Journalism History

The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication produced Journalism History for six years before the show wrapped in December 2024, and the 94-episode archive is a remarkable resource. Each episode ran 20 to 50 minutes and featured interviews with historians and researchers who had uncovered overlooked stories from journalism's past. The format was simple: a host would bring on a scholar to discuss a specific moment, figure, or trend in media history, and the conversation would ground the historical narrative in primary sources and original research. The show covered newspaper moguls and press barons, early broadcasting pioneers, the role of media in civil rights movements, the evolution of war reporting, and the technological shifts that reshaped news delivery from telegraph to television to the internet. With a 4.9-star rating from 16 reviewers, the quality was consistently high. Full transcripts are available at journalism-history.org, which makes the show useful as a research tool as well as casual listening. What made Journalism History special was its willingness to go deep on stories that never made it into standard textbooks. You would hear about a nineteenth-century editor who fought a governor, or the women who ran newspapers during World War II, or how a specific Supreme Court case changed libel law. The show treated journalism's past with the same rigor and curiosity that good journalists bring to current events, which felt appropriate.