baughman

Information

First Name

James L.

Last name

Baughman

Title

Fetzer Bascom Professor

Current course offerings

Fall 2010
J404: Interpretation of Contemporary Affairs

J819: History of Mass Communication (Graduate Seminar)

Courses taught

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

Biography

James L. 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.  In 2011, Baughman was named Fetzer Bascom Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication.

He was director of the School from 2003 to 2009.

Baughman is the author of four books, Same Time, Same Station: Creating American Television, 1948-1961; Television’s Guardians: The Federal Communications Commission and the Politics of Programming, 1958-67; 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. He is currently writing a history of American political journalism since 1960.

An Ohio native and a long-suffering Cleveland sports fan, Baughman earned his B.A. at Harvard, and his M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in history from Columbia University.

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.

Office hours

Tues./Thurs. 1:30 - 2:30 p.m.

Office

5166 Vilas

Education

 

Harvard University
B.A., History, 1974

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

Telephone

(608) 263-3390

Email

baughman@wisc.edu

Areas of research

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

Recent publications

• “‘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, 2009).
• 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.

History

Member for

2 years 24 weeks