Jack Lule studies the language of international news. He pays particular attention to archetypal, recurring stories. He is the author of three books and more than 50 scholarly articles and book chapters.
Jack Lule
Iacocca Professor
Fulbright Specialist in Journalism
610.758.4177
jack.lule@lehigh.edu
215 Coppee Hall
Education:
Ph.D., University of Georgia, 1987;
M.J., Temple University, 1981;
B.A., Sociology and Psychology, SUNY Binghamton, 1976
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Additional Interests
- News and Mythology
- News Language
- News and Metaphor
- Media and Migration
Research Statement
Biography
Jack Lule is Iacocca Professor and Fulbright Specialist in Journalism in the Department of Journalism and Communication at Lehigh University. His research interests include digital media, globalization and media, international communication, and cultural and critical studies of news.
He is the author of three books: Globalization and Media: Global Village of Babel (Rowman & Littlefield), now in its 4th edition, Understanding Media and Culture, in its 2nd edition, and the award-winning Daily News, Eternal Stories: The Mythological Role of Journalism (Guilford Press). Called “a landmark book in the sociology of news,” the book argues that ancient myths can be found daily in the stories of the news.
Lule is also the author of more than 50 scholarly articles and book chapters; a frequent contributor to numerous newspapers and periodicals, and has served as a commentator about the news on National Public Radio, BBC and other media outlets. An editorial board member for Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Critical Studies in Media Communication, and Journalism and Mass Communication Monographs, he has been awarded grants from The New York Times Company Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities and others.
A former reporter, he earned his Ph.D. from the University of Georgia and received the Distinguished Alumni Scholar Award from the university’s Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.
He is the recipient of four Lehigh teaching awards, including the Deming Lewis Faculty Award and the Donald B. and Dorothy L. Stabler Foundation Award for Excellence in Teaching from Lehigh. He has been teaching at Lehigh since 1990.
Books
Globalization and Media: Global Village of Babel, 4th edition, revised and updated. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021. (previous editions 2011, 2015, 2018).
The book argues for the central role of media in understanding globalization. Indeed, the book shows that globalization could not have occurred without media. From earliest times, humans have used media to explore, settle, and globalize their world.
Understanding Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication, 3rd edition, revised and updated. New York: Flatworld Publishers, 2022. (previous editions 2012, 2018).
Daily News, Eternal Stories: The Mythological Role of Journalism, New York: Guilford Press, 2001.
The book uses case studies of The New York Times to explore the mythic role of news in social life. The book won the Lewis Mumford Award for Research from the Media Ecology Association, New York, NY. It was also a finalist for the Frank Luther Mott/Kappa Tau Alpha Research Award for the best book in journalism and mass communication research published in 2001. The book has been the subject of review and commentary on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” Columbia Journalism Review, Harvard’s Nieman Reports, and other national journals. Its theme was the subject of a special issue of our flagship journal, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly. In 2013, the book was translated into Chinese.
Refereed Journal Publications
(including seven articles in the field’s flagship journal, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly)
“Place as Scene: News, Drama and the Southern Border: A Commentary,” Journalism & Mass Communication Monographs, 21:2, 160-164 (Summer 2019).
“News Language and Framing: Return of the Repressed in Media Studies,” invited essay for Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 96:17-19 (Spring 2019).
"To Kill a Journalist: How to Stop the Ultimate Form of Censorship," Media Ethics, 22:1, 18-24 (Fall 2009).
“Creating the Global Studies Curriculum: A Space for the Local?” Global-E Journal (July 2009). http://global-ejournal.org
“’Reprehensible’: Editorial Cartoons and Polarized Politics,” Media Ethics, 18:1, 9, 39 (Fall 2006).
“Disasters and the News Media,” International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics, 2:3 348-53 (2006).
“Corporate Responsibility and ‘Them Damn Pictures’: The Future of Editorial Cartoons,” Media Ethics, 17:2, 3,14 (Spring 2006). Reprinted in Utne, September- October 2006, pp. 44-45.
“War and Its Metaphors: News Language and the Prelude to War in Iraq, 2003,” Journalism Studies 5:179-90 (Spring 2004).
“Myth and Terror on the Editorial Page: The New York Times Responds to September 11, 2001,” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 79:275-93 (Summer 2002); lead article for special issue devoted to Mythology in Journalism.
“Teaching News Values for New Media,” Media Ethics, 10:9, 25-26 (Spring 1999). “News Values and the Oppressed: U.S. News and the Brazilian Street Children,” The Howard Journal of Communication, 9:169-85 (Fall 1998).
“News Values in a New World: A Burkean Analysis of The New York Times in Haiti,1994-96,” Journal of Communication Inquiry, 21:3-26 (Spring 1997).
“I.F. Stone: The Practice of Reporting,” Journalism Quarterly, 72:499-510 (Autumn 1995).
“Enduring Image of War,” Journal of Popular Culture, (Summer 1995), 29:199-212.
“The Rape of Mike Tyson: Race, the Press and Symbolic Types,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 12:176-95 (June 1995).
“News Strategies and the Death of Huey Newton,” Journalism Quarterly, 70:287-99 (Summer 1993).
“Radical Rules: I.F. Stone's Ethical Perspective,” Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 8:88-102 (Spring 1993).
nominated for the 1994 Communication Policy Research Award, The Donald McGannon Communication Research Center, Fordham University.
“Murder and Myth: New York Times Coverage of the TWA Hijacking Victim,” Journalism Quarterly, 70: 26-39 (Spring 1993).
“Journalism and Criticism: The Philadelphia Inquirer Norplant Editorial,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 9:91-109 (March 1992).
“News Language and the Study of International Reporting,” Journalism Educator, 46:58-64 (Winter 1992).
“The Contributions of I.F. Stone: 'Master of the Bright Thunderbolt,'” Mass Comm Review, 18:40-55 (1991).
“Roots of the Race: Sputnik and the Language of U.S. News,” Journalism Quarterly, 68:76-86 (Spring 1991).
“Telling the Story of Story: Journalism History and Narrative Theory,” American Journalism, 8:258-73 (Fall 1990).
“The Political Use of Victims: The Shaping of the Challenger Disaster,” Political Communication and Persuasion, 7:115-28, (1990).
“Media Studies Approach to Communications Law,” Journalism Educator, 45:53-57 (Summer 1990).
“Victimage in News of the KAL Flight 007 Shooting,” Journalism Quarterly, 66:615-620, 778 (Fall 1989).
“The Myth of My Widow: A Dramatistic Analysis of News Portrayals of a Terrorist Victim,” Political Communication and Persuasion, 5:101-120 (1988). [ERIC: ED 312 697]
requested and reprinted as paper no. 8, Terrorism and the News Media Research Project, Boston, Emerson College, 1988.
requested, reprinted and distributed as a monograph by the Gannett Foundation and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, 1988.
“Myth, Method and International News,” International Communication Bulletin, 22:18-25 (Fall 1987). [ERIC: ED 282 240]
requested and reprinted by Ecquid Novi: Journal for Journalism in South Africa, 9:81-102 (1988).
Chapters in Scholarly Books
“Afterword: Bread, Circuses, and Desolation Row,” invited chapter for The Circus Is in Town: Sport, Celebrity, and Spectacle, eds. Joel Nathan Rosen and Lisa D. Alexander, (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2021), pp. 278-282.
“Global Concern: Media Industry,” invited chapter for The Oxford Handbook of Global Studies, eds. Mark Juergensmeyer, Saskia Sassen, and Manfred Steger, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), pp. 579-96.
“Afterword: The Wide Worlds of the Sport Text,” invited chapter to More than Cricket and Football: International Sport and the Challenge of Celebrity, eds. Joel Nathan Rosen and Maureen Smith, (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2016), pp. 297-304.
“The Global Imaginary in Mumford and McLuhan,” invited chapter for Ethical Issues in Intercultural News, eds. Bo Shan and Clifford Christians, (New York: Peter Lang, 2015), pp. 321-36.
“Globalization and Media,” invited entry for The Encyclopedia of Public Administration and Public Policy 3rd ed., eds. Domonic Bearfield and Melvin Dubnick, (New York: Taylor & Francis, 2015), 1566-72.
“Globalization and Media: Creating the Global Village,” invited chapter for The SAGE Handbook of Globalization, eds. Manfred Steger, Paul Battersby and Joseph Siracusa, (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2014), pp. 363-78.
“The Political Use of Victims,” invited chapter for Propaganda, v. 2, eds. Paul Baines and Nicholas J. O'Shaughnessy, (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2012), pp. 243-63.
“Afterword: Sports and the Iron Fist of Myth,” invited chapter to Fame to Infamy: Race, Sport, and the Fall from Grace, eds. Joel Nathan Rosen and David C. Ogden, (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2010), pp. 214-33.
“Afterword: The Globalization of Vilification; The Localization of Redemption,” invited chapter to Reconstructing Fame: Sport, Race, and Evolving Reputations, eds. Joel Nathan Rosen and David C. Ogden, (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2008), pp. 127-32.
“News and Myth,” an entry in the International Encyclopedia of Communication, Vol. 7, ed., Wolfgang Donsbach (Oxford, UK, and Malden, MA, 2008), pp. 3254-56.
“News as Myth: Daily News and Eternal Stories,” a chapter in Media Anthropology, eds. Mihai Coman and Eric Rothenbuhler (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 2005), pp. 101-110.
“The CNN Effect,” an entry in the Encyclopedia of International Relations and Global Politics, ed., Martin Griffiths (New York: Routledge, 2005), pp. 93-101. “Metaphors of War: News Reporting and the 2003 Iraq War,” a chapter in Global Media Go to War, ed., Ralph Berenger (Spokane, WA: Marquette Books, 2004), pp. 95-106.
“Waters of Death in Central America: News Values and Myth,” a chapter in International Communication: Concepts and Cases, eds., Kwadwo Anokwa, Carolyn A. Lin and Michael B. Salwen (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Thomson, 2003), pp. 91- 109.
“The Rape of Mike Tyson: Race, the Press and Symbolic Types,” a chapter in Structured Inequality in the United States: Discussions on the Continuing Significance of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender, eds., Adalberto Aguirre and David V. Baker (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2000), pp. 545-564.
also printed as a chapter in Social Meanings of News: A Text-Reader, ed. Daniel A. Berkowitz (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1997), pp. 376-95.
“Terrorist Use of the News Media; News Media Use of Terrorists,” a chapter in Media Ethics: Issues and Cases 4th ed., eds. Lee Wilkins and Philip Patterson (Dubuque, Iowa: Wm. C. Brown Publishers, 2000). [also 1991; 1994; 1998], pp. 182- 84.
“Joe Eszterhas,” a chapter in the Dictionary of Literary Biography: American Literary Journalists, 1945-1995, ed. Arthur J. Kaul (Detroit, MI: Gale Research and Bruccoli Clark Layman, 1997), pp. 78-85.
“News Strategies and the Death of Huey Newton,” a chapter in The Path Ahead: Readings in Death and Dying, eds. Lynne DeSpelder & Albert Lee Strickland (Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing, 1995), pp. 33-40.
“Joe Eszterhas,” a chapter in A Sourcebook of American Literary Journalism: Representative Writers in an Emerging Genre, ed. Thomas Connery (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press,1992), pp. 307-15.
“Sacrifice and the Body on the Tarmac: Symbolic Significance of U.S. News about a Terrorist Victim,” a chapter in In the Camera's Eye: News Coverage of Terrorist Events, eds. Yonah Alexander and Robert Picard (New York: Brassey-Macmillan, 1991), pp. 30-45.
“The Myth of My Widow: A Dramatistic Analysis of News Portrayals of a Terrorist Victim,” a chapter in Media Coverage of Terrorism: Methods of Diffusion, eds. A. Odasuo Alali and Kenoye Kelvin Eke (Beverly Hills: SAGE, 1991), pp. 86-111.
“News Values of Three Worlds,” a chapter in Handbook for Third World Journalists, ed. Al Hester (Athens, Georgia & Tunis, Tunisia: Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research, 1985), pp. 13-30.
Teaching
COMM 1 Media and Society
COMM 098 “The Last Dance”: Documentary Storymaking
COMM 102 The Sports Documentary
JOUR 21 Writing for Media
JOUR 225 PBS/NPR Partnership
JOUR 245 Media Entrepreneurship
JOUR 275 Writing for Media II
JOUR 292 On Writing Well
JOUR 385 Seminar in Journalism Issues