Christopher R. Martin

Chris's research critically analyzes how the news media cover labor and class issues. His most recent book, No Longer Newsworthy: How the Mainstream Media Abandoned the Working Class (Cornell University Press, 2019), explores how the mainstream media have largely ignored the American working class since the 1970s in favor of "upscale" audiences. The book is one of Choice’s “Outstanding Academic Titles, 2019” and winner of the 2020 C.L.R. James Award from the Working Class Studies Association. Chris is also author of Framed! Labor and the Corporate Media (Cornell University Press, 2004), an award-winning book on how labor unions are covered in the news media.

He is also a contributing scholar for the D.C.-based Open Markets Institute’s new Center for Journalism & Liberty, and a regular contributor to the Working-Class Perspectives blog, which is housed in the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University. His work has also been published in places like Journalism Studies, Journal of Communication Inquiry, Communication Research, Labor Research Journal, Popular Music and Society, Journal of Communication, Perspectives on Politics, Z magazine, In These Times, Editor & Publisher, Nieman Reports, and HuffPost. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Communication Inquiry. With Richard Campbell and Bettina Fabos, Chris is co-author of the Media and Culture: Mass Communication in a Digital Age textbook (Bedford/St. Martin's, 2022), now in its 13th edition, and Media Essentials (Bedford/St. Martin's, 2020), in its 5th edition.

He previously taught at Miami University (Ohio), and has been a visiting instructor at the University of Klagenfurt in Austria. His teaching interests include mass communication, news reporting and writing, and ethics, and he actively contributes to the graduate program. His teaching and research, and community awards include the State of Iowa’s Board of Regents Award for Faculty Excellence (2004), the College of Humanities and Fine Arts Faculty Excellence Award (2010), and the Veridian Community Engagement Award (2011). He also chairs the Board of Directors of the Northern Iowan newspaper at UNI and advises the newspaper as well, is president of United Faculty, and serves on the boards of the College Hill Partnership in Cedar Falls and Iowa Public Radio.