Based on a seminar series at the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center at Columbia University, USA, this text examines the origins, meaning and impact of media and communication research in America, with links to European antecedents. The book collects essays, commentaries and reports.

This book captures the essence of a never-to-be-repeated glimpse at the history of media research. It offers a unique examination of the origins, meaning, and impact of media and communication research in America, with links to European antecedents. Based on a high-level seminar series at Columbia University's Freedom Forum Media Studies Center, the book features work by leading scholars, researchers, and media executives. Participants in the series have called the program "heroic and unprecedented." The book encompasses essays, commentaries, and reports by such leading figures as William McGuire, Elihu Katz, and Leo Bogart, plus posthumous reports by Wilbur Schramm, Malcolm Beville, and Hilde Himmelweit. It also contains original insights on the collaboration of Frank Stanton, Paul Lazarfeld, and Robert K. Merton.

"Here is an interesting, readable, and personalized history of communication study, written by 14 chapter authors who had direct contact with the founders and forerunners of the field."—Journal of Communication"...(this book) is a more ambitious book, one that collects lectures made over the past decade at the Freedom Forum (formerly Gannett Center) in New York, concerning the development of the field. As a reference book it deserves a place on a scholar's bookshelf."—Journal of Braodcasting & Electronic Media