David Paul Nord

David Nord is a retired professor journalism and history at Indiana University. He is also the editor of History News Service, and has served as the acting editor, interim editor and associate editor of the Journal of American History. Nord is the author or editor of four books and more than 40 journal articles and book chapters.

Nord spent his entire professorial career at IU, from 1979 until his retirement in December 2011. In addition to the School of Journalism, Nord was also a professor of American studies and an adjunct professor of history. Over the years, he served as interim, acting and associate editor at the Journal of American History, the flagship journal of the Organization of American Historians.

He earned his undergraduate degree at Valparaiso University, followed by a Master of Arts in history at the University of Minnesota and a Ph.D. in mass communication from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He worked as a reporter for the Valparaiso Vidette-Messenger and as a reporter, editor and writer for The Associated Press in Minnesota and North Dakota.

One of Nord's most important contributions to journalism history was his exploration of religious publishing in colonial America and its influence on the field of journalism. His 2004 book, Faith in Reading: Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America, 1790-1860, was named the best book of the year by the American Journalism Historians Association.

Nord was one of the first historians to go beyond the content of newspapers and study how people used the newspaper in their daily lives. His collection of essays in this area was published in 2001 as Communities of Journalism: A History of American Newspapers and Their Readers.

Nord also works with the Program in the History of the Book in American Culture at the American Antiquarian Society and edited The Enduring Book: Print Culture in Postwar America, one of the society's A History of the Book in America volumes. Nord is also the editor of the History News Service, a syndicate of professional historians who connect scholarly history to popular journalism, in an attempt to provide historical context to current events.