Jay Blumler

Jay G. Blumler (18 February 1924 – 30 January 2021) was an American-British theorist of communication and media. He was Emeritus Professor of Public Communication at the University of Leeds, and also Emeritus Professor of Journalism at the University of Maryland, having spent his early academic life largely in the UK.

Born in New York in February 1924, he served as an interpreter for the US Army in Berlin during the Second World War.[1] As Chair of the American Veterans Committee in Berlin he was invited to have tea with Eleanor Roosevelt when she visited the city. She had heard of some of the charity work that his committee had done and asked to meet with them.[1]

In 1947 Blumler became a political science graduate of Antioch College. From 1949 he taught political theory at Ruskin College, Oxford, before taking a position in Leeds in 1963, as Granada Television Research Fellow at the University of Leeds. In 1966 Jay established the Centre for Television Research and became the University’s first Professor of Public Communication in 1978. He retired from Leeds in 1989 but continued to publish prolifically as well as teaching for one semester each year at the University of Maryland.[1]