Professor Emeritus of Journalism,
Former Department Chair

Richard Campbell is professor emeritus and founding chair of the Department of Media, Journalism & Film at Miami University. 

He is the author of 60 Minutes and the News: A Mythology for Middle America and co-author of Cracked Coverage: Television News, the Anti-Cocaine Crusade and the Reagan Legacy. For Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, he was the lead author of three textbooks, including Media & Culture: Mass Communication in a Digital Age, now in its 13th  edition.

Campbell earned his B.A. in English from Marquette University and his Ph.D. from Northwestern University in the Radio-Television-Film department.  He also worked as a print reporter and broadcast news writer in Milwaukee. In his 48-year academic career, he also taught at Mount Mary College, UW-Milwaukee, Middle Tennessee State University, and the University of Michigan.

He was co-creator (with John Bailor) of “Stats + Stories,” a long-running podcast sponsored by Miami University and the American Statistical Association. The podcast won the 2021 Communication Award from the Mathematical Association of America. His other projects have included supporting the digital Oxford Observer and Report for Ohio -- initiatives aimed at getting more young journalists real-world experience and hired to cover under-reported areas in both rural and urban communities. He is also the executive producer of Training for Freedom: How Ordinary People in an Unusual Time & Unlikely Place Made Extraordinary History, a 2019 documentary on Oxford’s role in the historic events of Freedom Summer in 1964.

He grew up in Dayton, Ohio, where in 2015 he served on the city’s planning committee for the 20th anniversary of Dayton Peace Accords. In 2018, his Dayton alma mater, Carroll High School, inducted Campbell into their Alumni Hall of Fame.  In 2019, Campbell received Miami’s Benjamin Harrison Medallion Award "For Outstanding Contribution to the Education of the Nation" and delivered Miami’s winter commencement address.