Acknowledgements
Five decades have passed since the beginning of the research on The American Journalist, which now culminates in the publication of The American Journalist Under Attack in May 2026. Many colleagues at Indiana University and Syracuse University, graduate students, staff, and other media scholars have been instrumental to the research program’s success. We are indebted to all of them and gratefully recognize them here.
Our primary acknowledgment of support for this more than half-century of work goes to Dr. John W.C. Johnstone, then a sociologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago, whose professional courtesy and cooperation helped launch our research in 1982. He provided access to the questionnaire and sampling plan for the 1971 survey used in his team’s foundational book, The News People (1976)—co-authored by Edward J. Slawski and William W. Bowman—on which our research is based.
Four university deans also lead the acknowledgments, highlighting important support. The late Richard G. Gray, dean of the Indiana University (IU) School of Journalism, was instrumental in launching the 1980s research and securing support for it. His successor, Dean Trevor R. Brown, was equally enthusiastic in supporting the research of the 1990s. Brown’s successor, Dean Bradley Hamm was vital to the success of the 2013 research. Dean Mark J. Ladato of the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University gave critical support for the 2022 research.
THE FIRST BOOK IN THE SERIES, The American Journalist: A Portrait of U.S. News People and Their Work, Indiana University Press (1986).
The late Richard G. Gray, then dean of the Indiana University School of Journalism, helped write a successful grant proposal to The Gannett Foundation for the research done in 1982 for the first book, The American Journalist (1986). Before his death on November 20, 1984, Dr. Gray supervised library research by graduate student Robert Baker on the history and education chapters for the book. Baker wrote a first draft of the history chapter and helped with research for the education and training chapter. And the published book was dedicated to Dr. Gray. At The Gannett Foundation, Eugene C. Dorsey, president and chief executive officer, and Gerald M. Sass, vice president/education, gave enthusiastic “no strings attached” support for both the research and the book the foundation’s generous grant made possible.
For the first book, The American Journalist: A Portrait of U.S. News People and Their Work, published in 1986 by Indiana University Press, many people at the IU School of Journalism helped with coding, keypunching, data cleaning, data analysis, and other tasks. Graduate students Sue Lafky (now deceased), Jo Ellen Fair, and Hemant Shah played key roles in supervising the coding and running complex computer analyses of the study's massive dataset. (In a letter long ago, the late Sue Lafky remembered how she and her colleagues sometimes feared they would drop the boxes of punched cards as they carried them to the IU computer center.)
Mary Alice Sentman (now deceased) helped in drawing the sample and in persuading various news organizations to supply lists of editorial employees. Others who helped with coding and keypunching were graduate students Timothy Gallimore and Michael McClellan, clerical assistant Kathleen Ristow-Harriman, and undergraduate students Dawn Kuhns and Mary O’Doherty. Secretarial assistant Cathi Norton typed the manuscript and helped meet the 1986 book deadline for the IU Press.
Others were also helpful as the 1986 book was being written. Frances Goins Wilhoit (now deceased), then head of the Weil Journalism Library, did reference work and kept us informed about books and studies related to the survey. Also helpful were Joanne Bailey, Keith Buckley, and Michael Parrish, all IU librarians. In addition, Connie Carter, head of the Science and Technology Division of the Library of Congress, worked with journalism librarian Frances Goins Wilhoit to conduct extensive bibliographic research using advanced electronic searches.
David Nord, an IU colleague and expert on journalism history, made critical suggestions on the introductory chapter of the 1882 book. Other IU colleagues—Trevor Brown, Dan G. Drew, Eric Fredin (now deceased), and Edmund Lambeth (now deceased)—helped us validate interpretations of the data.
A second edition of the first book, The American Journalist: A Portrait of U.S. News People and Their Work, Indiana University Press (1991).
IU Press director John Gallman, whose wise counsel aided the first book's success, urged us to produce a second edition with additional data analysis that had not been completed in 1986. The revised version added chapters on women journalists (by Sue Lafky, based on her doctoral dissertation), analysis of journalists’ best work (by Lori Bergen, based on her doctoral dissertation), and an intensive analysis of broadcast journalists, with assistance from IU colleague Dan G. Drew.
THE SECOND BOOK IN THE SERIES, The American Journalist in the 1990s: U.S. News People at the End of an Era, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. (1996).
The Freedom Forum (successor to The Gannett Foundation) provided grant funding for research for the second book. Charles Overby, president of The Freedom Forum; Gerald Sass, executive vice president; Felix Gutierrez, vice president; and Everette E. Dennis, senior vice president, provided generous, no-strings-attached support for both the research and the published book. The endowment for the Roy Howard Research Professorship (held by author David H. Weaver), established by Jack Howard, Jane Howard, and the Scripps Howard Foundation, also supported the research.
In the 1992 research, John Kennedy, director of the IU Center for Survey Research, assisted us with the final editing of the 1992 questionnaire in preparation for using state-of-the-art computer-assisted interviewing by highly trained personnel. IU graduate students Lars Willnat (who would become the lead author of the 2017 and 2026 books), Douglas Walker, and Scott Lewis assisted in drawing the sample and processing the data. Walker did essential work in coding open-ended responses for the analysis in the published book. Doctoral students Divya C. McMillan and Wei Wu helped us greatly in the final stages of the book’s preparation, with McMillan writing a first draft of the book chapter on “Journalists Best Work,” based on our new research and earlier work by Lori Bergen and Sue Lafky.
As in the first book, IU librarians Frances Goins Wilhoit, Keith Buckley, Douglas Freeman, Ralph Gaebler, and Michael Parrish did reference work for the second one. Again, as the publication deadline neared, secretarial assistant Cathi Norton carefully prepared the manuscript for submission to Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.
In the second book published in 1996, two sections captured considerable attention. The foreword by Everette E. Dennis, then director of The Freedom Forum Media Studies Center, was titled “Background Check—Why the Public Needs to Know More About News People,” or, as he called it, “the new journalistic jungle.” Equally noteworthy was IU journalism dean Trevor Brown’s “Afterword: A Calling at Risk,” a piece with a sense of foreboding that anticipates the peril facing journalists in our latest book in 2026. The book was dedicated to Jerry Sass of The Freedom Forum.
THE THIRD BOOK IN THE SERIES, The American Journalist in the 21st Century: U.S. News People at the Dawn of a New Millennium, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers (2007).
IU colleagues Randal A. Beam, Bonnie J. Brownlee, and Paul S. Voakes joined the research team and were co-authors of the third book. The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation provided generous grant support for the 2002 research. Dr. John Bare, the foundation’s Director of Program Development and Evaluation; Larry Meyer, Vice President of Communications; and Eric Newton, Director of Journalism Initiatives, all provided invaluable assistance to the research project and the book's success. And again, The Roy Howard Professorship (held by David H. Weaver) funded by the Scripps Howard Foundation also provided research funding.
Doctoral students at IU—Leigh Moscowitz, Peter Mwesige, and Eunseong Kim—assisted in the research for the third book with data analysis and table/chart preparation. Interviewing for the 2002 research was again done by the IU Center for Survey Research under the direction of John Kennedy, Associate Director Nancy Bannister, Project Manager Kathy Matthews, and Field Director Katy Adams.
The third book was selected by media scholars Jennings Bryant (now deceased) and Dolf Zillman for the Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Communication Series, and Senior Editor Linda Bathgate supervised its publication. IU doctoral student Eunseong Kim prepared the book’s bibliography and name/subject indexes.
THE FOURTH BOOK IN THE SERIES, The American Journalist in the Digital Age: A Half-Century Perspective (2017).
In 2013, Lars Willnat, then an IU journalism colleague, assumed leadership of the research project, assisted by former lead researcher David H. Weaver and colleague Cleve Wilhoit. Research funds for the survey were from Dean Bradley Hamm and the IU School of Journalism. Doctoral students Jihyang Choi and Shuo Tang assisted with the sampling and preliminary data analysis for the 2013 field research.
These IU students assisted in reaching and encouraging participation of journalists from the initial sample: Noelle Bockhorst, Justine Cole, Sudeshna Chowdhury, Tyler Cotman, Xuyang Fang, John Ford, Semantha Felix, Cheonsoo Kim, Joan Ong, Lauryn Quick, Rachel Rapp, Elsa Remak, Elizabeth Schaefer, Christine Spasoff, Josephine Tanner, Zach Vaughn, Roshni Verghese, and Kate Wickwire. As in the two previous surveys, John Kennedy of IU’s Center for Survey Research assisted the research—and in 2013, Center colleagues Ashley Bowers, Alycia Cameron, and Heather Marti supervised the interviewing process. The interviews, however, were conducted online, with assistance from Brett Hurst at Qualtrics.
As the manuscript for the 2017 book was being written, lead author Lars Willnat became director of the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Kentucky, where Barrett Pope prepared the subject index. The manuscript was selected by Lee B. Becker, professor of journalism at the University of Georgia, for the “Mass Communication and Journalism” series of Peter Lang Publishing. He also provided critical editing suggestions and guided the eventual publication in 2017. Kurtis Beavers, a graphic artist at Indiana University, designed the book cover. The book was dedicated to the late Gwen Ifill, host of PBS News Hour.
THE FIFTH BOOK IN THE SERIES, The American Journalist Under Attack: Media, Trust, and Democracy, Peter Lang, Publisher (2026).
In 2022, the research was conducted at Syracuse University, where lead researcher Lars Willnat became the John Ben Snow Research Professor. The John Ben Snow Foundation endowed professorship and the Syracuse University Newhouse School of Public Communications provided financial support for the survey. Postdoctoral fellow Shuo Tang assisted with data analysis. Postdoctoral fellow Martina Santia wrote the chapter on women journalists, and doctoral student Stan Jastrzebski wrote the chapter on public media journalists, based on his doctoral dissertation.
The “Foreword” to the 2026 book was written by Margaret Talev, the founding director of the Syracuse University Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship in Washington, D.C. Dr. Elizabeth Howard, communications editor, and Marta Padvolotskaya, publishing success manager at Peter Lang Publishers, assisted in manuscript processing for the 2026 book. The book was dedicated to the late Katharine Meyer Graham, publisher of The Washington Post.