Faculty research profiles
Ronald Rodgers
Summary
Dr. Rodgers' more than 20 years of newspaper experience working in Asia - where he saw up close the overt hand of propaganda and press censorship - and in five Western states - where he saw the more covert influences on news driven by commercialism - drives his research interests. Those interests revolve around journalism history, especially an exploration of a synoptic account of the formation of journalistic normative standards derived from the multifarious agents of influence on conduct and content – to include religion, social science, academia, ethicists, the new profession of public relations, and the professionalizing core of journalists and their self-reflexive criticism of their own profession. Dr. Rodgers is especially interested in the raucous, changing world of journalism becoming unhinged from partisan financial sustenance in the latter part of the nineteenth century and first two decades of the twentieth because journalism in the latter decade of the twentieth century and first decade of the twenty-first faces a similar upheaval involving issues of new technology and consolidation and questions about objectivity and journalistic ethics.
Recent publications
Refereed Publications
Rodgers, R.R. (2009, accepted with revision – under review) The press, pulpit and public opinion: The clergy’s conferral of power and the concomitant call for a journalism of advocacy in an age of reform. Journal of Media and Religion.
Rodgers, R.R. (2009, accepted with revision – under review) The press and public relations from the periodicals’ point of view in the early twentieth century. Public Relations Review.
Rodgers, R.R. (2009, Winter) “Goodness isn’t news”: The Sheldon Edition and the national conversation defining journalism’s responsibility to society. Journalism History, 204-215.
Rodgers, R.R. (2008, Summer/Fall) OhmyNews and its citizen journalists as avatars of a post-modern marketplace of ideas. Journal of Global Mass Communication, 1, (3/4), 271-292.
Rodgers, R.R. (2008, Winter) Collier’s criticism of the newspaper press during the Norman Hapgood years, 1902-1913. American Journalism, 25 (4), 7-36.
Rodgers, R.R. (2007) Journalism is dead, long live journalism: Exploring new ways of making meaning in the realm of the connected computer. Explorations in Media Ecology, 6 (2), 97-113.
Rodgers, R.R. (2007) The problems of journalism: An annotated bibliography of press criticism in Editor & Publisher, 1901-1923. Media History Monographs, 9(2), 1-40.
Rodgers, R.R. (2007) “Journalism is a loose-jointed thing”: A content analysis of Editor & Publisher’s discussion of journalistic conduct prior to the Canons of Journalism, 1901-1922. Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 22(1), 66-82.
Rodgers, R.R. (2004). From a boon to a threat: Print media coverage of Project Chariot, 1958-1962. Journalism History, 30(1), 11–19.
Rodgers, R.R., Hallock S., Gennaria, M., & Wei, F. (2004). Two papers in joint operating agreement publish meaningful editorial diversity. Newspaper Research Journal, 25(4), 104-109.
Other Publications
Rodgers, R.R. (2009, Summer) Review of “Journalism 1908: Birth of a Profession,” edited by Betty Houchin Winfield. (University of Missouri Press, 2007) 356 pages. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly.
Rodgers, R.R. (2009, Spring) Review of “The Scripps Newspapers Go to War,” 1914-1918 by Dale Zacher. (University of Illinois Press, 2008) 285 pages. Journalism History.
Rodgers, R.R. (2009, Winter) Review of “Supermedia: Saving Journalism So It Can Save the World,” by Charlie Beckett. (Blackwell/Wiley, 2008) 160 pages. Newspaper Research Journal.
Rodgers, R.R. (2008, Autumn) Review of “Public Relations and the Press: The Troubled Embrace,” by Karla K. Gower. (Northwestern University Press, 2007) 300 pages. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly.
Rodgers, R.R. (2008, Winter) Review of “Media Ethics Beyond Borders: A Global Perspective,” edited by Stephen J. A. Ward and Herman Wasserman. (Heinemann, 2008) 180 pages. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly.
Rodgers, R.R. (2008, Winter) Review of “– 30 – : The Collapse of the Great American Newspaper,” edited and with an introduction by Charles M. Madigan. (Ivan R. Dee, 2007) 256 pages. Newspaper Research Journal 29(1).
Rodgers, R.R. (2007, Spring) Review of “The Year That Defined American Journalism: 1897 and the Clash of Paradigms” by W. Joseph Campbell (Routledge, 2006) 317 pages. Newspaper Research Journal.
Rodgers, R.R. (2006, Fall) Review of “Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism” by Eric Burns (Public Affairs, 2006) 384 pages. Newspaper Research Journal.
Rodgers, R.R. (2006, Spring) Review of “Journalism: The Democratic Craft,” edited by G. Stuart Adam and Roy Peter Clark (Oxford University Press, 2006) 393 pages. Newspaper Research Journal. ResearchWorking Papers The Social Gospel and the news. Monograph proposal under revision.
Conference Presentations (*=refereed papers)
*Rodgers, R.R. (2009, October) The roots of enmity: Public relations and the disintermediation of the press, presented to the annual meeting of the American Journalism Historians Association, Birmingham, Alabama.
Rodgers, R.R. (2009, May) Invited panel presentation to the International Association for Literary Journalism Studies’ Fourth International Conference for Literary Journalism Studies at Northwestern University. Panel topic: “The Future of the Story, The Story of the Future: Narrative Journalism in a Multi-Media Environment.”
*Rodgers, R.R. (2008, October) The Social Gospel and the news, presented to the annual meeting of the American Journalism Historians Association, Seattle,Washington.
Rodgers, R.R. (2008, August) The press and public relations from the periodicals’ point of view in the early twentieth century, invited paper presented to the Magazine Division at the annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Chicago, Illinois.
*Rodgers, R.R. (2008, August) The press, pulpit and public opinion: The clergy’s conferral of power and the concomitant call for a journalism of advocacy in an age of reform, presented to the Religion and Media Interest Group at the annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Chicago, Illinois.
*Rodgers, R.R. (2007, October) The old order and the new: Visions of the newspaper’s past vs. its present, 1890-1923, presented to the 27th American Journalism Historians Association annual conference in Richmond, Virginia. Honorable mention.
*Rodgers, R.R. (2007, August) Desiderata across the decades: Conversations about a civic-minded model of newspapering, presented to the Civic and Citizen Journalism Interest Group at the annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Washington, D.C.
*Rodgers, R.R. (2007, August) “Goodness isn’t news”: The Sheldon Edition and the national conversation defining journalism’s responsibility to society, presented to the Religion and Media Interest Group at the annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Washington, D.C.
*Rodgers, R.R. (2006, August) “The newspaper with a conscience”: Discourse on journalism’s responsibility to society and civic life in the late 19th and early 20th century, presented to the Citizen and Civic Journalism Interest Group at the annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication, San Francisco, California.
Keywords
Mass Communication, Mass Media, Media Management, Media Influence, Media Ethics, Print Media, American history, Ancient or classical history, journalism, newspapers
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