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Professor Burnis Morris |
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| Burnis R. Morris joined Marshall University in 2003 as the Carter G. Woodson Professor of Journalism and Mass Communications. He has headed the Journalism Division since 2006 and created new courses in copy editing and sports reporting. He is a member of the Marshall University Diversity Committee, Faculty Senate and Executive Committee of the Senate. He is chair of the JMC Diversity Committee and former chair of the Faculty Senate's Student Conduct and Welfare Committee. Nationally, Professor Morris is known for his work to improve news coverage of philanthropy and tax-exempt institutions and has written two books and numerous articles about nonprofits. Journalists at both large and small news organizations frequently seek his advice on how to cover nonprofits. Since 1993, he has received more than $1 million in grants to create workshops and conferences that train journalists who cover nonprofits and other programs designed to increase the number of minority students in journalism. The West Virginia Humanities Council in 2011 awarded him a fellowship to revisit Carter G. Woodson's 1933 classic, "Mis-Education of the Negro." | |
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| About Professor Burnis Morris | |
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As one of the first black journalism students at the University of Mississippi, he founded a black student newspaper, The Spectator, and was the university’s first black student selected for Who’s Who in American Colleges and Universities. He was a New York Times intern, spent 13 years in various reporting, editing and management positions at newspapers owned by Cox Enterprises (The Atlanta Constitution, Austin American-Statesman and Palm Beach Post) and Knight Ridder’s Charlotte Observer. He received a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship for journalists to study modern fiction (University of California, Berkeley) and was a Freedom Forum First Amendment Scholar at Vanderbilt University and the first Samuel Talbert Lecturer, a lectureship named in honor of the second chair of journalism at the University of Mississippi who died during Morris’s student years.
At Marshall, Professor Morris helped create a sports-journalism major and spearheaded the School of Journalism and Mass Communications’ diversity program for recruiting students and hiring faculty. In the classroom, he recreates big-city newsrooms reminiscent of his experiences as an editor, reporter and manager. His upper-division reporting students analyze tax returns and financial audits of nonprofits, examine governmental budgets and attend public hearings on various issues. He even requires first-year news-writing students to conduct Marcel Proust interviews like those found in Vanity Fair magazine. He has taught courses across a wide spectrum in mass communications -- including advanced reporting, public affairs reporting, computer-assisted reporting, mass media history, public relations and women, minorities and the media. |
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| As the 20th Drinko Fellow, Professor Morris will study the life and impact of Dr. Carter G. Woodson, ''The Father of Black History." | |
Drinko Academy =
Marshall University
211 Old Main =
One John Marshall Drive=
Huntington, WV 25755-2014
Email:
drinko@marshall.edu
