Making News

Making News is the story of how the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill grew from a single course in the English department in 1909 to become an international leader in journalism-mass communication education.

Bowers tells of strong leaders who shaped the program through their vision and personality, including one dean who was portrayed in a novel and another dean and a faculty member who were featured in newspaper comic strips. It is a story of how North Carolina newspaper editors pressured the university to change the journalism program and threatened to ask Duke University to start a journalism program if UNC did not change its program. It is a story of a dean whose dedication to academic excellence dramatically changed a school that had paid more attention to practical journalism than to academics. It is a story of another dean who transformed the school and raised millions of dollars to support its drive for excellence. The story is enriched by many personalities, including Graham, Graves, Coffin, Luxon, Adams, Cole, McPherson, Ferlinghetti, Spearman, Shumaker, Sechriest, and Morrison.