Barbie Zelizer: A Career Built on Asking the Right Question

Some scholars study a field, and then there are scholars who shape it. Barbie Zelizer has spent more than three decades doing both. A pioneering scholar of journalism studies, she built the intellectual architecture while simultaneously studying the foundations on which journalism stands. At the Annenberg School for Communication, she has been a force in the truest sense: a rigorous scholar and a community-builder, committed to the idea that journalism belongs squarely at the center of communication scholarship.

“Barbie was one of the first people I met when I first entered the field of Communication, and for me, she represents the immense breadth and depth of Communication: intellectually incisive, a thoughtful and compassionate interlocutor, a creative thinker who is constantly expanding the boundaries of communication in imaginative ways,” said Sarah Banet-Weiser, Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication. “She is a tireless community builder, a dedicated mentor and a field builder. She leaves an indelible mark on Annenberg’s community.”

From Jerusalem to West Philadelphia

Long before she was journalism studies’ most influential scholar, Zelizer was a reporter.

After studying political science and literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, she joined Reuters, covering the most demanding beats in the world and major stories from Jerusalem.

“As long as I can remember, I always wanted to be a journalist,” she says.

As she worked at the forefront of journalism, she found herself puzzling over how journalists were credentialed and able to secure public buy-in for their stories. “That was really what I wanted to probe,” she says. “What is it that journalists do to cement an authoritative presence in the world? And I tell my students that I am still asking that same question in every project I have done.”

She arrived at Annenberg as a doctoral student in the 1980s, carrying that question with her. It would go on to become her dissertation. 

The event that gave her dissertation its focus arrived unexpectedly. Zelizer was a young mother with a newborn and two small children at home, commuting to teach an undergraduate class at the University of Delaware, as she finished her Ph.D.

It was the anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, and when she asked her students if they knew who Kennedy was, a voice from the back of the room said, "Wasn’t Kennedy the first anti-Catholic president?" “I went: 'Whoa,” Zelizer recalls. “It wasn’t even that long ago, and already what was most distinctive about him had shifted.” She brought in retrospective news coverage for the class, and in the midst of it, something clicked. Zelizer drew on theories of collective memory from sociologist Maurice Halbwachs in her dissertation, which went on to become her first book, "Covering the Body: The Kennedy Assassination, the Media, and the Shaping of Collective Memory." The book introduced the concept of collective memory into communication studies.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, who later recruited Zelizer to Annenberg’s faculty in 1997, saw the significance of her work early on. “Barbie was a star Annenberg grad student who enriched our classrooms with insights from her time as a journalist," Jamieson recalls.

She points to Zelizer's work on Holocaust imagery as particularly transformative. “Her book on how the photographs of the liberation of the German concentration camps serve as the basis for our memory of the Holocaust was so powerful that I urged my favorite university press editor to compete for it,” Jamieson says. “As he repeatedly told me, he was in my debt for that call.”

“Those books,” Jamieson adds, “changed scholars' understanding of the role and capacities of imagery in journalism. Barbie’s presence at ASC put the school at the forefront of journalism studies.”

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Building a Field

Zelizer’s scholarly contributions are numerous — whether it is on Kennedy, Holocaust imagery, or the nature and future of journalism. But that work did something more. She didn’t simply contribute to a field; she helped build one.

When she entered the field as a scholar, journalism studies was more quantitative and positivist. There was one major journal devoted to journalism scholarship, and it carried a particular professional orientation that left little room for the kind of qualitative, humanistic, culturally attuned inquiry Zelizer was doing. 

She remembers a panel at a recent communication conference where a moderator asked the assembled senior women scholars who their women mentors had been. "We all looked at each other as there were none," she recalls. “There weren't women studying communication, and there certainly weren't that many women studying journalism with qualitative methods." 

For the next two decades, she laid the foundations of qualitative methods in journalism studies and expanded the field. Around the year 2000, Zelizer joined Howard Tumber and Michael Bromley in founding the journal Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism. Around the same moment, Bob Franklin independently launched Journalism Studies; the two publications appeared without knowledge of each other.

Victor Pickard, C. Edwin Baker Professor of Media Policy and Political Economy, calls Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism “the sub-field's premier journal.”

Zelizer also helped establish the Journalism Studies Division within the International Communication Association (ICA) while leading the Popular Communication Division. “I believe it was the fastest interest group to reach divisional status,” she says, “and at the same time, it is still one of the largest divisions today.” Zelizer served as ICA president from 2009 to 2010, and she carried that role with the same conviction that journalism belongs in communication studies. She adds that communication is a relatively young field, which gives it an advantage. “We often try to behave like older disciplines that don't have an applied leg,” she says, “and that's ridiculous. We should be celebrating the fact that, whether it's journalism or advertising or cultural inquiry, our field has these tentacles that not only bring in applied practice but also learn and grow from the applied practice.”

Zelizer's influence extends beyond journalism studies. Throughout her career, she has served as an ambassador for communication scholarship across disciplines, while earning some of academia's highest honors.

In 1995, she received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship — one of the first communication scholars to do so. She was subsequently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the British Academy, and Academia Europaea, a recognition reserved for scholars whose work has made an exceptional international impact in their field. The National Communication Association has also named her a Distinguished Scholar, honoring her work that has reshaped scholars' understanding of journalism, collective memory, and public life.

 “There weren't women studying communication, and there certainly weren't that many women studying journalism with qualitative methods." - Barbie Zelizer

Her Mentorship

Ask the Annenberg community who have worked with Zelizer what they will miss most, and they all mention her mentorship.

Muira McCammon (Ph.D. '23), now an assistant professor at Tulane University and a former Zelizer advisee, remembers the first time she spoke with Zelizer. "She called me from Sweden. I had gone on this trek to the Clinton Presidential Library in Arkansas, and Barbie spent all this time on the phone, not only welcoming me to Annenberg but also talking about her own experiences conducting research at presidential libraries. I was so inspired by her energy and her commitment to graduate students and research."

Pickard describes a similar experience of being embraced before his arrival. “Barbie was incredibly welcoming and encouraging toward me even before I arrived at Annenberg,” he says. “I will always be grateful for the generous advice she shared with me over the years, especially while I was a junior scholar.”

“It's very rare to find scholars who combine intellectual generosity with a goodness of heart,” McCammon adds. “Barbie has seen her advisees through all kinds of life milestones: weddings, book publications, tenure and promotion, and heartbreak. She took a chance on me, and in doing so, she fundamentally shaped the arc of my life.”

Annenberg Associate Professor Jessa Lingel describes Zelizer as a fierce advocate for the discipline, her students, and colleagues. “When Barbie is your co-conspirator, you can't lose,” she says. She narrated an incident to cement Zelizer's formidable reputation as an editor: “I had heard a lot over the years about what an intense editor Barbie could be,” she says. “And then last year, we were working on an op-ed project together, and I got to experience her editing firsthand. My main reaction was: ‘Oh my God, can you help me revise all of my writing forever?’”

Current doctoral candidate Anjali DasSarma, who served as Zelizer's teaching assistant for a couple of years, has also been shaped by her advising. “It is hard to describe in words what it means to be a Barbie advisee, as we call ourselves,” she says. “Her mentorship and guidance and granular feedback reflect her deep commitment to the success of her students and rigorous scholarship.”

Community Building at Annenberg

Zelizer's impact at Annenberg extended far beyond her scholarship. Here, she built intellectual communities that ensured journalism and cultural inquiry remained central to the school's mission. 

She founded the Scholars Program in Culture and Communication at a time when several faculty departures left a hole in the school’s curriculum. “I was very concerned that we were losing the cultural arm of the school,” she explains. For sixteen years, the program brought four visiting scholars annually, sustaining a vibrant intellectual community for graduate students.

Annenberg lecturer Jeff Pooley, who participated in the program as a visiting scholar in 2009, recalls Zelizer as a warm and generous host. “The semester in Philadelphia was a revelation — my first Ph.D. class, rich conversations with faculty, and a new obsession (with social media and the self) that’s stuck,” Pooley says.

With Donald Trump’s election in 2017, Zelizer transformed the program into something new: the Center for Media at Risk. "I realized there was a moment here that needs to be attended to, and it has to do with media practitioners," she says.

“The Center has truly been a place of critical thinking and compassion. The invited scholars, the symposia, the collaboration with graduate students, the incisive and urgent topics that the Center engages — these are some of the many ways that the Center for Media at Risk has been such an important element of Annenberg’s identity,” says Banet-Weiser, Lauren Berlant Professor of Communication. "Its programs, initiatives, and visitors never failed to remind us of a more just world."

For Jamieson, the center reflected Zelizer's longstanding commitment to journalism itself. “Her principled work to protect journalism has been an ever-so-timely public service to Annenberg and democratic society writ large,” she says.

The center is sunsetting with her retirement, and Zelizer shares her sentiments. "I don't ever think in terms of my legacy," she says, "but if there was one thing I wanted to do, it was to highlight the presence of journalism back in the curriculum. And I think that the Center for Media at Risk succeeded at that.” Sophie Maddocks (Ph.D. '24), who served as the center's research manager, puts it simply: “Working with Barbie has fundamentally shaped the way I think about scholarship, mentorship, and academic life. Her example continues to influence the questions I ask, the work I do — and my use of Oxford commas.”

What Endures

Perhaps the most fitting tribute is that the work she started continues. The journal she co-founded is still publishing. The division she helped establish is still growing. The students she mentored are now mentoring others, creating labs and intellectual communities that bear her imprint.

The curiosity that pulled her out of the Jerusalem foreign press corps and into an Annenberg classroom three decades ago remains as alive as ever. How do journalists establish authority in the world? More than three decades later, that question remains at the heart of her work.

“I was lucky enough to have the mentors who steered me in the directions that I wanted to go,” says Zelizer, looking back on her career. “I wouldn’t change a thing.”