About the blog and its author

After a run of more than six years that began in 2014, The 1995 blog is no longer being updated.

The blog was written by W. Joseph Campbell, Ph.D., professor emeritus of communication at American University in Washington, DC. He is the author of seven non-fiction books, including 1995: The Year the Future Began (2015).

Campbell 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 (editions published in 2020 and 2024), examined prominent 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 has been interviewed by numerous U.S. and international news organizations, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, C-SPAN, the BBC, CNN, Fox Business News, NPR, Asahi Shimbun in Tokyo, the Globe & Mail in Toronto, La Nación in Argentina, El Mercurio in Chile, and Neue Zürcher Zeitung in Switzerland..

In 2014, Campbell received Ohio Wesleyan University’s highest alumni award, the “Distinguished Achievement Citation.” He also is a recipient of the lifetime achievement award of the American Journalism Historians Association.