Bob Papper
Today
Bob Papper is Research Professor of Broadcast and Digital Journalism at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. He’s also Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Journalism in the Department of Journalism, Media Studies, and Public Relations at Hofstra University — from which he retired from full time work in 2013. He’s also Professor Emeritus at Ball State University, from which he retired in 2007.
For 30 years, including the 2023-2024 survey period, he’s overseen the RTDNA Annual Survey on the state of local radio and television news, and continues to do that — even in semi-retirement.
Papper also co-authored (with UMiss’s Deb Wenger) the Knight Study, “Local TV News & the New Media Landscape” (2018) … and continues to work advancing that research.
He conducted Future of News studies for the RTDNF;
originated the Middletown Media Studies (which morphed into the Video Consumer Mapping Study funded by The Nielsen Company), and is the founding editor of Electronic News, the official journal of the Electronic News Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.
Papper’s Broadcast News & Writing Stylebook will go into its 8th edition with Routledge/Taylor & Francis in 2024, and he’s won more than a hundred state, regional and national awards, including four regional Edward R. Murrow Awards and a DuPont-Columbia for “Excellence in Broadcast Journalism.”
Over the years
Papper has worked at television stations in Minneapolis, Washington, DC, San Francisco and Columbus, OH. He’s a past president of the Maine Association of Broadcasters and a long-time member of the national education committee of the Radio Television Digital News Association.
In 2006, Papper was honored as the Ball State University Researcher of the Year, and in 2007, the Associated Press Broadcasters inducted him into the Indiana Hall of Fame for Distinguished Service in Broadcast Journalism. In 2011, Papper received the Hofstra Teacher of the Year Award for the School of Communication.
In 2012, he received the Ed Bliss Award from the Electronic News Division of the AEJMC. The annual, national award recognizes “Outstanding teaching, scholarship and service.”