2008 AEJMC Election

David T. Z. Mindich's Bio

David T. Z. Mindich is a professor of journalism and mass communication at Saint Michael’s College. Hired in 1996, Mindich was department chair from 2000 to 2006; he is currently acting chair. Mindich is the founding adviser for the department’s Kappa Tau Alpha chapter, the nation’s only chapter housed at a small college. In 2007, Saint Michael's College gave Mindich its lifetime scholarship award. In 2006, CASE and the Carnegie Foundation named Mindich the Vermont Professor of the Year.

Mindich founded Jhistory, an Internet group for journalism historians, in 1994. Jhistory has sponsored an annual panel at the AEJMC since 1995; many of these panels were adapted as journal articles.

Mindich has been active in the AEJMC since 1991. In 1998-1999, Mindich was head of the History Division. In 2002, the AEJMC awarded Mindich the Krieghbaum Under-40 Award for Outstanding Achievement in Research, Teaching and Public Service. Also in 2002, Mindich served on the Task Force on Roles and Responsibilities of Elected Standing Committees. Mindich was elected to the Standing Committee on Research in 2004.

Working in consultation with the PF&R Committee, Mindich wrote a motion in 2006 to object to governmental “anti-press policies and practices,” a motion that the AEJMC membership approved with little opposition.

A former assignment editor for CNN, Mindich earned his BA from Brandeis (1985) and his doctorate in American Studies from NYU (1996), where he worked with Mitchell Stephens and Jay Rosen. He has written articles for the Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Wilson Quarterly, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, JMC Monographs, JMC Educator, and other publications. He is the author of Just the Facts: How "Objectivity" Came to Define American Journalism (NYU Press, 1999) and Tuned Out: Why Americans Under 40 Don't Follow the News (Oxford University Press, 2005), a book Walter Cronkite called “very important…a handbook for the desperately needed attempt to inspire in the young generation a curiosity that generates the news habit.”

Since the publication of Tuned Out, Mindich has given talks about young people and news at universities and to media groups, including the New York Times and USA Today. In 2003, Mindich joined the Annenberg/Oxford Institutions of Democracy Commission on the Press, where he wrote about media representation of African Americans and others.

Mindich lives in Burlington, Vt. with his wife, Barbara Richmond, their two children, and an oversized Bernese mountain dog.

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