About the blog and its author

After a run of more than six years beginning in 2014, The 1995 blog is no longer being updated.

Its author is W. Joseph Campbell, Ph.D., a tenured full professor at American University’s School of Communication in Washington, DC. He has written seven solo-authored books, including 1995: The Year the Future Began (2015). He also wrote the provocative media-mythbusting book, Getting It Wrong, which in 2010 won the Society of Professional Journalists’ national award for “Research about Journalism.” A second edition of Getting It Wrong was published in late 2016. His most recent book, Lost in a Gallup (2020), examined polling failures in U.S. presidential elections since 1936.

WJC discussing 1995

In addition, Campbell has written extensively about the yellow press period in America of the late Nineteenth Century.

Campbell earned his doctorate in mass communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1997 and soon thereafter joined the faculty at American University. He entered the academy after 20 years as a professional journalist in an award-winning career that took him across North America to Europe, West Africa, and parts of Asia.

Campbell has lectured at the Library of Congress, the National Press Club, and the Smithsonian Institution. He is a past winner of the “Faculty Member of the Year” award, given by American University’s student government.

He also has received Ohio Wesleyan University’s highest alumni award, the “Distinguished Achievement Citation.”