Abstract
Bruce Gronbeck
Dr. Bruce Gronbeck, a former University of Iowa professor who has been described as one of the most prominent scholars of rhetoric and media died Wednesday, September 10, 2014. He was seventy-three.
Gronbeck resided in Longmont, Colorado, and died in Iowa City where he had been honored at various alumni functions. The day before his death, he spoke at an alumni celebration at the Old Capitol Museum and was honored by the Department of Communication Studies later that evening.
Gronbeck received a master’s degree from the University of Iowa in 1965 and a doctoral degree in 1970. He began teaching at the University of Iowa in 1978 and retired from the university in 2008. He had chaired the Department of Communication Studies for six years and had served on the Faculty Senate and various committees. He had taught at several universities, including the University of Michigan. His research interests included the effects of new media on political campaigns, image management during media crises, and the effects of political advertising on citizens’ perceptions of the United States.
The author or editor of four scholarly books, eight textbooks and sixty articles, he had received the National Communication Association Mentor Award in 2002 and the University of Iowa Outstanding Graduate Mentor Award in 2006. He was a Fulbright Senior Specialist in Norway and Finland. He delivered lectures in Sweden and was invited to speak in Italy and Slovenia as well as throughout the United States.
Dr. Gronbeck volunteered at Iowa City Hospice, served as a mentor with Big Brothers Big Sisters, and was a caucus convener and poll watcher.
His wife Wendy survives him.
Stephen D. Isaacs
Stephen (Steve) D. Isaacs, who joined Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in 1988 where he taught and served as associate dean of academic affairs until his retirement in 2012, died in Austin, Texas, on August 28, 2014. He was seventy-six.
Mr. Isaacs grew up in a newspaper family. His father, Norman E. Isaacs, was editor of The Courier-Journal and The Louisville Times, Kentucky, and also served at Columbia where he, too, had been associate dean of academic affairs. His mother, Dorothy Ritz, was a journalist and wrote under her maiden name for The Los Angeles Times Syndicate.
When he joined The Washington Post in 1961, two years after graduating from Harvard, Stephen Isaacs already had newspaper experience, having worked in London for The Guardian and The Economist, and, at twenty-one, as financial editor of The Louisville Times in Kentucky. At age twenty-six, he became city editor of the Post and later moved on to other roles during his seventeen years at the paper, including New York bureau chief, political reporter, and editor of its Sunday magazine. He also directed The Los Angeles Times/Washington Post News Service.
In 1978, the thirty-nine-year-old Mr. Isaacs left the Post to become editor of The Minneapolis Star, then an afternoon paper with declining circulation. He left four years later, after the Star merged with The Minneapolis Tribune.
Mr. Isaacs worked at the CBS morning news program and other CBS News programs in the 1980s before joining the faculty at Columbia. He was a popular professor who taught classes on writing and ethics and who served as an associate and acting dean. He famously challenged students to develop one hundred story ideas from a can of Tab, a test designed to show that many stories can be found in the most mundane places. He became a professor emeritus in 2012.
Mr. Isaacs is survived by his longtime partner, Suzanne Freeman; his son, David; two daughters, Debbie Jacobson and Sharon Isaacs; and five grandchildren. His marriage to the former Diane M. Scharfeld ended in divorce.