Stempel, Guido H., III 1928–

PERSONAL:

Born August 13, 1928, in Bloomington, IN; son of Guido H., Jr. (a research chemist) and Alice (a pianist and music teacher) Stempel; married Anne Elliott (a social worker and mental health volunteer), August 30, 1952; children: Ralph W., Carl W., Jane Stempel Arata. Ethnicity: "Caucasian—German/Swiss." Education: Attended Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie-Mellon University), 1945-46; Indiana University—Bloomington, A.B., 1949, A.M., 1951; University of Wisconsin, Ph.D., 1954. Politics: Democrat. Religion: Methodist.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Athens, OH. Office—E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, Ohio University, Scripps Hall, Athens, OH 45701. E-mail—stempel@ohio.edu.

CAREER:

Frankfort Morning Times, Frankfort, IN, sports editor, 1949-50; Pennsylvania State University, University Park, began as instructor, became assistant professor of journalism, 1955-57; Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, began as associate professor, became professor of journalism, 1957-65; Ohio University, Athens, began as associate professor, became distinguished professor of journalism, 1965—, also director of School of Journalism and Scripps Survey Research Center. Defense Information School, member of advisory board, 1986-94. West Ohio Conference of the United Methodist Church, member of Board on Higher Education and Campus Ministries, 1996—. Military service: U.S. Army, communication specialist, 1954-55.

MEMBER:

Athens Rotary Club (president, 1984).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Chancellor's Award for Distinguished Service to Journalism and Journalism Education, University of Wisconsin, 1977; Eleanor Blum Award for service to journalism research, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications, 1989; Harold L. Nelson Award for Distinguished Achievement in Journalism Education, University of Wisconsin, 2004; award for "Lifetime of Exemplary Contributions to Journalism and Journalism Education, Newspaper Division," Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, 2005.

WRITINGS:

(Coeditor and contributor) Research Methods in Mass Communication, Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1981.

The Practice of Political Communication, Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1994.

(Editor and contributor) Historical Dictionary of Political Communication in the United States, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1999.

(Coeditor and coauthor) Mass Communication Research and Theory, Allyn & Bacon (Boston, MA), 2003.

Media and Politics in America: A Reference Handbook, American Bibliographical Center-Clio Press (Santa Barbara, CA), 2003.

Contributor to professional journals. Past editor, Journalism Quarterly.

SIDELIGHTS:

Guido H. Stempel III told CA: "I write about the research that I do—content studies of presidential campaign coverage and public opinion surveys. I did studies of media coverage of the 1956, 1960, 1964, 1972, 1980, 1984, and 1988 presidential campaigns. All of these dealt with coverage by major newspapers, and three of them also included network television and news magazines. I found virtually no support for the claims of bias in coverage that have come from both sides over the years. Bias is in the eyes of the beholder. My surveys have dealt with media use and with political attitudes. I have found that the Internet is vastly overrated as a news medium, that use of all media except the Internet tends to increase with a person's age, and that use of print media correlates highly with level of education.

"Most of my writing has been articles in research and professional journals. I taught journalism for more than forty years and collaborated with more than thirty faculty members and students in published research. I also was editor of the Journalism Quarterly for seventeen years.

"Currently I am director of the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University. We do four surveys a year on a variety of topics. Recent surveys have dealt with topics ranging from the performance of the president and the Iraq war to interest in sports and attitudes about tattoos. The latter study found that use of tattoos has tripled by generations, going from about three percent for those over sixty-five to nine percent for the next generation to thirty percent for young adults."