James L. Baughman
Ph.D., Columbia University
Professor and Director

Education:
Harvard University
B.A., History, 1974

Columbia University
M.A., History, 1975
M.Phil., History, 1977
Ph.D., History, 1981

Courses:
History of Mass Communication
Literary Aspects of Journalism
Interpretation of Contemporary Affairs
Creative Non-Fiction.

Research areas:
Journalism history in 20th century, beginnings of TV in America.

Recent publications:

Same Time, Same Station: Creating American Television, 1948-61. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.

The Republic of Mass Culture: Journalism, Filmmaking, and Broadcasting in America since 1941, 3rd Edition, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005, 320 pp.

“Minow’s Viewers: Understanding the Response to the ‘Vast Wasteland’ Address,” Federal Communications Law Journal, 55 (May, 2003): 449-58.

“‘Wounded But Not Slain’: The Orderly Retreat of the American Newspaper, 1945-2000,” in The History of the Book in America, vol. 5, David Paul Nord, Joan Shelley Rubin, and Michael Schudson, eds. (American Antiquarian Society and University of North Carolina Press; in press).

Biography: James L. Baughman became Director of the School of Journalism & Mass Communication in 2003. An Ohio native, he earned his B.A. at Harvard, and his M.A., M.Phil. and Ph.D. in history from Columbia University. While earning his doctorate, Baughman worked for Facts on File, the Kirkus News Service and WNET-TV.

Baughman has been a member of the UW faculty since 1979, teaching the history of mass communication and news and editorial writing. He has also been a lecturer in the History Department. Baughman was awarded the UW's Chancellor's Distinguished Teaching Award in 2003 and the Wisconsin Alumni Association's Ken and Linda Ciriacks Alumni Outreach Excellence Award in 2005.

Baughman recently published his fourth book, Same Time, Same Station: Creating American Television, 1948-1961 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007). His other books include Television’s Guardians: The Federal Communications Commission and the Politics of Programming; Henry R. Luce and the Rise of the Modern American News Media; and Republic of Mass Culture: Journalism, Broadcasting, and Filmmaking in America since 1941.  

Baughman was a member and chair of the Wisconsin Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and was chair of the Erik Barnouw Award Committee of the Organization of American Historians, which honors outstanding historical documentaries.