Yong Volz

Faculty Group Chair, Journalism Studies

Yong Volz Download High-Resolution Photo

Doctoral Faculty, Faculty Chair, Journalism Studies

Associate Professor

107 Neff Hall

Missouri School of Journalism

Columbia, Mo. 65211
(573) 882-2159
Education

B.A. and M.A. in Journalism, Renmin University of China
M.Phil. in Communication, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Ph.D. in Mass Communication, with minor in History, University of Minnesota

Areas of Expertise
  • Journalism History
  • Gender, Race and Professional Identity
  • Research Methodologies
  • Media Sociology

YONG VOLZ (张咏) is the Roger Gafke Distinguished Faculty Fellow and is chair of the Journalism Studies faculty at the Missouri School of Journalism. 

She currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, where she chairs the Standing Committee on Research. She is the immediate past president of the Chinese Communication Association and a former Board member of the American Journalism Historians Association (AJHA). Additionally, she serves on the editorial boards of several academic journals and co-edits the “Journalism in Perspective” book series, published by the University of Missouri Press.

Volz’s research centers on journalists and their place in society and history. Working primarily in the tradition of historical and comparative sociology, her research explores the formation of journalists as a distinctive occupational group, especially concerning gender, race, and the impact of social movements on the collective construction of journalistic identity.  She has examined empirical cases spanning three centuries from both the United States and China. Her published work addresses the elite formation of U.S. foreign correspondents, gender disparities among Pulitzer Prize winners, American women journalists in the post-feminist era, pioneers in U.S. journalism education and their transcultural practices, Western missionary journalists in late nineteenth-century China, and the first generation of Chinese women journalists in the early twentieth century, among other topics.

Volz’s methodological repertoire encompasses qualitative, quantitative, and historical, including archival research, oral histories, interviews, discourse analysis, quantitative content analysis, collective biography, and various forms of statistical analysis. Her work has appeared in journals such as Journalism, Journalism Studies, Journalism Practice, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Media, Culture & Society, International Communication Gazette, American Journalism, and International Journal of Advertising.

Volz has earned top paper awards from AEJMC and won the Asian Journal of Communication Best Paper Award for International Communication Research. Since coming to Missouri, Volz has received a number of research fellowships, visiting scholarships and professorships from universities and institutions in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China.  Additionally, she has received research grants from AJHA, AEJMC (with A. Hinnant and R. Thomas), and CCKF for International Scholarly Exchange.  She was also a 2013-14 Reynolds Journalism Institute Faculty Fellow, during which time she completed an oral history project — Herstory — bringing to light the experiences of senior women journalists across the country (http://herstory.rjionline.org/).

Volz teaches at all three levels: undergraduate, master’s and doctoral. At Missouri, she has served on more than 60 dissertation committees and 100 master’s thesis and project committees. Her teaching, advising and mentorship has been widely recognized.  She received the 2017 University of Missouri Alumnae Anniversary Faculty Award for her “teaching excellence and contributions to the education of women,” the 2020 Jordan Hoyt Tribute to Women Award for “contributing to an environment of equity, fairness and justice for women on the MU campus,” the 2021 Ann K. Covington Award for Undergraduate Mentoring for her “outstanding contributions to fellowships applicants.”  She was also the 2018 winner of Adviser of the Year from Kappa Tau Alpha National Honor Society for Journalism and Communication. Most recently, she received a 2021 Faculty-Alumni Award from the Mizzou Alumni Association and the 2022 O.O. McIntyre Professorship for Teaching Excellence.

Born in Beijing and raised in Shanghai, Volz received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism from Renmin University of China, where she also self-studied law and passed China’s National Judicial Exam.  She received a master’s degree in communication from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and a doctoral degree in mass communication with a minor in history from the University of Minnesota, where she received several scholarships and the university-wide dissertation fellowship. 

Reynolds Faculty Fellowships; Roger Gafke Faculty Fellow

Established in 2014 by the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation, the Reynolds Faculty Fellowship was established to help recruit and retain talented faculty at the Missouri School of Journalism. The Fellowship provides support for scholarship and research, in addition to salary enhancement. Donald W. Reynolds was a 1927 graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism and spent his life building the Donrey Media Group, ultimately owning more than 100 enterprises in the newspaper, radio, television, cable television and outdoor advertising industries. The Foundation is allowing up to 50 third-party donors to create individual Fellowships. The Roger Gafke Faculty Fellow is named for Roger Gafke, the retired director of program development for the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute and professor emeritus at the Missouri School of Journalism. The fellowship is a gift of the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation.

Recent Awards

  • 2022 O.O.McIntyre Professorship for Teaching Excellence, Missouri School of Journalism
  • 2021 Faculty-Alumni Award, Mizzou Alumni Association
  • 2021 Ann K. Covington Award for Mentoring, University of Missouri Fellowships Office
  • 2020-21 Manuel T. Pacheco Leadership Development Program, University of Missouri System
  • 2020 Jordan Hoyt Tribute to Women Award for “contributing to an environment of equity, fairness and justice for women on the MU campus, demonstrated respect for the diversity of women’s experiences, and helped promoted the advancement of women through education, advocacy, support and activism,” University of Missouri Chancellor’s Status of Women Committee
  • 2018-19 Fellow, Institute for Diverse Leadership, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication
  • 2018 Adviser of the Year/William H. Taft Outstanding Adviser Award, Kappa Tau Alpha National Honor Society in Journalism and Mass Communication
  • 2017 Outstanding Service Award, Chinese Communication Association
  • 2017 Alumnae Anniversary Faculty Award for the Recognition of Faculty Women, University of Missouri

Recent Publications

  • Yong Volz (2021), “Journalism as a Vocation: Liang Qichao and the Contested Ideas of Journalism, 1890s-1900s,” Global Media Journal 8 (2): 107-152.
  • Yong Volz, Chin-Chuan Lee et al. (2020). “Roundtable: Internationalizing Media History: The Curious Case of China,” Historiography in Mass Communication, 6 (3): 39-62.
  • Teri Finneman & Yong Volz (2020). “Leading the Second Wave into the Third Wave: U.S. Women Journalists and Discursive Continuity of Feminism,” Feminist Media Studies, 20 (6): 863-878.
  • Yong Volz & Lei Guo (2019). “Making China Their ‘Beat’: A Collective Biography of U.S. Correspondents in China, 1900–1949,” American Journalism, 36 (4): 437-496.
  • Lei Guo and Yong Volz (2019). “(Re)Defining Journalistic Expertise in the Digital Transformation: A Content Analysis of Job Announcements,” Journalism Practice, 13 (10): 1294-1315.
  • Joy Jenkins, Yong Volz, et al. (2018). “Reconstructing Collective Professional Identity: A Case Study of a Women Journalist Association in the Post-Second Wave Feminist Movement in the United States,” Media, Culture & Society, 40 (4): 600-616.

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Updated: October 9, 2024