VCU news

By VCU News staff

Karen McIntyre, Ph.D., an associate professor of journalism and director of graduate studies at the Richard T. Robertson School of Media and Culture in the College of Humanities and Sciences, has been named the recipient of the 2021 Hillier Krieghbaum Under-40 Award by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

The award recognizes a member of the association who is under 40 and has shown outstanding achievement and effort in areas of teaching, research and public service. Founded in 1912, the association is the oldest and largest alliance of journalism and mass communication educators and administrators at the college level.

“I was thrilled to receive this award,” McIntyre said. “It was humbling to join the list of previous recipients, several of whom I admire and whose work I regularly cite.”

McInyre’s international and interdisciplinary research focuses on journalism processes and effects. Specifically, she studies constructive journalism, an emerging form of journalism that involves applying positive psychology techniques to the news process in an effort to create more productive and solution-focused stories. She also studies press freedom and journalism practices in East Africa. She was a 2018-19 Fulbright scholar in Rwanda, where she studied press freedom, public trust in the media and journalism education and training.

A book co-edited by McIntyre, “Reporting Beyond the Problem: From Civic Journalism to Solutions Journalism,” was published in the spring. It explores a variety of journalistic genres that cover the news in ways other than the traditional problem-based narrative.

McIntyre’s research has been published in journals including Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Journalism Studies and Journalism.

Prior to joining academia, McIntyre was a print and multimedia journalist in California and abroad.