Joe Saltzman, the director of
the Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture (IJPC) and the
author of Frank Capra and the Image of the Journalist in
American Film, is an award-winning journalist and professor
of journalism at the Annenberg School for Communication at the
University of Southern California.
He received his B.A. in journalism from
the University of Southern California and his M.S. from the
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. After working
for several years as a newspaper reporter and editor, Saltzman
joined CBS television in Los Angeles in 1964 and for the next
ten years produced documentaries,
news magazine shows, and daily news shows, winning more than
fifty awards, including the Columbia University-duPont broadcast
journalism award (the broadcasting equivalent of the Pulitzer
Prize), four Emmys, four Golden Mikes, two Edward R. Murrow
Awards, a Silver Gavel, and one of the first NAACP Image Awards.
He was among the first broadcast documentarians to produce,
write, and report on important social issues, including Black
on Black, a ninety-minute program with no written
narration on what it is like to be black in urban America
in 1967; Rape, a 30-minute 1970 program on the crime,
which resulted in changes in California law; The Junior
High School, a two-hour program on education in America
in 1970; and Why Me? a one-hour program on breast cancer
in 1974 that resulted in thousands of lives being saved and
advocated changes in the treatment of breast cancer in America.
DVD and tape copies of the Saltzman
documentaries are now available.
In 1974, Saltzman created the broadcasting sequence in the
USC School of Journalism. During his tenure at USC, Saltzman,
who has won three teaching awards, was associate dean of USC
Annenberg for five years, and has remained an active journalist
who has produced medical documentaries, functioned as a senior
investigative producer for Entertainment Tonight, and
wrote articles, reviews, columns, and opinion pieces for numerous
magazines and newspapers.
He has been researching the image of the journalist in popular
culture for fifteen years and is considered an expert in the
field. His IJPC database and this web site are considered
the world-wide resources on the subject. He is currently working
on a book, Ancient Journalists: The Origins of the Image
of the Journalist from the Beginnings of Recorded History
to the Fall of Rome.
Saltzman was awarded the 2005 Journalism Alumni Award from
the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, the
Alumni Association’s highest alumni honor.
For
a conversation with Saltzman conducted by Norman Corwin, click
here.
|
