Joe Saltzman
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 & Journalism 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 an African-American in urban American 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? considered the first documentary on breast cancer on television, a one-hour program broadcast in 1974 that resulted in thousands of lives being saved and advocated changes in the treatment of breast cancer in America that are now commonplace.
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 producer for Feeling Fine Productions and 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 twenty years and is considered an expert in the field. His IJPC database and his web site are considered the world-wide resources on the subject. He is the writer of Frank Capra and the Image of the Journalist in American Film, and his newest book, written with Matthew C. Ehrlich of the University of Illinois, Heroes and Scoundrels: The Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture was published this year. The Heroes and Scoundrels Project includes the book, a 40-hour companion video and a special Web site updating the materials on a regular basis (www.ijpc.org). Saltzman, who was awarded the 2005 Journalism Alumni Award from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, the Alumni Association’s highest alumni honor, was named the 2010 national Journalism & Mass Communication Teacher of the Year by the Scripps Howard Foundation in 2011. The Scripps Howard Foundation’s National Journalism Awards are considered among the most prestigious awards in American journalism.
website: www.ijpc.org