Journalism historian to discuss Carrie Ingalls' frontier newspaper work

Our August speaker will be Julie Hedgepeth Williams, assistant professor of journalism and mass communication at Samford University. She'll tell us about her new book, "Little Newspapers on the Prairie: The Frontier Press Career of Carrie Ingalls."

Julie Hedgepeth Williams spent most of the 1980s working as a reporter, photographer, editor, and columnist in a small-town daily newspaper in North Carolina. Then she went to grad school in journalism at University of Alabama, where she was fascinated with her media history class. Williams realized she'd have been right at home in a newspaper out on the frontier in the late 1800s/early 1900s, as it was so similar to her small-town press experience. Williams earned a master's degree in journalism and then a PhD in mass communication, both focused on media history. She admits to liking MANY eras in media history, but her latest endeavor has focused on Carrie Ingalls' work in the frontier press. Williams is the past president of the national American Journalism Historians Association, and she teaches part-time at Samford University in Birmingham. She lives in Birmingham's Southside in a house that was built at the same time Carrie was trekking through South Dakota, following newspaper work as settlers moved west.

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