Bill Reader

Education:

M.A., Media Studies, The Pennsylvania State University.

Experience:

Joined the faculty in 2002. Earned tenure in 2010.

Teaches news editing, community journalism, media ethics, news & information literacy, and senior seminars in food journalism and humor writing in journalism.

Previously taught in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2000-2002, and was a lecturer in the College of Communications at The Pennsylvania State University, 1998-2000.

Worked as a newspaper reporter, editor, photographer, copy editor, and page designer throughout the 1990s. Has several professional awards, including first-place honors for reporting and editorial writing from the Keystone Press Awards in Pennsylvania, and was a member of the design team that won World`s Best Designed Newspapers honors from the Society of News Design in 1998, 1999, and 2000.

Publications/Research:

Research focuses on community journalism, participatory journalism, applied journalism ethics, and various forms of audience feedback (letters to the editor, online comments, etc.).

Author of Audience Feedback in the News Media (2015, Routledge). Co-editor with John Hatcher of University of Minnesota Duluth of Foundations of Community Journalism (2012, SAGE). Co-author with Steven Knowlton of Dublin City University, Ireland, of Moral Reasoning for Journalists (2008, Praeger).

Guest editor of special issue of Newspaper Research Journal, "The Future of Community Newspapers" (winter 2011).

Reader is author or co-author of a dozen research articles published in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism, Newspaper Research Journal, Community Journalism, and Journal of Mass Media Ethics.

Reader has written professional essays for various newspapers and trade journals including The Chronicle of Higher Education, American Journalism Review, Quill, The Cincinnati Enquirer, The Masthead, and Grassroots Editor.

He has contributed chapters and essays to several scholarly books and research encyclopedias, including Journalism Ethics Goes to the Movies (2007, Rowman & Littlefield), "When Journalists are First Responders: Die Hard and Die Hard 2"); Ethics and Entertainment: Essays on Media Culture and Media Morality (2010, McFarland), "Enlightenment Ethics in DIY Culture"; and The Encyclopedia of American Journalism (2007, Routledge), "Local News" and "Op-Ed Page."

Reader has given numerous presentations at professional and scholarly conferences, including more than 15 presentations at the annual conferences of AEJMC. He has conducted national and regional presentations for professional organizations such as the National Newspaper Association, the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors, the New York Newspaper Association, the Virginia Press Association. He also has presented and conducted training for several newspaper companies, including serving as one of the coordinators of the 2014 public-records audit performed by the Ohio Coalition for Open Government.

Professional Affiliations:

He is a founding member and former head of AEJMC’s Community Journalism Interest Group and is a partner with the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues. Reader also is an active member of the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors. He is on the editorial boards of Newspaper Research Journal and Community Journalism.