St. Cloud State University

Bill Huntzicker

William E. Huntzicker joined the faculty in the fall of 2003 on a fixed-term appointment, and he has returned annually since then. He teaches reporting and some theory courses. He does research in journalism history and has written a book, The Popular Press 1833-1856 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999).

Bill also serves as the department’s internship coordinator.

As faculty adviser to the annual spring First Amendment Forum, Bill Huntzicker worked with the student SPJ chapter and Professor Mike Vadnie to organize programs on crisis coverage (school shootings and disappearances); free speech and hate speech; investigative reporting; and sports journalism.

In 2006, support from Dean Roland Specht-Jarvis, the Minnesota Newspaper Association and the St. Cloud Times allowed the group to invite New York Times reporter Ron Nixon and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Ison to lead a workshop on investigative reporting.

In 2007, these supporters and additional help from a special ST. CLOUD STATE speakers grant allowed the group to invited New York Times sports reporter and columnist Ira Berkow as keynote speaker for a day called “Sports Wars.” In the morning, Berkow and others discussed “Sports Wars: Should Reporters and Athletes Be on the Same Team?” and in the afternoon, sports promoters and journalists discussed “Sports Wars: Marketing, Spin and the Search for Truth.”

Professor Huntzicker demonstrated his commitment to basic journalistic principles by nominating the department’s 2006 and 2007 First Amendment Award winners: Don Gemberling, one of the authors of Minnesota’s Data Practices Act and an advocate of open government; and Gary Gilson, former director of the Minnesota News Council. Gilson has participated in the First Amendment Forum for the past four years.

Bill serves on the department’s appeals and scholarship committees and is chairman of the curriculum committee.

Outside of the department, he continues to study the history of the mass media and to work on some historical preservation issues.

Visit William E. Huntzicker's Website

His most recent work includes:

• "Creating Connections and Barriers: Contradictory Images of the River in the Illustrated Press," presented paper at the annual SCSU Sinclair Lewis Conference, October 2007.
• written three chapters of Memory and Myth: The Civil War in Fiction and Film from Uncle Tom’s Cabin to Cold Mountain, edited by David B. Sachsman, S. Kittrell Rushing, and Roy Morris Jr. and published by Purdue University Press in 2007. Huntzicker’s chapters are: “’This Inherited Misfortune’: Gender, Race and Slavery in Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Gone with the Wind (about the novels); “Hollywood Themes and Southern Myths: An Analysis of Gone with the Wind” (about the movie),and “Alex Haley’s Roots: The Fiction of Fact” on the Haley’s blending of fact and fiction in both the book and television miniseries.
• selected as a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow to join a five-week seminar on the American West since Reconstruction at the Huntington Library near Los Angeles in the summer of 2005.
• joined with University of Minnesota Professor Hazel Dicken-Garcia and graduate student Jennifer Moore to present an illustrated paper “Cartoonist Thomas Nast’s 1872 Crusade against Candidate Horace Greeley” at the annual Popular Culture Association meeting April 4, 2007, in Boston. He also moderated the session in which the paper was presented.
• wrote “Independent or Compromised? Civil War Correspondent Sylvanus Cadwallader,” Chapter XIX of Words at War: The Civil War and American Journalism, edited by David B. Sachsman, S. Kittrell Rushing, and Roy Morris Jr. and anticipated publication by Purdue University Press in 2008.
• wrote “Picturing American Indians: Newspaper Pictures and Native Americans in the 1860s and 1870s,” in Seeking a Voice: Images of Race and Gender in 19th-Century Journalism, edited by David B. Sachsman, S. Kittrell Rushing, and Roy Morris Jr. and submitted to Purdue University Press for consideration in 2007.
• joined a panel discussion on gender in at the annual West Symposium on 19th Century Newspapers, the Civil War, and Free Expression on Nov. 10, 2006, at the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga. Huntzicker’s presentation was called “Defining Civilization: The First Six Months of Harper’s Weekly: A Journal of Civilization.”
• worked with Professor Maurine Beasley of the University of Maryland to revise her panel presentation called “Jane Grey Swisshelm: Liberal Bigot?” into a proposed book chapter called “Strong Women, Innocent Blacks, and Fierce Savages: Jane Grey Swisshelm’s Construction of Race and Gender.”
• presented a PowerPoint slide show, “The Illustrated Civil War,” on the process of picturing war news in Harper’s Weekly and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper to the St. Croix Valley Civil War Roundtable Jan. 22, 2007, in Woodbury, Minn.
• presented a paper “Did Roots Trump Gone with the Wind and Uncle Tom’s Cabin? at the annual Symposium on 19th Century Newspapers, the Civil War, and Free Expression Nov. 11, 2005, in Chattanooga.
• wrote brief essays on Jane Swisshelm, Ted Turner, Chet Huntley, “The Huntley-Brinkley Report,” frontier newspapers, and Chinese-American newspapers for Encyclopedia of American Journalism History, edited by Steven Vaughn, Bruce Evensen, and James Landers, published by Routledge Press in 2007.
• updated his chapter “The Frontier Press, 1800-1900 in The Media in America: A History, Sixth Edition, edited by Wm. David Sloan (Northport, Ala.: Vision Press, 2005): 173-195. Earlier versions of this chapter appeared in earlier editions: First Edition in 1990; second, 1993; third, 1996; fourth, 1999; fifth, 2002.
• wrote brief essays on Jane Swisshelm, Ted Turner, Chet Huntley, “The Huntley-Brinkley Report,” frontier newspapers, and Chinese-American newspapers for Encyclopedia of American Journalism History, edited by Steven Vaughn, Bruce Evensen, and James Landers, published by Routledge Press in 2007.
• wrote section introduction “Media” and individual entry on Legh Freeman in Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, edited by David Wishart (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004): 501-505, 512-3.
• served as a copy editor for Insights, a campus online newsletter on diversity issues published through the affirmative action office and Jewish studies.
• was invited to become president of the steering committee of the annual West Symposium on 19th Century Newspapers, the Civil War, and Free Expression at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
• served as referee for papers presented at the annual meetings of American Journalism Historians Association, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, and the West Symposium on 19th Century Newspapers, the Civil War, and Free Expression at the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga.
• read and refereed papers submitted for publication in Journalism History, American Journalism, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, The Atlanta Review of Journalism History, North Dakota History, and The Annals of Iowa.
• read books to help judge book awards for both American Journalism Historians Association and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.
• served on the Board of Directors of the American Journalism Historians Association. (Term ends in the fall of 2007).
• served on a Minneapolis neighborhood task force monitoring development of the Pillsbury A-Mill property along the historic riverfront near downtown Minneapolis.
• drove the Minneapolis RiverCity Trolley for five summers giving historical tours of the downtown, riverfront and lake districts in Minneapolis (discontinued in 2006).
• served on the Marcy Holmes Neighborhood (the oldest Minneapolis neighborhood) Association’s land use committee.

Mass Communications Adjunct Faculty List