Doug Cumming, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Journalism

Education

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, N.C., August 2002

Ph.D., School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Freedom Forum Fellow.
Dissertation – “Facing Facts, Facing South: The Southern Education Reporting Service and the Effort to Inform the South after Brown v. Board, 1954-1960.”
Kappa Tau Alpha, journalism student honor society.

Brown University, Providence, R.I., May 1980

M.A., American Civilization, with focus on religion, social reform.

Bennington College, Bennington, Vt., June 1974

B.A., Literature.

Professional Experience

Washington & Lee University, Lexington, Va. (beginning Fall 2003)

· Assistant professor in Department of Journalism and Mass Communications

Loyola University New Orleans, 2002-03

Assistant professor, extraordinary faculty, in Communications Department

Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Atlanta, Ga., 1990-2000

Lead Education Writer. Initiated investigations and covered state and federal education issues; led local coverage among school reporters in suburban bureaus and newsroom, 1997-2000.
DeKalb County Education Reporter. Covered largest urban school system in state, 1996-97.
Senior Writer, education, 1995.
Atlanta Constitution editorial board writer. Sept.-Dec., 1994.
Assistant Metro Editor. Managed four to six reporters covering education, religion; initiated “School Matters” weekly feature; planned and edited Saturday religion page; helped launch in-house weekly writing contest, 1990-1994.

Southpoint, Atlanta, Ga., 1989-90

Senior Editor, features. Helped launch Time-Warner monthly targeting metropolitan South; assisted editor John Huey on planning, design and publication of first issues (T-W closed Southpoint after nine issues), June 1989-May 1990.
Assigned and edited cover stories and other features; writers included Howell Raines, Roy Blount, Bill Kovach, Neil Maxwell and other high-profile journalists.
Wrote feature articles, including profile of Cold Sassy Tree author, a sojourn across the postmodern Bible belt and architectural essay on seven high-rise “wonders” of the contemporary Southern landscape.

Providence Journal-Bulletin, Providence, R.I., 1976-89

Editor, Sunday Magazine. Assigned and edited weekly 60-year-old Sunday supplement of Journal-Bulletin; oversaw staff of copyeditors, art director, photo editor; wrote personal essays monthly; selected staff writers for cover stories; accepted work from staff and freelance writers; oversaw redesign, January 1988–May 1989.
Special Writer. Covered energy and deregulation for three years, including Seabrook, N.H., nuclear power plant, cable TV growth, breakup of Bell Telephone and deregulation of airlines. Worked on team of writers assigned to daily or weekly stories to provide a “good read” anchoring front page daily and Sunday, 1982–1987.
General Assignment Reporter. Covered everything from Tall Ships to Mafia, in Newport, Pawtucket and Greenville, R.I., bureaus, 1976–1981.

Raleigh Times, News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C., 1974-75

State staff, N & O. Covered flue-cured tobacco sales, murders, small-town politics. Also wrote for features department. Sept. 1974-Sept. 1975.
Summer intern, Raleigh Times. Covered the city, June-Sept. 1974.

Atlantic Monthly, Boston, Mass., 1974

Intern. Wrote recommendations on unsolicited manuscripts, Jan.-Feb. 1974.

Academy Theatre, Atlanta, Ga., 1971

Writer-in-residence. Worked with improvisational troupe to develop educational play to improve racial understanding in recently desegregated high schools in several Georgia towns. Produced 80-page narrative of the federal-funded project.

Teaching Experience

W & L: “Discovering Early American Newspapers,” * Fall '05, '06, ’08; Winter ’09 http://journalism.wlu.edu/J296/J295%20Syllabus.htm ; “Magazine writing,” * Spring '05; '06, ‘08 http://journalism.wlu.edu/J357/J357s05.htm ; “Southern Journalism since 1945,” * Fall '03, '04 http://journalism.wlu.edu/J215/syllabus.html ; “Introduction to Reporting,” Fall ’03, Winter & Fall ’04, ’05, ’06; Winter ’07, Winter & Fall ’08 http://journalism.wlu.edu/J201/index.html ; “Reporting for Print Media,” Fall & Winter ’03, ’04, ’05, ’06, ’07; Fall ‘08 http://journalism.wlu.edu/J253-263/J253-263syll.htm ; “In Depth Reporting,” co-taught, Spring ‘04. W&L.

* designed by instructor

“Summer Scholars,” a 4-week academic camp for rising high school seniors at W&L, taught journalism, July 2007, July ’08.

Loyola University New Orleans: “Beginning Reporting,” Fall 2002 and Spring 2003, “Feature Writing,” Fall 2002, “Law of Mass Communication,” Spring 2003.
UNC-Chapel Hill: “Historical research and historiography,” guest lecture for Philip Meyer’s “Mass Communication Research Methods,” graduate course, September 2001, Discussion Leader, Carolina Summer Reading Program, August 2001, “Basic Newswriting,” guest lecture, Summer I, 2001.
“College Head Start,” West Georgia College, Carrollton, Ga. Co-taught five-day summer course for high school seniors, with Joe Cumming, former Newsweek bureau chief, a mass communication professor at West Georgia -- and my father. He developed curriculum to help college-bound students learn about links between news, classroom learning and their own knowledge of the world, June 1993.
“Getting People & Places into Our Stories,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Initiated and taught narrative writing workshop to 14 news reporters. Over next nine years, attended or co-taught more than a dozen in-house writing/reporting workshops, April 1991.
“Magazine Article and Feature Writing,” University of Rhode Island, College of Continuing Education, Providence, R.I. Spring 1988.
“News Feature Writing,” The Learning Connection, Providence, R.I., November 1987.
Tomlison Fellow, 2-day speaker/teacher, Tabor Academy, Marion, Mass., January 1987.

Fellowships & Grants

Freedom Forum Fellowship, highly competitive grant given to three seasoned journalists a year and paying tuition and more than $130,000 for 27 months for a Ph.D. at UNC-CH.
Center for the Study of the American South, UNC-CH, Summer Research Grant, 2001.
CASE Fellowship, one-week residency at Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, Mass., April 1999.

Knight Center for Specialized Journalism, one-week workshop on covering religion, University of Maryland, College Park, Md., December 1993.
Nieman Fellowship, academic year at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., for mid-career journalists, 1986-1987.

· Academic Papers, Book Reviews & Conferences

The Southern Press: Literary Legacies and the Challenge of Modernity, Northwestern University Press, Visions of the American Press series; book in press for publication Winter 2009.
“Editors” and “Atlanta,” two entries (4,000 words and 1,800 words) accepted for Encyclopedia of Journalism, New York: MTM/Sage Publications, expected publication, 2009.
“Ink and Blood: Dueling as an Occupational Hazard in Southern Journalism,” presented at AEJMC Southeast Colloquium, Tuscaloosa, Ala., March 2006.
“Tom Wolfe, Reporter: His Relationship to Old New Journalism and New New Journalism,” accepted for Shenandoah: The Washington & Lee University Review, Spring, 2007, and for online Journal of Magazine & New Media Research, Fall, 2006.

“Chapter 11: [The Southern Press] 1963 to the Present,” accepted for publication in book on the history of the Southern press, Butler Cain, ed., Vision Press, Northport, Ala. [book pending]
“Building Resentment: How the Alabama Press Prepared the Ground for Sullivan v. New York Times.” American Journalism, Summer 2005.
“ ‘So Shocked, So Stunned’: Letters to Southern Newspapers after Brown v. Board.” Accepted for presentation, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) Southeast Colloquium, Little Rock, Ark., March 2003.
“Building Resentment,” earlier versions of above, presented at AEJMC Convention, Miami, Aug. 2002, won Student Paper Award runner-up, History Division; and AEJMC Southeast Colloquium, Gulfport, Miss., March 2002, won Best Student Paper, Southern History.
Review of Lafcadio Hearn’s America: Ethnographic Sketches and Editorials. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly.
Review of The Press and Race: Mississippi Journalists Confront the Movement. Journalism History 27:4 (Winter 2001-2002).
“ ‘Just the Facts, M’am’: Southern School News and the Search for ‘Objectivity’.” Research paper presented to the American Journalism Historians Association, San Diego, Calif., October 2001.
“Public School Muckraker of the 1890s: A Reinterpretation of Joseph M. Rice.” Research paper presented to the Southeast Colloquium, History Division, AEJMC, Columbia, S.C., March 2001 and (revised) AEJMC, Washington, DC, August 2001.
“Breaking the Seal: Using Public Records Laws to Lift the ‘Cloak of Secrecy’ from Student Tests.” Law division paper presented to the Southeast Colloquium, AEJMC, Columbia, S.C., March 2001.

Professional and Related Service

Re-launched and now serve as faculty advisor for Washington & Lee student chapter of Society of Professional Journalists, Fall 2005-.
Taught two session, on “interviewing,” for Virginia Association of Journalism Teachers and Advisers (high school faculty) workshop, W&L, Sept. 17, 2005.
Oversaw two independent student projects, 2005: senior journalism/art student produced 12-page color brochure on historic furnishings of the Robert E. Lee House, and student on Mollenhoff fund summer grant developed bibliographic organization for new Farrar Collection of 18^th and 19^th century newspapers and produced website http://journalism.wlu.edu/Farrar/index.htm.

Led three sessions in first day of Roanoke Times Minority Journalism Workshop, June 2005 and '06, for about a dozen minority high school students interested in journalism.
Newsroom workshop and critique, Richmond Times-Dispatch, co-leader with W&L colleagues, April 9, 2004.
Sowell Symposium, Hollins University, “Journalism and Contemporary Criticism: The Impact of Globalization,” panelist for “Journalism Education, Professional and Liberal Arts.” April 2, 2004.
“Resegregation Roundtable,” co-hosted with Edward Fiske, former New York Times education editor, a discussion among journalists on re-segregation of public schools. Program on Southern Politics, Media and Public Life, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Aug. 29, 2002.
“Searching for a Superhero: Can Principals Do it All?” co-facilitated case-study workshop; moderated research panel. Education Writers Association conference, Charlotte, N.C., November 2001.

“Southern Journalists Roundtable,” by-invitation discussion of post-election issues and trends sponsored by the Program on Southern Politics, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, UNC at Chapel Hill, N.C., January 2001.

Related Publications

The American Editor, “How the South covered desegregation,” March 2003.
National CrossTalk, “Pursuing Higher Standards,” Winter 1999; “Georgia’s Momentum: The magic of a popular lottery-funded college scholarship program,” Fall 1998.

Oxford-American, “Going to the Chapel: Same-Sex Wedding on Campus,” # 19.
Black Issues in Higher Education, “Federal Judge Sides with White Student in Admissions Dispute,” 4 Feb. 1999, 12-13.
The New Republic, “Atlanta Dispatch: Assembly of God,” 30 March 1998.
The Ultimate Atlanta School Guide, “Is your school passing or failing?” introduction to 1^st – 3^rd editions (Atlanta: Journal-Constitution, 1996, 1998, 2000).
Brown Alumni Monthly, “Confessions of Ted Turner,” May 1994.
Southpoint, “The Novelist & the Movie Star,” October 1989; “God Is Not Dead: A Sojourn in the Post-Modern Bible Belt,” December 1989; “Seven Wonders of the South,” February 1990.
Newsweek, “My Turn,” 12 May 1986.
The Family Secret, poems, with Joe Cumming (Atlanta: Peachtree Publishers, 1982).
“The Class of ’56: It Was a Very Good Year: Account of the News-Writing Process,” in How I Wrote the Story: A Book for Writers by Writers about Writing, 2^nd ed., (Providence: Providence Journal Co., 1986), 92-94.

Awards

AEJMC, history division, Best Student Paper runner-up (Emery Travel Grant), August 2002; and Southeast Colloquium, March 2002, Best Student Paper (Southern History), both awarded for paper “Building Resentment: How the Alabama Press Laid the Ground for New York Times v. Sullivan.”
Unity Award (Education); New England Associated Press News Executives (1st Place-Features); and United Press International New England Newspaper Award (1^st Place-Community Service, Division 1), 1986 – all three for story on autistic teenager. Providence Journal-Bulletin.
Finalist, Free Press Association’s H.L.Mencken Award, 1983. “Censorship in Baileyville.” Providence Journal-Bulletin.
George Polk Award, 1982, for series on airline deregulation. Providence Journal-Bulletin.
Author of the Year Award in poetry (1983) Dixie Council of Authors and Journalists, with co-author Joe Cumming and illustrator Walter Cumming, for book Family Secret.

Professional Membership

Society of Professional Journalists
Institute of Environmental Communications, Loyola University New Orleans
Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (History Division)
American Journalism Historians Association
Committee of Concerned Journalists