Turow, Joseph 1950- (Joseph Gregory Turow)

PERSONAL:

Born April 5, 1950, in New York, NY; son of Abraham (a chemist) and Danuta Turow; married Judith Forrest (a pediatrician), June 17, 1979; children: three. Education: University of Pennsylvania, B.A. (with distinction), 1971, M.A., 1973, Ph.D., 1976. Hobbies and other interests: Viewing residential architecture.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Bala Cynwyd, PA. Office—Annenberg School of Communications, University of Pennsylvania, 3620 Walnut St., Philadelphia, PA 19104-6220. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Communications professor and writer. Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, lecturer in communications, summer, 1974, 1975; Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, assistant professor, 1976-81, associate professor of communications, 1981-86, faculty fellow at Fowler House, 1976-77; University of Pennsylvania, Annenberg School of Communications, Philadelphia, associate professor, 1986-90, professor of communications, 1990—. University of California, Los Angeles, visiting assistant professor, summer, 1980, visiting associate professor, summer, 1985. Member of advisory panel of Indiana Arts Commission, 1980-83; Commonwealth Speaker for Pennsylvania Humanities Council, 1989, 1991; advisory board member, Telecourse Project on Mass Communication, WGBH-TV, Boston, 1989-91; advisory board member, WPBT-TV, Miami, 1991—. Member, communication advisory panel, Please Touch Children's Museum, Philadelphia, 1992-93; member, National Endowment for Children's Educational Television (U.S. Department of Commerce), 1995-97; seminar leader; public speaker; guest on television and radio programs.

MEMBER:

International Communication Association (mass communication division chair, 1993-97), Speech Communication Association of America (division head, 1987), Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Award from Speech Communication Association of America, 1977, for article "Another View of Citizen Feedback to the Mass Media;" David Ross fellowship from Purdue University, 1979, 1980-81; awards from International Communication Association, 1981, for article "Unconventional Programs on Commercial Television: An Organizational Perspective," and 1983, for paper "Corporate Planning Toward the Coming Information Age: How It Will Affect Mass Media Culture;" Russell B. Nye Award for best article, from Journal of Popular Culture, 1982; National Endowment for the Humanities grants, 1986, 1994; University of Pennsylvania Research Foundation grant, 1988-89; Ford Foundation grant, 1996.

WRITINGS:

Program Trends in Network Children's Television, 1948-1978 (monograph), Federal Communications Commission (Washington, DC), 1979.

Getting Books to Children: An Exploration of Publisher-Market Relations, American Library Association (Chicago, IL), 1979.

Entertainment, Education, and the Hard Sell: Three Decades of Network Children's Television, Praeger (New York, NY), 1981.

(Editor) Careers in Mass Media, Science Research Associates (Chicago, IL), 1984.

Media Industries: The Production of News and Entertainment, Longman (New York, NY), 1984.

Playing Doctor: Television, Storytelling, and Medical Power, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1989.

Media Systems in Society: Understanding Industries, Strategies, and Power, Longman (New York, NY), 1992.

Breaking up America: Advertisers and the New Media World, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1997.

Media Today: An Introduction to Mass Communication, Houghton Mifflin Co. (Boston, MA), 1999.

(Editor, with Andrea L. Kavanaugh) The Wired Homestead: An MIT Press Sourcebook on the Internet and the Family, MIT Press (Cambridge, MA), 2003.

Niche Envy: Marketing Discrimination in the Digital Age, MIT Press (Cambridge, MA), 2006.

CONTRIBUTOR

Paul Hirsch, Peter Miller, and F. Gerald Kline, editors, Strategies for Communication Research, Sage Publications (Beverly Hills, CA), 1978.

C. Whitney and James Ettema, editors, Individuals in Mass Media Organizations, Sage Publications (Beverly Hills, CA), 1981.

Robert Bostrom, editor, Communication Yearbook 7, Sage Publications (Beverly Hills, CA), 1983.

W. Rowland and B. Watkins, editors, Interpreting Television, Sage Publications (Beverly Hills, CA), 1985.

Phillip Tompkins and Robert McPhee, editors, Organizational Communication: Traditional Themes and New Directions, Sage Publications (Beverly Hills, CA), 1985.

Clifford Johnson, editor, The Book of Days, Pierian (Ann Arbor, MI), 1987.

Erik Barnouw, editor, The International Encyclopedia of Communication, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1989.

B. Dervin, L. Grossberg, and E. Wartella, editors, Paradigm Dialogues, Sage Publications (Beverly Hills, CA), 1989.

The Academic American Encyclopedia, Grollier, 1989.

B. Ruben and L. Lievrow, editors, Information and Behavior, Transaction Books (New Brunswick, NJ), 1990.

J. Anderson, editor, Communication Yearbook, Sage Publications (Beverly Hills, CA), 1990.

C. Stratos, editor, The World of News, Gnosis Publishing (Athens, Greece), 1991.

J. Curran and M. Gurevitch, editors, Culture, Society, and the Media, 2nd edition, Routledge (New York, NY), 1992.

Lynn Spigel and Michael Curtin, editors, The Revolution Wasn't Televised, Routledge, 1996.

OTHER

Author of "Outtakes," a column in EMMY: The Magazine of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, 1980-82. Contributor of articles and reviews to communications and education journals, including Communication Research Reports, Journal of Broadcasting, Journal of Popular Culture, The Lancet, and Journal of Communication. Member of editorial board, Communication Education, 1978-82, and Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 1985-94, 1996—; advising and contributing editor, Journal of Communication, 1981-91, 1996—; assistant editor, Central States Speech Communication Journal, 1983-85; member of founding editorial board, Critical Studies in Mass Communications, 1984-89; editorial board member, Sage Annual Reviews of Communication Research, 1986—; advising editor, Ablex Communication Book Series, 1988-91.

SIDELIGHTS:

Joseph Turow, a professor of communications at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of Communications in Philadelphia, is the author of more than fifty articles and several books on mass media industries. In 1997's Breaking up America: Advertisers and the New Media World, Turow examines the shift in marketing from mass appeals aimed at most consumers to targeted campaigns directed at specific groups of consumers based upon factors such as age, race, ethnicity, gender, lifestyle, and income. According to David Paull Nickles in the Business History Review, Breaking up America "provides a clearly-written and stimulating examination of the origin, operation, and effect of target marketing." In the book, Turow airs his concerns about the social costs of this type of advertising. Carl Sessions Stepp, in his review of the book for the American Journalism Review, noted that "Turow thoroughly documents target marketing's evolution, and he clearly delineates his concern about its potential social costs." Stepp also felt that "at times, though, Breaking up America comes across as breathlessly naive—as if we should be aghast at the smoking-gun revelation that advertisers prefer some customers to others." Canadian Journal of Sociology's G. Dean Barry believed that "this book will provide an excellent primer into the subject area and Turow's extensive research will go some way toward legitimating these issues within the mainstream sociological and communications/media discourse. The writing is clear and evocative, and the historical and cultural treatment of the topic allows for easy integration into discussions of broad social phenomenon, particularly in terms of political economy."

In 2006's Niche Envy: Marketing Discrimination in the Digital Age, which a Publishers Weekly critic considered a "fascinating and disturbing study," Turow takes a look at the societal effects of the growing use of database marketing. This type of marketing technique involves companies using digital surveillance technology to tap into customers' personal histories and interests for company gain.

Turow told CA: "My primary research and writing revolves around two questions: (1) What forces cause continuity and change in mass media material? and (2) To what extent can publics use those forces to bring about the changes in mass media that they want? The more I learn, the more I realize how complex the answers to these questions are.They are intertwined tightly with the issue of power and control in society. They relate to the broad spectrum of societal resources that define the holders of power and how they use it. And they relate to industrial and organizational processes through which power and control are exercised. Studying this subject is fascinating. Trying to implement changes in the media is more difficult and necessarily frustrating than most people would imagine."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Benet, James, Arlene Daniels, and Gaye Tuchman, editors, Hearth and Home, Oxford University Press, 1978.

Boylan, Robert, Phillip Davison, and T.C. Yu, Mass Media: Systems and Effects, Praeger, 1977.

Greenberg, Bradley, Life on Television, Ablex Publishing (Norwood, NJ), 1980.

PERIODICALS

American Behavioral Scientist, November 1, 1989, "Public Relations Versus Journalism? Comments on Turow," p. 213.

American Journalism Review, July 1, 1997, Carl Sessions Stepp, review of Breaking up America: Advertisers and the New Media World, p. 45.

American Libraries, March, 1983, review of Getting Books to Children: An Exploration of Publisher-Market Relations, p. 131.

Atlantic Monthly, June, 1997, Randall Rothenberg, review of Breaking up America, p. 113.

Business History Review, winter, 1997, David Paull Nickles, review of Breaking up America.

Canadian Journal of Sociology, December 1, 1998, G. Dean Barry, review of Breaking up America, p. 162.

Choice, May, 1998, A.E. Preston, review of Breaking up America, p. 1574; March, 2007, S.A. Schulman, review of Niche Envy: Marketing Discrimination in the Digital Age, p. 1211.

Chronicle of Higher Education, June 27, 1997, review of Breaking up America, p. 18; October 6, 2006, Nina C. Ayoub, review of Niche Envy.

Contemporary Sociology, March, 2000, Patricia L. Gibbs, review of Breaking up America, p. 397.

Food Technology, winter, 1989, review of Playing Doctor: Television, Storytelling, and Medical Power; winter, 1992, review of Media Systems in Society: Understanding Industries, Strategies, and Power; summer, 1993, review of Media Systems in Society.

Journalism and Mass Communication Educator, summer, 1999, Thomas Eveslage, review of Media Today: An Introduction to Mass Communication.

Journalism Quarterly, winter, 1992, Robert O. Blanchard, review of Media Systems in Society.

Journal of American Studies, August, 1991, Gerry Cobb, review of Playing Doctor, p. 279.

Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, spring, 1985, Susan Tyler Eastman, review of Media Industries: The Production of News and Entertainment; spring, 1993, Seth Geiger, review of Media Systems in Society.

Journal of Communication, summer, 1994, John Weispfenning, review of Media Systems in Society.

Journal of Economic Literature, December, 1997, review of Breaking up America, p. 2167.

Journal of Marketing, January, 1999, Herbert J. Rotfeld, review of Breaking up America, p. 121.

Library Quarterly, April, 1980, Jean Karl, review of Getting Books to Children, p. 262.

M2 Best Books, January 3, 2003, "Professor Hopes to De-capitalise ‘Internet’"; December 9, 2003, review of The Wired Homestead: An MIT Press Sourcebook on the Internet and the Family.

Mass Communication and Society, June 22, 1998, Debra Merskin, review of Breaking up America, p. 201.

Medical Humanities, July, 1990, review of Playing Doctor, p. 23.

National Post, October 14, 2006, "Why Retailers Want Your Brain," p. 6.

New York Times, March 25, 1989, Caryn James, review of Playing Doctor, p. 16.

New York Times Book Review, April 9, 1989, Mike Oppenheim, review of Playing Doctor, p. 33.

Philadelphia Inquirer, June 7, 2005, "Different Prices on the Same Web Site Just a Cookie Away."

Publishers Weekly, February 10, 1997, review of Breaking up America, p. 72; August 21, 2006, review of Niche Envy, p. 60.

Television Quarterly, spring, 1989, Brian Rose, review of Playing Doctor.

Television-Radio Age, March 20, 1989, review of Playing Doctor, p. 14.