Gutgsell Endowed Chair: Robert W. McChesney

Robert W. McChesney studies the history and political economy of media. He is the president and co-founder of Free Press, the national media reform organization. McChesney hosts the “Media Matters” weekly radio program every Sunday afternoon on WILL-AM. McChesney has written or edited seventeen books. McChesney’s most recent book is Communication Revolution: Critical Junctures and the Future of Media, published by New Press in fall 2007. A companion book, The Political Economy of Media: Enduring Issues, Emerging Dilemmas (Monthly Review Press), will appear in autumn 2008. His other recent books include: The Problem of the Media: U.S. Communication Politics in the 21st Century (2004); the award-winning Telecommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy: The Battle for the Control of U.S. Broadcasting, 1928-1935 (1993); and  the multiple award-winning Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times (1999). McChesney has also written some 150 journal articles and book chapters and another 200 newspaper pieces, magazine articles and book reviews.  His work has been translated into fourteen languages. Since launching his academic career in the late 1980s, McChesney has made some 600 conference presentations and guest lectures. McChesney co-edits the History of Communication Series for the University of Illinois Press. While teaching at Wisconsin, he was selected as one of the top 100 classroom teachers on the Madison campus. From 2000 to 2004 he co-edited Monthly Review, the independent socialist magazine founded by Paul Sweezy and Leo Huberman in 1949. Prior to entering graduate school, McChesney in 1979 was the founding publisher of The Rocket, a Seattle-based rock magazine. At the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in McChesney's hometown of Cleveland, the founding of The Rocket is credited as the birth of the Seattle rock scene of the late 1980s and 1990s. In his spare time, McChesney writes on professional basketball.