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of Davies' books

From the USM PR Office:

Southern Miss Professor Releases Book
on Changes in the Newspaper Industry After World War II

Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Contact Jana Bryant - 601.266.4497

Writer: Jacob Seal

Hattiesburg – Turmoil in the nation's newspaper industry in the 20 years following World War II set the stage for the challenges facing the industry today, according to a new book by David R. Davies, an associate professor of journalism at the University of Southern Mississippi.

The book, titled “The Postwar Decline of American Newspapers, 1945-1965,” depicts the disorder that tainted the newspaper industry immediately following the war as a result of new competition from broadcast television and shifting social agendas that reshaped news content.

Triggered by the rapid increase of television consumption during the ‘50s, Davies asserts that newspaper readership started to dwindle and companies began to invest more money in broadcast advertising forcing newspaper publishers to make significant changes in the industry.

Inspired by work on his dissertation at the University of Alabama, Davies said the book describes historical trends in the news industry which, in many ways, mirror modern trends of the mass media.

“While I had hoped to finish the book much earlier, I think now is a great time for it to hit the shelves because many of the same problems facing the industry after World War II have recycled in recent years, changing the climate of the newspaper industry once again,” Davies said.

In comparison with the 1950s, when the newspaper industry was disheveled by the rapid expansion of television consumption, Davies said the industry faces a similar challenge today from Internet competition. Because of the “explosion of media” available on the Internet, newspapers are once again losing readers and ad revenues as they did 50 years ago, he said.

The problem, Davies suggests, is that the industry as a whole is too slow to respond to change. “We are in the middle of a communications revolution,” he said. “I still believe that despite all of the changes in modern media, newspapers can still be profitable. The challenge is learning how to be profitable in a completely new environment.”

Dr. Arthur J. Kaul, professor and assistant director of the School of Mass Communications and Journalism at Southern Miss, said he expects Davies’ book to produce a lot of insightful dialogue about the historic and contemporary trends of mass communication.

“By learning about media history, we can understand the kinds of issues that are likely to recur when new media are introduced,” Kaul said. “While this book may be focused particularly on the two decades following World War II, I believe it will serve as a reference to explain how the media landscape is changing today and how we can better adapt to that change tomorrow.”

Davies, who is also associate dean of the College of Arts & Letters at Southern Miss, has also written extensively about the newspaper industry and its coverage of the Civil Rights Movement in a book titled “The Press & Race: Mississippi Journalists Confront the Movement,” published in 2001.

His doctoral dissertation in 1998 won the prize for best dissertation in media history awarded by the American Journalism Historians Association.