Michigan State University journalism professor Lucinda D. Davenport, Ph.D., was recognized with the national McGuffey Award by the Textbook and Academic Authors Association for her co-authored Writing & Reporting for the Media textbook, 13th edition (copyright 2023), nominated by Oxford University Press.
The McGuffey Award recognizes learning materials whose excellence has been demonstrated over time. The Writing & Reporting for the Media textbook has continuously been ranked in the top tier of its market throughout the decades.
Oxford University Press portfolio manager Jaime Burns noted, “Over the life of the 12th edition, more than 20,000 copies have been sold. The 12th edition was adopted at about 345 schools and campuses, including Harvard, Stanford and Columbia universities. According to studies we did earlier this summer, this makes Writing & Reporting for the Media the No. 1 text against its main competitors.” The 13th edition continues to gain new adopters.
Among its attributes with instruction methods for fundamentals in good writing and reporting, the peer-reviewed textbook has stayed ahead of the curve in evolving digital assets. For the 5th edition, Davenport and co-author Fred Fedler developed the very first interactive software for journalism education, called Media Master, to be independent or paired alongside a reporting and writing textbook.
“I spent a long summer reading a thick HyperCard instruction manual, building digital databases, and figuring out how to customize a program to create hypermedia newswriting exercises,” said Davenport. “This was unchartered territory because there were no digital products on the market at the time, and our college’s Apple lab was one of the first in the country. So, Apple computing had to be taught, as well, which was at the front of the instruction manual.”
In 2016, the 11th edition became one of the first journalism textbooks, and among the first in any discipline, to include augmented and virtual reality content. “Former colleague Jen Ware used a program in which students could scan a couple of paragraphs with their phone and see the information in a multimedia scenario instead of reading text on a page,” Davenport said.
By the 13th edition, the textbook offered hundreds of auto-graded and free-response exercises in an instructor’s learning management system (D2L). The e-book also includes more than 50 news videos showcasing the latest examples of reporting in a media-rich culture.
Central Florida Professor Fred Fedler copyrighted the first edition in 1973, and 20 years later decided to take on co-authors.
“His idea was to have a cafeteria of chapter topics and exercises that could support different journalism courses,” said Davenport.
After Fedler retired, Davenport continued to write the textbook with original co-authors University of Nebraska–Lincoln Professor Emeritus John Bender and Shippensburg University Professor Michael Drager, a doctoral alumnus of MSU’s College of Communication Arts and Sciences.
Davenport is also the co-author of another top-ranked textbook, Media Now: Understanding Media, Culture and Technology (13th edition), used in introductory media survey courses. MSU Media and Information Professor Emeritus Bob LaRose and former colleague Joe Straubhaar are co-authors.
“It has always been kind of fun to tell high school visitors and their parents that we write the textbooks that other universities use,” said Davenport.
The McGuffey Award is named for William Holmes McGuffey, whose McGuffey Primer for elementary school children was published from 1836 to 1960. Its sales ranked alongside the Bible and Webster’s Dictionary.