The Inaugural Deutschmann Essays: Successful Senior Scholars Share Ideas About Journalism and Media Research

Abstract

The inaugural Deutschmann Essays perpetuate in print the insights from senior media scholars on authoring significant scholarship to accomplish sustained excellence. The AEJMC instituted in 1969 the Deutschmann Award. Since our field was initially dominated by White men, so was the Deutschmann Award. Over 54 years of the award, 27 of 34 awardees were White men, one person of color, and six women. However, of the 10 most recent recipients, five have been women and one a person of color. AEJMC leaders are sincerely committed to recognizing the accomplishments of more diverse nominees, including women and people of color.

At the same time, study of communication seems especially important today. The communication revolution provides an exciting framework, but it is not a framework without problems.

(Deutschmann, 1958, p. 83)

As the epigraph highlights, Paul J. Deutschmann prophesied in 1958 that the communication revolution, with its “manifest changes in the methods of communication in the postwar period” (p. 77), would entail a major motivation for the study of communication. Deutschmann posited that the “whole range of developments in the computer field has many links to the study of communications” (Deutschmann, 1958, p. 77).

Deutschmann died of a heart attack in 1963, at age 44, in his home in East Lansing, Michigan. He had just returned home from a leave in Costa Rica, where he was director of the Inter-American Program on Popular Information. The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication instituted in 1969 the Deutschmann Award for Excellence in Research to honor an AEJMC member for an outstanding record of achievement and demonstrable influence in journalism and mass communication research.

The Deutschmann Essays

As the 2022–2023 AEJMC President, I cherish the honor of introducing Journalism & Communication Monograph’s eight inaugural Deutschmann essays. The essayists, some of whom co-authored their essay with colleagues, appear in the order of the year they won Deutschmann award: 2000: James E. Grunig, Maryland; 2009: David H. Weaver, Indiana; 2010: Stephen Lacy, Michigan State; 2013: Lee Becker, Georgia; 2015: Pamela J. Shoemaker, Syracuse University; 2018: S. Shyam Sundar, Pennsylvania State; 2019: Esther Thorson, Michigan State; and 2021: Glen T. Cameron, University of Missouri.

This inaugural compendium of Deutschmann essays perpetuates in print the wisdom of highly productive scholars. Offering a treasure trove of insights on conducting significant scholarship to accomplish sustained excellence, the essayists provide wise ideas, strategies, and trends that are relevant across our field. Despite their busy lives (yes, the recluse and calm of academe is a myth!), the Deutschmann essayists were generous with their expertise and energy.

Deutschmann winners Stephen Lacy and Esther Thorson proposed this Deutschmann essays project and coordinated both the participation of the authors and AEJMC’s approval. The Standing Committee on Research and the Publications Committee extended critical support, ideas, and insights; Amanda Caldwell and the AEJMC staff also provided support. Their diligence and dedication have ensured the success of this initiative.

Lacy and Thorson thoughtfully suggested that the authors could address any topic that they thought would help graduate students and junior faculty improve their scholarship. They envisioned the essays as addressing research design, paradigms, theory building, book and journal publishing and reviews, forms of analysis, the role of scholarly associations in advancing scholarship, evaluation of progress in various research areas, and new approaches, among other topics. Lacy also suggested that the AEJMC Research Committee should periodically host a panel of Deutschmann awardees to discuss how to produce significant scholarship; the idea is that this would help graduate students to understand the extra investment necessary to accomplish excellence.

Deutschmann’s Legacy

Deutschmann graduated with bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Oregon in 1940; until 1950, he worked as a journalist except for 4 years when he served in the U.S. Armed Forces. He reported for the Denver Post and served as a consultant to the Inland Daily Press Association and the Scripps-Howard newspaper group.

In 1950, he began his doctoral work in mass communications research in Stanford University, where he taught journalism and was a doctoral student of Stanford University communication education pioneers Wilbur Schramm and Chilton Bush. He earned his PhD in 1956. Deutschmann was appointed associate professor in the Michigan State University College of Communication Arts & Sciences in 1955, when the college was established. He helped establish and develop the Michigan State University’s College of Communication Arts and served as director of its Communications Research Center during its formative years.

Already as a PhD student in Stanford, Deutschmann pioneered empirical studies in journalism and mass communication. Deutschmann had “a tabula rasa on which to write the new field of doctoral study,” as Everett Rogers (2001) stated in his study of the Department of Communication at Michigan State University as a “seed institution” for communication study (p. 235). Deutschmann was among the core group of faculty when, in 1957, Michigan State’s first doctoral cohort began studying communication as a scholarly pursuit.

Deutschmann (1958) analyzed 10 PhD programs in “communication or mass communication” in 1958 to discover a “a commonality of parentage” (p. 78). He observed that PhD programs at Illinois, Iowa, Michigan State, Minnesota, Stanford, Syracuse, and Wisconsin were directly or indirectly related to schools or departments of journalism. PhD programs at Missouri and Northwestern, despite their “more professional, journalistic” approach, studied “all of the mass media as social institutions” (Deutschmann, 1958, p. 78).

Deutschmann’s insights on the study of communication presaged the trends and themes of journalism and communication scholarship today. Deutschmann posited that the human behavior of communication was “at once disarmingly simple and hopelessly complex” (p. 83). As Deutschmann stated, “Communication studies sometimes turn up profound findings, but they also turn up simplicities which hardly seem worth the trouble” (p. 83). Deutschmann’s research works included 43 research papers.

Deutschmann’s premature death prompted his colleagues to honor him by presenting a special series of papers to the Quantitative Research Group at the Association for Education in Journalism’s 1963 convention. Scripps-Howard Research published the papers in a volume edited by Wayne Danielson, Texas-Austin (Danielson, 1963). Over 54 years, the Deutschmann Award has become one of the highest research honors that AEJMC can bestow on a member for outstanding achievements in journalism and mass communication research. The Deutschmann Award honors demonstrable influence and impact in the field and therefore is not necessarily awarded every year. The AEJMC Standing Committee on Research honors the winner in an engaging panel session featuring toasts and roasts by peers and students to recognize the body of significant research over the awardee’s distinguished career.

The Deutschmann Awards Hall of Fame, 1969–2023

From 1969 through 2023, the 34 Deutschmann awardees have been research pioneers and scholars whose research made a major impact. They include 1969: Chilton R. Bush, Stanford (inaugural winner); 1972: Ralph O. Nafziger, Minnesota/Wisconsin-Madison; 1973: Wilbur Schramm, Iowa; 1979: J. Edward Gerald, Minnesota; 1981: Harold L. Nelson, Wisconsin-Madison; 1985: Bruce Westley, Kentucky; 1991: Scott Cutlip, Georgia; 1993: Wayne Danielson, Texas at Austin; 1994: Phillip Tichenor, Minnesota; George Donohue, Minnesota; Clarice Olien, Minnesota; 1995: Richard F. Carter, Washington; 1996: George Gerbner, Pennsylvania; 1997: Jack M. McLeod, Wisconsin-Madison; 1998: Maxwell E. McCombs, Texas at Austin; 1999: Steven Chaffee, Stanford; 2000: James Grunig, Maryland; 2001: Ivan Preston, Wisconsin-Madison; 2003: Melvin DeFleur, Boston; 2004: Clifford Christians, Illinois; 2005: Donald L. Shaw, North Carolina; 2007: Guido H. Stempel, III, Ohio; 2009: David Weaver, Indiana; 2010: Stephen Lacy, Michigan State; 2011: Sharon Dunwoody, Wisconsin-Madison; 2013: Lee Becker, Georgia; 2015: Pamela J. Shoemaker, Syracuse University; 2017: Steve Reese, Texas at Austin; 2018: S. Shyam Sundar, Pennsylvania State; 2019: Esther Thorson, Michigan State; 2020: Daniel Riffe, North Carolina at Chapel Hill; 2021: Glen T. Cameron, University of Missouri; 2022: Annie Lang, Indiana University Bloomington; and 2023: Jane Singer, City University of London, UK.

Americans, White People, and Men Dominate the Deutschmann Awardees

I would be remiss if this introduction did not end with a call to diversity and equity. Since our field was initially dominated by White men, so was the Deutschmann Award. Over 54 years of the Deutschmann Award, 27 of the 34 awardees were White men, six White women, and one man of color. Such trends align with recent studies analyzing inequities of race, place, and gender. Freelon et al. (2023) analyzed the communication citation elite (CCE)—a group of 1,675 highly cited scholars in communication research—by race, gender, and country of employment more than 20 years. They found that 91.5% of first-author CCE members are White, 74.3% are men, and 78.6% work in the United States (Freelon et al., 2023). The dominance of White men resulted from the dominance of the scholarly field by White men, which, in turn, reflect the social norms of the time. However, from 2011 through 2023, of the 10 most recent Deutschmann Award recipients, five have been women and one a person of color. AEJMC leaders are sincerely committed to recognizing the accomplishments of more diverse candidates, including women and people of color.

As media educators, we raise inequities of race, place, and gender among journalism and media scholars because, like you, we have cherished the magnanimity, the camaraderie, and the collective wisdom of our AEJMC community. We have contributed to AEJMC’s rise as a collegial, resolutely nonpartisan, interdisciplinary organization fostering excellence in research, teaching, and professional freedom.

Our Shared Future

The inaugural publication of Deutschmann essays suggests three important next steps. One, we should seek ways to publish essays from other Deutschmann awardees. Two, we should create similar initiatives for winners of AEJMC’s other signature awards, as the Eleanor Blum Distinguished Service to Research Award and the Krieghbaum Mid-Career Award. Three, AEJMC has initiated steps to institute an AEJMC Distinguished Fellows Program to reward and recognize AEJMC members for their contribution to journalism and media education and beyond.

As a premier scholarly organization in our field, AEJMC has led the professionalization of journalism education and research. Founded in 1912 by Willard Grosvenor Bleyer, the first president (1912–1913) of the American Association of Teachers of Journalism, as it was then known, AEJMC is the oldest and largest alliance of journalism and mass communication researchers, educators, and administrators in higher education.

This inaugural publication of essays by Deutschmann winners celebrates AEJMC’s mission to promote the highest possible standards for journalism and mass communication education, to encourage the widest possible range of communication research, to encourage the implementation of a multicultural society in the classroom and curriculum, and to defend and maintain freedom of communication to achieve better professional practice, a better-informed public, and wider human understanding.