Richard Campbell:
Encouraging citizenship through mass media

Campbell had been approached several times to write a book based on his introductory mass communication course but didn't want to write a textbook. He told reps: "If I don't get tenure, come back. I was joking, but I knew it was possible I wouldn't gain tenure at the University of Michigan, where I was teaching at the time." When Michigan closed its mass communication program, not only was there no chance of tenure, but Campbell was out of a job. He let it be known he was ready to write, and in 1994, St. Martin's won a bidding war against Houghton-Mifflin and Gilford Press. The advance, the largest in masscom history, gave Campbell enough to take time off from teaching and spend full-time writing the book. "It was a really good investment," he said. "I have really fond memories of 1994-1997. I relish those years. It gave me time to work on the project with no interruptions and spend more time with my family."

While writing Media and Culture, Campbell spent an average of five hours a day writing. "It really helped to build it every day, " he said. "I do really rough drafts. Big sections in rough form and then go back to it, massaging it and editing it until I get it how I want it." Campbell is now professor and director of the School of Journalism at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro.

Campbell believes his ability to tell publishers what was wrong with other intro masscom books and how he would address those problems is what landed him the contract for Media and Culture. "What matters to publishers is that you can show you have a strong understanding of the market," he said. "A lot of academic writers have a strong idea, but if you can't explain to a publisher why there's a strong need for the product, you're not going to get a contract."

Media and Culture was Campbell's third book. His first two, 60 Minutes and the News: A Mythology for Middle America, published in 1991, and Cracked Coverage: Television News, the Anti-Cocaine Crusade, and the Reagan Legacy, published in 1994, analyzed the role of news in how the public perceives events. To write Cracked Coverage, Campbell and co-author Jimmy Reeves of Texas Tech, looked at major network news stories on cocaine, examining what they saw as a shift between how the story was told depending on who the offenders were: "We found that networks had two different ways of telling a story depending on whether the offender was upper class or lower class." Campbell said stories about upper-class offenders were about redemption, therapy and other solutions for those with money. Stories about lower class offenders centered on gangs, and blacks, he said. "Eighty percent of cocaine was used by white Americans," he said. "But the networks shifted coverage to black communities and ignored cocaine use in suburban America."

At the time, President Reagan was talking about cracking down on the drug problem, and so, Campbell said, it was in the politicians' best interest to be against drugs. "We found amazing things," he said. "TV crews on the back of police vans as they break into crack houses. But we never saw white suburban houses being raided. And so cocaine became strictly a lower-class problem with journalists operating as agents of the state in league with the police."

Cracked Coverage saw virtually no circulation in the popular press, Campbell said, and was read mainly by sociologists and criminologists. He would have liked to have had a trade publisher pick it up, but once he got involved in writing Media and Culture, he said, he didn't have the time to push for it.

Campbell said he was always interested in writing. He started out as a journalism major but switched to English because the journalism program at Marquette University, where he earned his bachelor's, was at the time, "awful." After earning his bachelor's, he taught journalism and worked as an adviser for the school newspaper at West Division High School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Wanting to go back to school to learn more, he earned a master's in mass communication from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1980 and a doctorate in radio-television-film from Northwestern University in 1986.

"I feel journalism is crucial in a democracy," Campbell said. "You can't have democracy without journalism. If you don't have a free press -- and tolerate even weak newspapers and media channels -- we're in big trouble. The excesses of the media in the O.J. trials or in Clinton's current personal problems generate important discussion that help redefine the role of journalism in democracy. And we have to always remember that democracy is a messy business."

He said one of his main interests is in the public journalism movement, which is working to redirect journalism. "The public generally despises journalists," he said. "Those in the public journalism movement are trying to figure out a way for journalists to re-engage the public."

Campbell enjoys golfing and also reading essays. His weekly television rituals are "Seinfeld" and "South Park," which he watches with his wife Dianna and two children, Chris and Caitlin. "I use "South Park" to talk about the freedom of expression with my students," he said.

— reported by Kim Pawlak, 1998