Bruce Konkle - Photo by Casey Kochey

Bruce Knokle is presenting his research — “The National Education Association’s Framing of Scholastic Journalism during the 20th Century.”

Bruce’s research analyzed the origin of scholastic journalism as a special interest area within the NEA. The Journalism Education Association formed as a subgroup of NEA and split out as a separate organization in the 1960s.

What did NEA provide for scholastic journalism?
Forum for some of the schoalstic journalism strongest advocates. NEA publications included articles on scholastic journalism. Those authors included Mary Benedict, Laurence Campbell, Clarence Hach and Carl Towley.

Links to college and university presidents that might have helped give additional validation to scholastic journalism.

NEA was an outlet for journalism information NEA members to let them know how to create viable journalism and student newspapers, yearbooks and magazines.

Bruce is discussing the value of research on scholastic journalism and discussing some of the state scholastic press associations have histories. The first scholastic press association to reach the 100th anniversary will be Oklahoma, which was founded in 2018. [The organization is now named Oklahoma Scholastic Media.]

What is discovered in history could be useful to help us avoid being a “mothball publication.”