visibility. Thanks to all who made these things happen—and to all of you who make this organization so vibrant.

How did you become involved in AJHA?

My advisor, Richard Kielbowicz, now retired from the University of Washington, encouraged me to get involved, along with AEJMC’s History Division and ICA’s Communication History Division—now I try to encourage all of my students, in turn, to get involved with these and other organizations. You’re stronger together and that goes with the weird twists and turns of any academic career—better to do it with friends and colleagues along the way. And it’s easier to pass good stuff onto the next generation when you’re part of an institution such as AJHA, AEJMC or ICA.

What’s with this interest in the “materiality” of media history? And transitions? And why books?

I’m really interested in the “things” of media history, as explored by the work of scholars such as Brian Creech, Susan Keith, Florence Le Cam, Juliette De Maeyer, Rachel Plotnick, Michael Stamm, Perry Parks, and others. As part of that, I’m interested in the messy nitty-gritty of analog-to-digital transitions and their impact on news workers, and the related fate of technology tools, from software to hardware. I’ve written A Short History of Disruptive Journalism Technologies, which is about the computerization of the newsroom in the 1960s through the 1990s, The American Newsroom: A History, 1920-1960, which is a social history of that space, along with very early analog-to-digital precursor technologies, as well as Newsrooms and the Disruption of the Internet, which is about, well, the internetization of the newsroom from the 1990s through the 2010s. I’m happy to email anyone a PDF copy of my books, I feel that books can help researchers tell more nuanced (and think thus more true) stories and I suspect that this is a reason why so many media historians write them. But articles are important, too, as they can be where single incidents, people, processes or particular technologies can be explored in depth.

How do you fund your research? Where would you point grad students or early-career scholars toward, resource-wise?

I try to keep a close eye on H-Net and its various announcements, as there are archival grants advertised there. I try to look at a particular library and its collection and see if there’s a fund for outside researchers to visit—you’d be surprised how many of the latter are out there and how easy it is to apply to them (from places that are private like BYU and Duke to public like the NYPL and here at LSU). It’s good, too, to apply to institutional opportunities like AJHA’s McKern or the Cokie Roberts Research Fund for Women’s History—the only way not to get something is not to apply! I’d try to not let a letter get in the way of an application, either—I’m happy to write one for anyone wanting to come down to LSU.

What’s one thing you wish your fellow scholars knew about media history?

I really want the actual, and positive, reality that media history is a growing, healthy field to be front of mind. It’s easy to get discouraged in the academy, with the fate of one’s discipline, but as the former chair of the Media History Division at AEJMC and someone who’s been active in both AJHA and ICA, along with other organizations, such as the Radio Preservation Task Force, this is a great time to be studying, teaching, and publishing about media history—take heart, people!

What hobbies/interests do you have outside of academia?

My family and I love to go hiking, camping and Ruth and I love to go dancing with friends; Ruth’s field work brings us to fun places, and so we also enjoy traveling as a family (and whenever possible, we bring our dog, Roux, along—and you may have seen him with us from time to time).

By Mark Bernhardt

As academics we have an obligation through our roles as authors, peer reviewers, and editors to ensure that only quality work gets published. That includes an obligation not to lower the bar for prestigious scholars in the field because of who they are. The consequences of not upholding our standards go beyond just publishing bad scholarship; it can result in serious offense and harm.

During the first-year research methods course in my PhD program, a fellow student told the professor that he had found a partially plagiarized sentence in a book and asked to whom he should report it. The professor, a late-career academic, responded that in such a scenario it should be reported to the book’s publisher. However, he cautioned, if the author was a major scholar, it was best not to report a minor plagiarism incident because doing so could result in professional blackballing. And so, I learned that the research and scholarship rules that I was being taught to follow meticulously did not apply to eminent late-career academics (and I include retired professors in this classification) because others would protect them.

It was many years before I directly witnessed what a renowned late-career academic could get away with. I serve on a committee that reviews the articles published in a prestigious journal and selects the winner of the sponsoring organization’s best article award. One year I read an article that analyzed the styles of three film directors who were blind in one eye, with the author asserting that their vision impacted the films they produced. Reading about the first director, the author revealed that, according to medical professionals, there are relatively minor difference in the way people with vision in only one eye and people with vision in both are able to see and it would not affect one’s view through a camera lens. What support was there then for the author’s thesis? Not finding it in the discussion of the first director, I moved on to the second. Nothing there either. And then came the third, who the author divulged was not even blind in one eye but only wore an eyepatch as part of the persona he created for himself, with photographic evidence showing that he switched between wearing the patch over his right and left eyes! I was dumbfounded. How did such a poor piece of scholarship get published in such a prestigious journal? Did the editor have the misfortune of selecting the world’s worst reviewers to evaluate the manuscript for the double-blind peer review process? Then I looked at the author’s bio. Not only was she an accomplished late-career academic, she was also a former editor of the journal and former president of its sponsoring organization. I strongly suspected I had found the answer to my question.

I do believe that these incidents are not common in academia, though I may be naïve, and that the vast majority of late-career academics are not willing to aid fellow late-career academics in publishing subpar work as a favor. That it happens at all, however, creates a bad perception for early- and mid-career academics who are held to higher standards. They may also feel that they cannot be too outspoken about the problem because late-career faculty could derail a tenure and promotion application and often run the journals and discipline-specific organizations, which puts them in positions of power through which they can hinder someone’s career advancement.

Recently, an essay published in a journal that is clear about not being peer reviewed but that does aspire to be scholarly, got me thinking about the ways publishing poor quality work can cause serious harm. The author, a late-career White man, mischaracterized the work done in the subdiscipline of social history, made false claims about how historians are using postmodernism, and included a misogynistic and racist assessment of multiculturalism’s detrimental impact on history as a discipline and how Black and women historians behave as colleagues. It is a problem when a late-career scholar is ignorant of how a field has developed, and it becomes a bigger problem when a journal disseminates that ignorance to others. Additionally, under no circumstances should a scholar make claims for which there is no supporting evidence. Peer reviewers and editors have an obligation to reject such manuscripts.

I found the author’s discussion of multiculturalism the most disheartening component of the essay. He begins by saying that most multiculturalists reject unity in American national identity, articulating his preference for a single national narrative that encourages pride in the nation. The author then expresses concern that multiculturalism may fracture the “common culture” that has prevailed on campuses. Regardless of whether that happens, he claims to have noticed a difference in the “colleagueship” of Black and women historians, which he attributes to multiculturalism’s influence.

As a history professor at Jackson State University, Mississippi’s largest HBCU, I can attest that my students would scoff at the notion that multiculturalism is detrimental. It is only because of multiculturalism that the history of women, people of color, those who identify as queer, and other underrepresented groups in academia have gotten to have their stories told. They were not part of the single national narrative pushed by the discipline until the late twentieth century. Scholars had to fight hard for change, often at great personal cost. While a truly inclusive single national narrative might be nice, it is only through multiculturalism that we have any chance of constructing one, and the likelihood for success is hardly apparent. At the moment, it is conservative politicians who are working hardest to develop a single national historical narrative—specifically one that rejects multiculturalism and downplays or disregards past bad acts. Recently, the AJHA took a strong oppositional stance to such censoring of history and placing restrictions on those who teach in the discipline. Regarding his concern about multiculturalism fracturing the common culture that previously prevailed, my students would advocate smashing it because they know well that the university they attend exists because they were never intended to be part of that common culture.

As troubling as his views are—and some of his claims are obviously incorrect—it is far more troubling that his views were published. I understand that disagreement is a driving force within academia as we all put forth arguments supported by evidence that others critique and challenge. Wrestling with controversial ideas is a component of this. In the case of history, it is essential that such dialogue be published to further our understanding of the past. Outdated understandings of the discipline, misinformation, misogyny, and racism provide nothing to advance that dialogue—they hurt it—and no scholarly journal should provide a platform for those views.

Finally, as for any difficulty he finds in his working relationships with Black and women colleagues, I guarantee that multiculturalism is not the root cause. Unfortunately, not only do women and people of color in the academy have to deal with such ugliness, some editors prove no help by giving their prejudiced peers a forum through which to be heard.

We all must be vigilant about maintaining high standards regarding everything that is published in scholarly journals. Those standards must apply to everyone. When a different standard exists for late-career academics, as it sometimes does, it hurts us all, and can do so far more severely than just by granting individuals undeserved publications. Yes, we should be wary about censorship and silencing voices. However, in some cases it is clear that what is being said is harmful. Scholarly journals should not be a forum for harming anyone.

The American Journalism Historian Association announced Karlin Andersen Tuttle as the incoming editor of the Intelligencer, the organization’s electronic newsletter. Andersen Tuttle, an AJHA member since 2019, recently earned a dual-title PhD in mass communications and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies from Penn State.

“I am excited to take on editing The Intelligencer and continue its work highlighting members’ achievements, research, and pedagogy,” Andersen Tuttle said. “The annual AJHA convention created such a supportive space for me as a graduate student to present my research and learn more about the field. I plan to use my position to continue to grow that community and encourage future scholars.”

Before pursuing a PhD, Andersen Tuttle wrote for a daily newspaper in Washington state, The Spokesman-Review, and worked in marketing for a regional library system. After moving to Pennsylvania, she worked in public relations and marketing at Penn State where she wrote and edited a twenty-eight page quarterly magazine covering faculty and graduate student research. She currently serves as the editorial liaison for the journal Mass Communication & Society.

Her dissertation, “Your Trusted Friend: Untold Histories of Five Christian Women’s Magazines, 1974-2023,” included reviewing over six-hundred magazine issues, archival material, and oral history interviews with the magazines’ editors and staff members.

Andersen Tuttle also holds an MA from Penn State in Media Studies and a BA in English with minors in journalism and editing, publishing, and design from Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington.

How did you become involved in AJHA?

I earned my PhD in American Studies from NYU. While I was researching conservative media activism, I was unfamiliar with AJHA or journalism history as a field. In 2016 I attended the Joint Journalism and Communication History Conference because it was hosted by the NYU Journalism, which just so happened to be located in the same building as my department. That’s where I first learned about AJHA, and where I first met Anthony Nadler (with whom I’d later edited the book News on the Right).

Why are you a journalism historian?

Much of what I study wouldn’t be considered “journalism” to many, perhaps most, in our field. I’m primarily concerned with right-wing media, and how the modern conservative movement in the United States cultivated a critical disposition toward the press. The book I’m currently writing for Columbia University Press, Making the Liberal Media, is less about the press than about the long history of right-wing antipathy towards it. Over the course of my research, I realized that what counts as journalism is often in the eye of the beholder. While many may (rightly) consider right-wing media as propaganda, its audiences often experience it as news. As I’ve written in American Journalism, I see journalism history as a study of what Raymond Williams once called “structures of feeling,” or the dialectic between how people experience reality and more formal or systematic notions of what’s true. In short: I’m interested in how people, particularly conservatives, have experienced the news of the day throughout history. This focus allows me to see an ongoing battle for credibility over who has the authority to tell the “true” story of public life, a battle often overlooked by scholars operating under traditional normative understandings of what counts as “journalism.”

Why should we care?

Our field is dwindling. History departments are being defunded, and journalism department lines for historians are few and far between. Declining funding and accelerated time-to-degree expectations are making it difficult for graduate students to justify dissertations that involved time consuming (and often costly) archival research projects. The long-term survival of journalism history requires adopting a capacious definition of terms and a welcoming disposition. If a weirdo with a PhD in American Studies and a bizarre fixation with right-wing propaganda can find a home in “journalism history,” anybody can.

What’s the weirdest thing you’ve found in the archives?

Phone sex transcripts at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. I was in Simi Valley researching the Reagan administration’s repeal of the Fairness Doctrine. I stumbled across a folder marked “Pornography,” and couldn’t resist taking a peek. Apparently, some anti-porn crusaders had documented their 900-number calls in an attempt to get the Reagan administration to shut them down. My favorite transcript begins “Hello you miserable worm. This is Mistress Sharon from page 34 of High Society. I knew you would call. You just can’t get enough, can you…”

What hobbies/interests do you have outside of academia?

I’ve never had a hobby. When given the opportunity, I enjoy: travel, hiking, making people laugh, conspiring (non-criminal), organizing (political), performing high-concept punk rock (hype-man), washing dishes, and Werner Herzog.

A.J. Bauer is an assistant professor in the Department of Journalism and Creative Media at the University of Alabama.