Debunking media myths

Campbell's next book, Getting It Wrong, will be out in summer 2010, from University of California Press. Getting It Wrong debunks 10 prominent
media-driven myths.

■ Check out Campbell's blog, Media Myth Alert

■ The Year That Defined American Journalism: 1897 and the Clash of Paradigms is Campbell 's latest book.
Here's the transcript of an online chat about the book at washingtonpost.com

■ See a gallery of 1897 photos.

■ All about "yellow journalism" as practiced in the late 19th century.

■ Campbell won AU student government's 'Faculty Member of the Year' award in 2006.

W. Joseph Campbell is a tenured professor in the School of Communication at American University in Washington, D.C.

He joined the AU faculty in 1997 and has since written four books, with a fifth to be published in 2010.

Campbell's most recent book was the well-received year study, The Year That Defined American Journalism: 1897 and the Clash of Paradigms (Routledge, 2006). The Year That Defined American Journalism was a finalist for the 2007 Tankard Book Award, given by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC).

Campbell's first book, The Emergent Independent Press in Benin and Côte d'Ivoire: From Voice of State to Advocate of Democracy (Praeger, 1998), examined the wellsprings of independent-minded journalism in francophone West Africa.

His second book, Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies (Praeger, 2001), challenged prominent myths and misunderstandings of the yellow press period in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century. He also is the author of The Spanish-American War: American Wars and the Media in Primary Documents (Greenwood, 2005).

Campbell entered journalism education after more than 20 years as a newspaper and wire service journalist, a career that took him across North America and to West Africa, Europe, and Asia.

His international assignments included nuclear arms negotiations in Geneva, youth unrest in Swiss urban centers, the challenge to communist rule in Poland, political upheaval across West Africa, and the consequences of the world's deadliest industrial disaster at Bhopal, India.

Campbell earned his Ph.D. in mass communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1997.

Campbell has written for Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, American Journalism, Journalism History, Editor & Publisher, Presstime, and American Journalism Review, and has given lectures at the National Press Club, the Library of Congress, and the Freedom Forum. Campbell has been interviewed on many topics by a variety of news outlets, including the New York Times, Baltimore Sun, Philadelphia Inquirer, Chronicle of Higher Education, Editor & Publisher, Voice of America, C-SPAN2, and local television stations in Washington, D.C.

His research about the yellow press period in American journalism has won national awards from the AEJMC and the American Journalism Historians Association. More...

In summer 2009, Campbell worked two days a week
with the AU groundskeeping staff. "Every day is a seminar,"
he said about his time in the arboretum. Read more