Wilbur Schramm
| Wilbur Schramm | |
|---|---|
| Born | Wilbur Lang Schramm August 5, 1907 Marietta, Ohio |
| Died | December 27, 1987 (aged 80) Honolulu, Hawaii |
| Occupation | Journalist, writer, academic |
| Language | English |
| Education | B.A., Marietta College M.A., Harvard University Ph.D., University of Iowa |
| Notable works | Mass Media and National Development |
| Notable awards | O. Henry Prize |
Wilbur Lang Schramm (August 5, 1907 – December 27, 1987), was a scholar and "authority on mass communications". He founded the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1935 and served as its first director until 1941. Schramm was hugely influential in establishing communications as a field of study in the United States, and the establishing of departments of communication studies across U.S. universities. Wilbur Schramm is considered the founder of the field of Communication Studies. He was the first individual to identify himself as a communication scholar; he created the first academic degree-granting programs with communication in their name; and he trained the first generation of communication scholars. Schramm's mass communication program in the Iowa School of Journalism was a pilot project for the doctoral program and for the communication research institute he founded in 1947 at Urbana. At Illinois, Wilbur Schramm set in motion the patterns of scholarly work in communication study that continue to this day.
Schramm was born in Marietta, Ohio, to a musical, middle-class family whose ancestry hailed from Schrammburg, Germany. His father Arch Schramm played the violin, his mother Louise the piano, and Wilbur Schramm himself played the flute. His father was a lawyer in Marietta, Ohio . Due to their Teutonic name, his father's legal practice suffered. Wilbur Schramm "suffered from a stammer which at times severely hampered his speech, and which he never fully conquered". Schramm developed a severe stutter at age five due to an improperly performed tonsillectomy. Schramm's stutter was traumatic to him and he avoided speaking in public because of it. Instead of giving the valedictory address at his high school graduation, Schramm played the flute.
He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Marietta College, where he received a bachelor's degree in political science while working as a reporter and editor at The Marietta Daily Herald. When he graduated summa cum laude from Marietta College in history and political science in 1929, he did give a valedictory speech. He received a master's degree in American civilization from Harvard University, where he worked as a reporter for The Boston Herald.
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