Everette Dennis

Everette E. Dennis (born August 15, 1942) is an American media expert, author, academic administrator and organization executive. He is a former Dean and Chief Executive Officer at Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q). Since 2021, he has been professor emeritus in the Medill School at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois and since 2011, Felix E. Larkin Distinguished Professor emeritus in Fordham's Graduate School of Business in New York City.

Dennis is most known for his contributions to institution building, education, philanthropy, and foreign affairs, with a primary focus on media and society, and publications on journalistic practice, media economics and management, media technology and digital disruption, media law/ethics, and global communication. With over 200 scholarly articles and approximately 45 books authored, co-authored or edited to his name, including Other Voices: The New Journalism in America, Understanding Media in the Digital Age, and Media Debates: Great Issues for the Digital Age, his work, translated into multiple languages, has been cited within media studies and related fields. He has led research initiatives on media credibility, presidential coverage, media usage in the Middle East, and his foundation policy endeavors in Eastern Europe, East Asia, and Latin America have yielded various prescriptive monographs. He is a recipient of the Eleanor Blum Award and the Trayes Award,

Dennis was elected in 2017 as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He holds elected life memberships in the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Antiquarian Society, alongside membership in the Century Association and Harvard Club of New York.

Early career and education
Dennis was editor of the Oregon Daily Emerald while earning his B.S. in Journalism and Political Science from the University of Oregon (UO) in 1964. He earned his M.A. in communication at Syracuse University before working as public information officer for state mental health agencies in New York and Illinois. Subsequently, he served on the faculty at Kansas State University from 1968 to 1972, with short-term appointments at UO and Northwestern University. He earned his Ph.D. in Mass Communication from the University of Minnesota (UMN) in 1974. Subsequently, he was awarded the Liberal Arts Fellowship in Law at Harvard Law School, a research fellowship at the Kennedy School of Government, and a Special Nieman Fellowship.

Career
From 1974 to 1981, Dennis taught at UMN, where he progressed from Instructor to Full Professor and subsequently assumed the role of Dean and Professor at UO's School of Journalism & Communication from 1981 to 1984. He then became the Founding Executive Director of the Media Studies Center at Columbia University, the nation's first institute for advanced study of media and technological change, until 1996, concurrently serving as a Senior Vice President and Head of the International Consortium on Media Studies for the Gannett and Freedom Forum foundations. Prior to joining NU in 2011, he spent 14 years as Felix E. Larkin Distinguished Professor at Fordham's Graduate School of Business. He was concurrently Executive Director of the International Longevity Center, an affiliate of Mount Sinai School of Medicine. He has also played a key role in establishing advanced media education facilities, such as overseeing and implementing a new building at NU-Q, NU-Q's Media Majlis (museum), a robotic newsroom, and a Media Innovation Lab. From 2011 to 2020 he was Dean and Chief Executive Officer at NU-Q, while also holding a professorship at NU's Medill School of Journalism and in the School of Communication.

Dennis served as President of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication in 1983–84. He authored a national project on curriculum reform in journalism schools with grants from two foundations. In 1996, he took the position of Founding President for the American Academy in Berlin working with Dr. Henry Kissinger and Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and later led the Media Use in the Middle East project, resulting in a website as the project established itself as a partner of the World Internet Project.

Media exposure
In the 1980s and 1990s Dennis appeared frequently on television news programs. In a New York Times piece, he emphasized the need for an intellectual renewal of journalism schools, highlighting their crucial role in training "information workers for an information society". While discussing the potential impact of a Minnesota Court of Appeals ruling on the use of anonymous sources by newspapers, he noted that the ruling effectively makes a reporter's promise of anonymity to a news source legally binding. In a Washington Post article, he discussed the ethical dilemma posed by the serial mail Unibomber's offer to cease killing if either the New York Times or the Washington Post published his anarchist manifesto, stating, "It's a situation fraught with danger for anyone who is involved”. Regarding the O.J. Simpson trial in 1995, he critiqued the media's focus on procedural matters and jury selection, which he believed overshadowed more significant aspects of the trial. In another New York Times article, he discussed the challenges faced by educational institutions in Qatar, highlighting measures such as advancing freedom of expression, creating new teaching materials and making Arabic language competence mandatory.

Works
Dennis' earliest books chronicled the rise of New Journalism, first in The Magic Writing Machine and subsequently in Other Voices: The New Journalism in America, followed by books on news reporting and a study of Justice Hugo Black and the First Amendment. Known for multiple editions of the text, Understanding Mass Communication with co-author Melvin L. DeFleur and Media Debates with John C. Merrill, he authored and edited several books on the critical intersections of contemporary media with their broader societal impacts. He also founded the Media Studies Journal (formerly Gannett Center Journal) at Columbia and served as its editor-in-chief for a decade. His book Of Media and People, delved into the intricate relationships between media and society, examining economic aspects and war reporting. Gary Burns, in his review, praised the book, stating, "Despite the book's overly broad sweep, Dennis makes a number of worthwhile points that deserve consideration by all media scholars." In Media and Public Life, he offered a retrospective of influential essays from the Media Studies Journal, exploring the global role of media. Michael Antecol praised the book's command of diverse topics, underscoring the stature of the ideas explored in the American Journalism Review.

Dennis' synthetic writing brought together such studies as The Cost of Libel and others assessing the state of media law and ethics. He edited Media and the Environment, which explored how media delivers environmental reporting to enhance public comprehension of scientific issues. Steve Nash commented that the book "offers telling insights on how the news media filter information about accelerating environmental ruin." In Beyond the Cold War, he analyzed mutual images between the US and the former Soviet Union, examining the media's role in shaping perceptions during and after the Cold War. Brian Thomas's review in International Affairs highlighted the book's exploration of Cold War propaganda and its implications for the changing role of media in shaping international perceptions.

Awards and honors

 * 2001 – Oregon Journalism Hall of Achievement, School of Journalism and Communication
 * 2002 – Distinguished Service Award, University of Oregon
 * 2004 – Eleanor Blum Award for Support for Research, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication
 * 2004 – Trayes Award for Media & Society Research, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication

Selected books

 * Media Freedom and Accountability (1989) ISBN 978-0-313-26727-7
 * Reshaping the Media: Mass Communication in an Information Age (1989) ISBN 978-0-8039-3661-4
 * Beyond the Cold War: Soviet and American Media Images (1991) ISBN 978-0-8039-3900-4
 * Media Debates: Issues in Mass Communication (1991) ISBN 978-0-8013-1470-4
 * Of Media and People (1992) 978-0803947474
 * The Media in Black and White (1996) ISBN 978-1-138-53674-6
 * Children and the Media (1996) ISBN 978-1-138-52039-4
 * Covering Congress (1997) ISBN 978-1-138-52137-7
 * Media Debates: Great Issues for the Digital Age (2005) ISBN 978-0-495-00181-2
 * Finding the Best Business School for You: Looking Past the Rankings (2006) ISBN 978-0-275-98820-3
 * Understanding Media in the Digital Age (2009) ISBN 978-0-205-59582-2
 * Other Voices: The New Journalism in America (2010) ISBN 978-1-138-52947-2
 * Mobile Disruptions in the Middle East (2018) ISBN 978-113805051

Selected articles

 * Wackman, D. B., Gillmor, D. M., Gaziano, C., & Dennis, E. E. (1975). Chain newspaper autonomy as reflected in presidential campaign endorsements. Journalism Quarterly, 52(3), 411-420.
 * Dennis, E. E. (2003). Prospects for a big idea‐is there a future for convergence?. International Journal on Media Management, 5(1), 7-11.
 * Dennis, E. E. (2004). Out of sight and out of mind: The media literacy needs of grown-ups. American behavioral scientist, 48(2), 202-211.
 * Dennis, E. E., Warley, S., & Sheridan, J. (2006). Doing digital: An assessment of the top 25 US media companies and their digital strategies. Journal of Media Business Studies, 3(1), 33-51.
 * Dennis, E. E. (2006). Television’s convergence conundrum. Television Quarterly, 37(1), 22-27.