Subscribe to LSUWire
Send this to a friend
| Subscribe to LSUWire
|
|
Send this to a friend
|
| A Pulitzer Prize winner became the first person to receive a doctoral degree from LSU's Manship School of Mass Communication. Craig Flournoy, a Shreveport native and recipient of more than 50 state and national journalism awards, received his doctorate on Thursday, Aug. 7, at LSU's summer commencement exercises. Flournoy previously worked as an investigative reporter for the Dallas Morning News for 22 years, where he won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting in 1986 -- the first Pulitzer Prize ever awarded to that newspaper. The Manship School launched its doctoral program in the fall of 2000 and Flournoy was a member of the initial class. The Manship School's program focuses on media and politics -- the first of its kind in the country -- and it is designed to produce graduates who excel in the research, teaching and practice of public affairs communication. "Craig is precisely the kind of person that our program was created for," said John Maxwell Hamilton, dean of the Manship School. "He's an accomplished journalist, and we believe he now has the tools to be an equally accomplished journalism educator. He will be the first of many doctoral graduates who are equipped to conduct scholarly research and to master real-world public affairs problems." Flournoy's dissertation examined media coverage of two seminal events in the civil rights movement: the lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955 and the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955-56. He compared coverage by three publications aimed primarily at white audiences -- Life, Look and the New York Times -- with two aimed primarily at black audiences -- the Birmingham World and Jet. Flournoy's study showed that, during the first half of the 20th century, mainstream news organizations largely ignored black people or presented them as criminals. However, this changed during the Till murder case and the bus boycott. The dissertation found that, in reporting these events, Life, Look and the New York Times adopted new frames by first presenting blacks as the innocent victims of deadly racial hatred and, later, as nonviolent protestors. Flournoy's investigation also found that the black-oriented publications produced the most accomplished journalistic coverage of the Till case and the bus boycott by providing a greater range of sources, broader context, more depth and a clear statement of the central problem. The finding challenges the widely held opinion that the New York Times provides the best journalistic source of information on key historical events. Flournoy is now an assistant professor of journalism at Southern Methodist University. He earned a bachelor's degree in history from the University of New Orleans in 1975 and a master's degree in history from SMU in 1986. He won the 1986 Pulitzer with fellow reporter George Rodrigue for an investigation into subsidized housing in East Texas, which uncovered patterns of racial discrimination and segregation in public housing across the United States and led to significant reforms. In 1997, he was one of three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for beat reporting. For more information on Flournoy or the Manship School's doctoral program, contact Ralph Izard, the Manship School's associate dean of graduate studies and research, at 225-578-2002 or izard@lsu.edu. -30- |
LSU Media Relations
225-578-3871
 |  |  |
|