John C. Merrill

John Calhoun Merrill (9 January 1924 – 20 September 2012) was an American author and professor of journalism. He was professor emeritus at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, and taught at a number of other colleges and universities, and was the author of 30 books and over 100 articles in journals, and has been considered one of the leading scholars in journalism during his time. In 2007, a festschrift, Freedom Fighter, was issued in his honor.

Biography Merrill was born January 9, 1924, in Eden, Mississippi, and served in the US Navy from 1942 to 1946. He met his wife at Delta State University, where he graduated from in 1949. His first teaching position was at Northwestern State College from 1951 to 1962, after which he moved to Columbia in order to teach at the Missouri School of Journalism at the University of Missouri. He received the Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism in 1996.

He was an active member of First Baptist Church in Columbia, and had five children with his wife Dorothy.

Selected works

Handbook of the Foreign Press (1955) Gringo: The U.S. As Seen By Mexican Journalists (1963) The Foreign Press (with C. Bryan and M. Alisky; 1964) The Elite Press (1968) International Communication (with H.D. Fischer; 1970) Dimensions Of Christian Writing (with D. Bell; 1970) Media, Messages & Men (with R. Lowenstein; 1971) The Imperative of Freedom (1974) Ethics and the Press (with R. Barney; 1975) International & Intercultural Communication (with H.D. Fischer; 1976) Existential Journalism (1977) The World's Great Dailies (with Harold Fisher; 1980) Philosophy--and Journalism (with Jack O'Dell; 1983) Global Journalism: A Survey of the World's Media (1983) Basic Issues in Mass Communication (with E. Dennis; 1984) The Dialectic in Journalism (1989) Modern Mass Media (with J. Lee and J. Friedlander; 1990) Macromedia: Mission, Message, and Morality (with R. Lowenstein; 1990) Media Debates (with E. Dennis; 1991) Journalism Ethics: Philosophical Foundations for Journalists (1997) Legacy of Wisdom: Great Thinkers and Journalism (1994) Media Controversies (with D. Gordon, C. Reuss and Mike Kittross; 1995) The Princely Press: Machiavelli on American Journalism (1998) Twilight of Press Freedom: Rise of People's Journalism (2000)