Prof K research & writing

This is one of those AI photo conversions using the Studio Ghibli style. We were talking about the copyright issues in media law class, so I decided to try it.

William (Bill) Kovarik, PhD, is an historian and a professor at Radford University. His research involves science, technology and communications, and his professional background involves reporting and editing for daily newspapers, national news magazines, wire services and environmental publications. In 2021 he was  named among the leading pioneers of environmental journalism by Environmental Health News.

Education: Kovarik earned a Bachelor of Science in Journalism at VCU in Richmond, Virginia; an MA in communication at the University of South Carolina; and a PhD in communication at the University of Maryland.  His research is located at the intersections of media history, media technology, science communication and international development. His  dissertation involved research into the  media coverage of a preventable environmental disaster (Ethyl leaded gasoline) and the use of media history to uncover previously inaccessible and unknown events in environmental history. Kovarik also studied international comparative media law as a post-doctoral fellow at the Oxford PCMLP Summer Institute. 

Media career:  Kovarik worked with wire services,  daily newspapers, national news magazines and the environmental press. These included the Associated Press, the Baltimore Sun, the Charleston SC Post-Courier, columnist Jack Anderson,  the New York Times, Time Magazine and Time-Life Books, among other mainstream media organizations.  He began his career as editor and publisher of the Chesterfield News Journal, a weekly newspaper.  He has also served as editor of Energy Resources and Technology, Latin American Energy Report, Appropriate Technology, New River Voice and Appalachian Voice.

Professional service:  Kovarik was elected as an academic representative on the board of directors of the Society of Environmental Journalists and also served on the board of  Appalachian Voices and the academic advisory board for the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism and the Virginia Press Association FOIA task force. He is the faculty advisor for the Tartan newspaper and other student publications. He has also served as a consultant to the Virginia Mountaineer (Grundy, Va) and Floyd (Va) Community Media. He is also a contributing historian on a United Nations Foundation expert panel.

University and teaching service: Kovarik has served for more than three decades as a professor at Radford University — a public university that was once part of Virginia Tech. He has also served as an instructor at the University of Maryland and the University of South Carolina; as a visiting professor at Virginia Tech, the University of Western Ontario in London, and the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia;  and as a professor at Unity College in Maine; and an instructor in media history for Springhouse School and the Virginia Governor’s School for the Humanities. He is also a regular instructor at the annual Roanoke Regional Writers Conference at Hollins University. Kovarik also served as a writing coach and ethics instructor at Virginia Tech in the Dept. of Chemical Engineering and the Bioinformatics Institute.

Books & Publications:  “The Forbidden Fuel” (1982,  republished 2010) with Hal Bernton and Scott Sklar), The Ethyl Controversy (1993); “Mass Media and Environmental Conflict” (1996, with Mark Neuzil, Sage); “Web Design for the Mass Media” (2001, Pearson) and “Revolutions in Communication” (2011, 2016, Bloomsbury, with a 3rd edition scheduled for 2025).

Media and Environmental Law:   Prof. Kovarik has provided expert  testimony in lawsuits involving environmental history issues for Peter Angelos LLC and for Lloyds of London, and in lawsuits involving defamation and freedom of information issues in Virginia and West Virginia.    

Kudos for environmental history: 

“I’d like to personally thank Prof Bill Kovarik, who is also a subscriber, for his work on this subject. He and a small band of like-minded individuals have produced the vast majority of authoritative scientific accounts, data, and research on Leaded Petrol exposure, and have been on a lonely mission to inform the world of the damage that has been done to so many by the greed of so few…” Nicholas Kircher, A Chemical Mind podcast.  April 9, 2025.

“My research stands on the shoulders of prior scholars who have devoted their careers to the subjects in this book. I could not have written this without Bill Kovarik, with his encyclopedic recall of Ethyl history …” Daniel Stone, American Poison, Penguin Random House, February 2025.

When it came time to make the attempt to capture in words the horror that was producing tetra-ethyl lead in the 1920s, I turned to Bill Kovarik, PhD. Dr. Kovarik is professor in the School of Communication at Radford University. He is also today’s finest authority on the dark history of leaded gasoline and the still-present global environmental disaster it brought about… We thank Bill for graciously allowing us to work into our story his detailed description of the tetra-ethyl lead manufacturing process as it existed in the 1920s. That process, carried out by workers who were kept in the dark about its risks as long as possible, is downright terrifying. Thanks, Bill, for the specifics and the accuracy. — Swirled all the way to the shrub by Rick Wilson and Tom Bentley. 

Plaudits for media history: 

“A stunning work of research, [Revolutions in Communication] conveys intellectual excitement and stimulates creative thinking about the social construction of communication.” ―Maurine H. Beasley, Professor Emerita of Journalism, Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland College Park, USA

“I could almost imagine myself standing next to William Caxton as the newly inked printed pages of the Canterbury Tales began to accumulate on the table next to his printing machine. Bill Kovarik’s latest work on the history of the media has brought together under one academic roof the role of technology and how it has shaped our way of life and our world. He deserves full credit for the way his words take on both colour and a sense of adventure. This work belongs on the book shelves of any university or college program in which the study of technology and its companion media has a central focus. Let it be said that Kovarik’s readers will never suffer a dull moment in this beautifully tailored work as he walks through some of the most important history of the age from the iPad to the cell phone to the Internet.” ―David R. Spencer, Professor of Information and Media Studies, University of Western Ontario, Canada

“Kovarik has the most complete understanding of media technology among journalism historians working today. It is a very interesting and useful work.” ―Mark Neuzil, Professor of Communication and Journalism, University of St. Thomas

“As an historian of both technology and the media, Bill Kovarik has made a unique contribution to our understanding of communication history. He explains how the print, visual, electronic, and digital technological revolutions have shaped communication. Equally important, he shows that that new technologies have been invented to overcome the limitations of existing media. This is fascinating reading, both for communication scholars and historians.” ―James E. Grunig, Professor Emeritus of Communication, University of Maryland, USA

“A clear benefit of the second edition Revolutions in Communication is its focus on recent technological revolutions in media. As I tell my undergraduate media history students on the first day, the one constant in professional journalism and related fields is technological change. Seeing how people in the past have dealt with change, as outlined in Kovarik’s book, offers a way of keeping history relevant while grappling with shifts in media technologies.” ―Jane Marcellus, Professor of Journalism, Middle Tennessee State University, USA

“A solid and very accessible textbook. The first edition of Revolutions in Communication does an excellent job in introducing a wide range of topics, and while the second edition maintains that, it further introduces a level of international orientation that is extremely important and welcome.” ―Glenn Ruhl, Professor in Communication Studies, Mount Royal University, Canada

“This text offers a very good and useful survey of communications systems and developments that underpins the importance of understanding the historical context.” ―Sheryl Wilson, University of the West of England, UK. 

“Revolutions in Communication does what few introductory media textbooks can-it captures and engages the attention of undergraduate students through savvy exploration of the major milestones in media history and the dramatic curves in the road that some navigated, and others neglected. It is the story of circumventing technologies bypassing legal and institutional barriers and information monopolies to bring media content to mass audiences for the first time at signal moments in human history. The creativity and ingenuity of technological discovery appear alongside media’s darker uses by monopolists and propagandists. All are meticulously set in their industrial and legal contexts, often roiling with contention sparking social and political transformation-from the Protestant Reformation to the digital revolution-that would forever change the world.” ―David Dowling, Professor, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Iowa, USA

“Kovarik’s book has become a staple of media history courses across the world since its first edition. This third edition goes even further and deeper in its research scope with a comparative historical approach and with rich updated examples on all types of media technology. A must read for the public and students of all ages alike.” ―Murat Akser, Senior Lecturer in Screen Production, Ulster University, UK

“The publication briefly and clearly, yet insightfully describes the development of communication and media history from antiquity to the current present, from the first drawings in caves and the birth of the first written systems to the world of social networks today. The book presents a readable text explaining the turning points on this journey in a way that allows them to be understood even by those who have been distant from communication and media history. Therein lies the main prize of this book.” ―Pavel Vecera, Assistant Professor, Masaryk University, Czech Republic 

prof. Kovarik’s books & projects 

The Forbidden Fuel: A History of Power Alcohol Mass Media and Environmental Conflict (1997) Web Design for Mass Media Revolutions in Communication: Media History from Gutenberg to the Digital AgeFirstAmend.book.cover2ndEd

Publications & Public service 

Major research projects

     Media history research

  • “International Environmental Journalism,” (noted above)
  • “Civil rights and the press,”  web feature for Revolutions in Communication, 3rd edition under development for Bloomsbury.
  • “Life in the old print shop,” feature section from Revolutions in Communication, 2017.  Subject of guest lectures via skype at NYU, Ball State and other history classes using Revolutions in Communication as a textbook.
  • “The Industrial printing revolution,”  feature section from Revolutions in Communication, 2015.
  • “E.W. Scripps and science: The unconventional ideas behind the founding of the science service and the Scripps Institute of Oceanography,” feature section from Revolutions in Communication, 2015.
  • “Street Press of the Velvet Revolution,”  feature section from Revolutions in Communication, 2016.
  • The confluence of newspapers and the environment in the early 20th century.  Looking at the news coverage of selected public health and conservation issues in the 1899 – 1932 period, we see a striking bipolar distribution, indicating a revival of Progressive era concerns late in the 1920s and the ubiquity of environmental controversy. This is a paper from the 1998 conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications.
  • Exploring the Lost History of Environmental Conflict Before Silent Spring. Presentation to the Communication Studies Seminar Series Virginia Tech September 25, 1998.
  • Environmental History Timeline helps remind us of the traditions of reform and the roots of conservation. This was originally a guide for our use when Mark Neuzil and I wrote Mass Media and Environmental Conflict in 1996. Since then it has taken on a life of its own on the web.
  • The editor who tried to stop the Civil War: Hezekiah Niles and the New South describes the efforts of one Baltimore editor to reconcile opposing views in the 1820 – 1833 period. He clearly foresaw civil war and proposed a course of economic development for the South which was, perhaps not surprisingly, adopted after the war by Southern progressives, including Atlanta editor Henry Grady. The paper was published in American Journalism in 1992 and has been slightly updated since then.
  • Niles Weekly Register Encyclopedia of Journalism History, 2006 — Niles’ concept of news embraced the broadest scope of human experience. His Register kept close track of economics, technology, science, medicine, geography, archaeology, the weather, and many stories of human interest. There was, for example, a dog who rescued another dog from a river. There was the case of a blind woman restored to sight, and another of a slave who killed himself rather than be sold at the slave market. Niles printed many items about ballooning and predicted that someday man would build machines to fly (although he doubted that steam engines could propel them).

  • Photo courtesy Rex Wyler.

    Greenpeace Entry in the Encyclopedia of Science and Technology Communication, 2009 — Greenpeace raised street theater and protest tactics to a new level using global media. The effect, according to Greenpeace co-founder Robert Hunter, was a “mind bomb” – that is, an action that would create a dramatic new impression to replace an old cliché.  The most obvious example of a  “mind bomb” was to overturn the image of heroic whalers to that of heroic ecologists risking their lives to save the gentle giants of the sea.  This approach caught the world’s attention and dramatically changed the political terrain for commercial fishing and whaling operations after Greenpeace’s first whaling protests in June of 1975.

  • Environmental Sourcebook, Center for Foreign Journalists, Scientists Institute for Public  Information, Society of Environmental Journalists, 1992-94
  • The Ethyl Controversy, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of, 1993. (pdf)   After 17 refinery workers went barking mad from lead poisoning, public health officials demanded answers from Standard Oil and General Motors. They claimed there were no alternatives, although they had patented several dozen. Two scientists —  Alice Hamilton of Harvard and Yendell Henderson of Yale — stood up to the industry, demanding that the government take precautions, but they were unable to keep the profitable poison off the market.  (It was finally banned in the US in the late 1970s). Although industry blamed the media for highly sensational accounts of the disaster, a closer look shows that science writers of the 1920s were able to perform their basic responsibility under democratic theory, which was to uncover facts and present a variety of opinions. What they were not able to do was fathom the technological complexities at the base of the controversy. 
  • A Survey of Central American News Media Hardware, Intercommunication and Development needs: Paper presented to the Eighth Annual Conference on Intercultural and International Communication, Miami, Fla. Feb. 22, 1991. These are the results of a study by the International Center for Foreign Journalists concerning media technology needs in Central America.
  • Dr North and the Kansas City Milk War: Public Health Advocacy Collides with Main Street Respectability, Paper to The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications (AEJMC) 1989. This is about a New York physician and public health expert who used yellow journalism tactics to force pasteurization on the milk industry of Kansas city in the 1920s.

    ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY Research 

Professional service

  • Society of Environmental Journalists — Board of Directors 2004 – 2010;  Conference Chair, Roanoke, 2008, hosted by Virginia Tech; Also tour leader, panel chair, educational coordinator;  Pittsburgh coal history tour leader, Oct. 2018; New Orleans day-long workshop leader, Sept. 2013, Chemicals in the environment; Lubbock Texas, October 2012, Reporting wind power tour, book publishing panels; Chattanooga, TN: October 2013, citizen science panel; New Orleans, La: chemical disaster workshop panel; many others. Also see Education for Environmental Journalism, SEJ web site. 
  • Speaker for:   First Amendment rally, Floyd Ec0-village, Feb. 2017;  “Art, identity and media in Appalachia,” presentation to the Grayson County Land Care group, June 20, 2016;
    History of Renewable Energy, Unity College, 2015;  American Chemical Society conference, Pittsburgh PA, October, 2012 panel on the media and Rachel Carson; Elderstudy, “Radio Time Machine,” 2011. Many others.
  • Guest instructor, Hollins University Writers Conference:  2012, 2013, 2014, on technology and writing; 2016 on Writing in the Gothic South;    2019 on communications technology and community media; and 2025  Writing Ghost Stories.
  • Book production for “Head of Lettuce,” “Blood on the Horns,” and other books.   Cover Design  and other production work for Glen Martin’s Global Democracy and Human Self-Transcendence: The Power of the Future for Planetary Transformation, Cambridge Scholars, 2018.

Interviews & Citations,  2001-2021

“The oil industry was born with the silver spoon of subsidy firmly wedged between its little teeth. It was not born in the spirit of free competition that they like to tell you about all the time. So energy is really political, and it was always political from the very beginning…” — Prof. K, From Freedom Fuels, starring Daryl Hannah, Willie Nelson, John Stewart, Homer Simpson, Woody Harrelson and Prof. Kovarik.