In November of 1999, the Seigenthaler Chair of Excellence brought 75 scholars and journalists to campus for a two-day conference devoted to Michael Schudson's book The Good Citizen: A History of American Civic Life. The Good Citizen is a book of great sweep that interprets the changing meaning of citzenship throughout U. S. history. Schudson argues that Americans have developed three approaches to being a good citizen, with a fourth emerging, as we have fashioned a public life together over three centuries. He finds in this history not a simple story of progress or decline but a varied one of changing circumstances and responses. And he argues that this variety offers a hopeful vision for the future of democracy.

For two days, political scientists, media specialists, historians, sociologists, and journalists reflected on the meaning of Schudson's book for how we think about public life and the role of the mass media in it. The first day was devoted to formal papers. Those papers and the responses to them are represented here. The second day we followed a looser format with a panel on Journalism and the Changing Meaning of Citizenship that included Jay Rosen of New York University, Peter Parisi of Hunter College. Walter Dean of the Pew Center for Civic Journalism, Cole Campbell, editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and Gene Roberts of the University of Maryland. There was also a closing panel that featured Schudson and the presenters from the first day. The Saturday panels featured short presentations with more interaction and are not represented here.

The conference proceedings will be featured in an upcoming issue of Communication Review.

If you would like more information about the conference or other Seigenthaler conferences, please write to me at deason@mtsu.edu