Gerald Stone:
65-plus journal articles

"Most of Text and Academic Author's members have at one time or another written scholarly works before writing texts," Stone said. "That is how you establish publisher credibility to author a textbook." Stone says one thing TAA needs to do more of is address the concerns and issues of people at the journal-writing stage. "The organization needs to pay as much attention to academic publishing as text publishing," he said. Journal writing doesn't produce any monetary profits for authors -- in fact, a few authors must pay page charges to get published in a journal. Stone would like to see that changed. "Academic articles are the single most copied publications in existence since the copy machine was invented," Stone said. He has written several articles advocating that academic authors not give away their creative rights to journal articles. "TAA should take a leadership role in speaking for those who write journal articles and want to retain copyright," he said.

Although his five books -- Using Communication Theories, published in 1999; Newswriting, 1992; Public Relations Research, 1989; Communication Theory and Research Applications, 1988; and Examining Newspapers: What the Research Reveals About America's Newspapers, 1987 -- didn't set any sales records, Stone said he is satisfied. "They got me raises, tenure and promotions."

He also hopes to follow his dream: to write the Great American Novel, which he has wanted to do since high school. After more than 30 years, a masters and a doctorate, five textbooks and numerous journal articles, Stone is half-way through his sci-fi fantasy novel titled "Dream Factory." The book's plot is part of a dream Stone had 20 years ago. "The problem is, I have to put it aside so frequently that when I go back to it six months later, I've forgotten who the characters are."

Stone says he is a "pretty dogged writer": "When I begin a project I'll spend countless hours on it -- evenings, weekends, vacations, summer break -- to meet deadlines. It seems I always have something in the works."

Stone earned his bachelor's degree in journalism from Louisiana State University in 1966, his master's in journalism in 1969 and his doctorate from Syracuse University in mass communication in 1975. He took early retirement and became an emeritus professor in 2003, after serving as director of graduate studies at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale's School of Journalism, where he previously was dean of SIU's College of Communications and Fine Arts. Since leaving academia, he has worked with his son's nonprofit management group in the Washington, DC area.

Of the 13 courses he's taught over the years, Stone says the ones that teach skills were his favorite. "I really enjoyed seeing students go from very little confidence in their writing to discovering that they not only can do it, but are good at it and enjoy it," Stone said. Some of his students have become newspaper editors and broadcast news anchors, and some, he believes, could win Pulitzers. "I estimate 60 percent or more of my students have gone on to enjoy a successful career in the field," he said.

Stone became president of TAA in 1995. He didn't know it would be the single roughest year in TAA's history. One month into his presidency, executive director Norma Hood died of cancer. He spent the rest of the year organizing the move from TAA's headquarters in rural Florida where Hood had been running things by herself, to the University of South Florida-St. Petersburg, where headquarters remains today. "It took almost six months to recover the records," Stone said. "That was a tough and tentative time for the organization."

TAA had relied on Hood as executive director to do everything for the organization, Stone said. While president, he tried to spread the responsibility out. Now headquarters takes care of membership details and the executive director deals with organizational decisions while the newsletter editor handles TAA interest information. The treasurer has control of the checkbook and authorizes payments. "While we now have the protection of more widely distributed duties," Stone said, "we now have to deal with the long-distance communication problems that entails."

Stone said that although 1995-96 was a hard year, the experience created a better organization. "Our organization had been broke since its inception," Stone said. "But with the successful receipt of foreign reprography funds, we became flush with funds and were able to do things for our members that we had only dreamed of doing before." He noted that the reprography funds on which TAA relies come primary from the work of U.S. academic authors whose journal articles are copied abroad.

Among activities the new finances allowed were random audits of publisher records and the start a series of on-campus seminars to help people break into publishing and create better educational materials. One aspect of those seminars was "Successful Academic Writing," led by Stone and other TAA members with academic journal experience. "The seminars resulted in doubling the TAA membership, ensuring the organization's future," Stone said. He received the Mike Keedy Award for leadership contributions to TAA.

The Stone family is unique among Text and Academic authors' members: They're a two-member TAA family. Stone joined in 1992, served on the TAA Council and several committees, became vice president in 1994 and president in 1995. His wife, Donna Besser, also a masscom scholar, tagged along at a couple of conferences and then joined herself in 1996. While Gerald focused on journalism, Donna's interests straddled advertising and public relations.

Donna was a conference panel organizer at the 1996 Chicago TAA convention, where the couple's daughter, Leah, also made a presentation -- a poem she wrote about the joys and tribulations of writing. Leah, who was an honor student at Southern Illinois University, later worked as an editor in book publishing, newspapers and television.

"Does the Stone family constitute a 'unique' family in TAA?," asked Gerald, rhetorically. "The organization doesn't have many couple members both of whom write textbooks, and even fewer whose children have made TAA conference presentations."

Donna is a co-author of Social, Political and Economic Contexts in Public Relations: Theory and Cases published by Erlbaum in 1993. She was a public relations teacher at Ohio University, Kent State University and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and taught integrated marketing communication at SIU. She now works with Gerald and their son at the Stone Group in Washington, DC.

— reported by Kim Pawlak, 1998