W. Joseph Campbell

W. Joseph Campbell is an American writer, historian, media critic, and analyst. He has written seven solo-authored books, the latest of which, Lost in a Gallup (2020), examines polling failures in U.S. presidential elections. The book has been praised as “well-written, impressively researched, and detailed,” as a “fast-moving narrative history,” and as a “bracing reality check.”

An updated soft-cover edition of Lost in a Gallup was released in early 2024.

Campbell’s work also includes the award-winning, media-mythbusting book, Getting It Wrong (University of California Press, 2010, 2017). Getting It Wrong inspired critics to refer to Campbell as “the man who calls journalists on their own B.S.” and “the master of debunk.”

He also is the author of the well-received 1995: The Year the Future Began (University of California Press, 2015) and The Year That Defined American Journalism: 1897 and the Clash of Paradigms (Routledge, 2006).

Campbell is professor emeritus of communication at American University in Washington, D.C. He earned his doctorate in mass communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Before entering the academy, Campbell was a professional journalist for 20 years. Assignments in his award-winning reporting career took him across North America to Europe, West Africa, and parts of Asia.

Campbell earned his undergraduate degree at Ohio Wesleyan University which awarded him its Distinguished Alumni Citation at a ceremony in 2014, shown in the image below.