Barbie Zelizer: A career built on asking the right question
As the Raymond Williams Professor of Communication retires after three decades, the Annenberg School for Communication and the field itself bear the unmistakable imprint of her work.
2 min. read
Barbie Zelizer is a renowned pioneering scholar of journalism studies; she built the intellectual architecture while simultaneously studying the foundations on which journalism stands. Now, after three decades at Penn’s Annenberg School for Communication (ASC), the Raymond Williams Professor of Communication is retiring. 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 Zelizer, the Annenberg School for Communication’s Raymond Williams Professor of Communication, is retiring after three decades as a pioneering scholar of journalism studies at Penn.
(Image: Courtesy of Annenberg School for Communication)
“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,” says Sarah Banet-Weiser, dean of ASC. “She is a tireless community builder, a dedicated mentor and a field builder. She leaves an indelible mark on Annenberg’s community.”
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. She arrived at Annenberg as a doctoral student in the 1980s.
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.
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. For the next two decades, she laid the foundations of qualitative methods in journalism studies and expanded the field.
Zelizer helped establish the Journalism Studies Division within the International Communication Association while leading the Popular Communication Division. Zelizer's impact at Annenberg extended far beyond her scholarship. She founded the Scholars Program in Culture and Communication at a time when several faculty departures left a hole in the School’s curriculum.
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.
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