John Calhoun Merrill Papers

Personal correspondence, speeches and lectures, photographs, manuscripts of articles and papers, publications and other materials documenting the career, research and writings of John Calhoun Merrill, journalist, media scholar and author of scholarly papers and books. John C. Merrill was born in 1924 in Yazoo City, Mississippi, and is a retired Journalism Professor Emeritus from the University of Missouri-Columbia. Merrill is a 1949 graduate of Delta State University. He began his career officially as a wire editor for the Clarion-Ledger although he first worked as a high school student for Hodding Carter's Delta Democrat Times just before serving in World War II. Merrill also worked for the Bolivar Commercial in Cleveland before earning his Master of Arts degree and PhD and turning to journalism education. Among Merrill's books are Existential Journalism; Media, Messages and Men; The Imperative of Freedom: A Philosophy of Journalistic Autonomy; and The Elite Press. Merrill also wrote the first U.S. textbook on international journalism and is a senior fellow at the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center in New York. In 1970 Merrill won the University of Missouri Outstanding Journalism Teacher Award and in 1971 was selected as an outstanding alumnus by the Delta State University Alumni Association.