Sharon Bramlett-Solomon, Associate Professor

Sharon Bramlett-Solomon teaches journalism and mass communication courses in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University and was recently named the Lincoln Center of Applied Ethics Professor of Media & Culture.

Her professional background includes seven years in newspaper reporting, public relations and radio advertising sales. She formerly worked as a reporter for the Memphis Commercial Appeal and Louisville Courier-Journal newspapers. She also served as public information director for the Memphis Urban League and worked as an account executive at WDIA radio station in Memphis.

Her research focuses on audience effects of race representation in U.S. media, and she has presented and/or published more than 100 scholarly papers in this area. She also has published studies on aging and online news diffusion. Her articles have appeared in numerous prominent scholarly journals, including Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Newspaper Research Journal, Southwestern Journal of Communication, Mass Communication & Society, The Howard Journal of Communication, Journalism and Mass Communication Educator, and The Journal of Children and Media. In addition to numerous published book chapters, she also has published articles in a number of popular magazines and newspapers, including the Arizona Republic, the East Valley Tribune, Arizona Informant, Louisville magazine, Focus magazine, Essence magazine and Today's Arizona Woman.

She was a graduate fellow at Indiana University, where she taught reporting courses and earned her Ph.D. in 1987. She teaches news writing, advanced reporting, race, gender and media, ethics and diversity and a graduate media theories course. She founded and served as coordinator and adviser to the Cronkite School’s Association of Multicultural Journalists for more than 10 years and directed the AMJ News Reporting Team on BLAZE radio. She has received local and national recognition for working to enhance journalism diversity. In 1994, she was named the Barry Bingham Sr. Fellow by the National Conference of Editorial Writers Foundation, an award given annually to a journalism educator dedicated to recruiting students of color and preparing them for journalism careers. In 2002 she was awarded the Arizona Black Women’s Task Force Mentor Award for her history of mentoring students at ASU.

She has received a number of teaching, research and service awards from the Cronkite School. She also is an active member of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication and has chaired the AEJMC Minorities and Communication Division Commission on Status of Minorities and has served on the AEJMC Committee on Professional Press Freedom & Responsibility. She currently serves on the AEJMC Equity and Diversity Awards Committee and is writing a book on Race, Gender, Class and Media.

Her book "Race, Gender, Class and Media: Studying Multiculturalism and Mass Communication" was published in 2012 and she currently is working on its second edition.