Media&Values magazine was the brain-child of founding editor Elizabeth Thoman, CHM, a Roman Catholic sister and former high school journalism teacher, when she was a graduate student at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. She was also the founder and executive director of the National Sisters Communications Service (NSCS), a non-profit agency established by a major grant from the Lilly Endowment to help communicate the expanding role of women in the post-Vatican II Roman Catholic Church.

The first 25 issues of Media&Values (1977 - 1983) were published under the aegis of the NSCS (later changing its name to Center for Communications Ministry / "CCM") and directed to an audience of Catholic educators, youth leaders, social workers, librarians and ministers. Topics in the magazine ranged from an analysis of the portrayal of nuns on television to the exciting potential of the computer revolution to early research on violence in the media.

A regular column, "In Terms of Media,' defined new - and at the time, strange - words such as "satellite dish," "hard drive," "data banks," and "wired society." Other features, such as book reviews and Resource Recommendations, set up a long-standing relationship with leading scholars, writers and publishers who came to value the magazine's ability to translate theoretical concepts about media issues into thoughtful columns and practical, action-oriented articles.

By fall of 1983, the Center for Communications Ministry decided that it had accomplished its original mission and announced that Media&Values would cease publication with the closing of CCM. Recognizing the contributions the magazine had already made to an understanding of media culture and its growing readership among educators of all denominations, a group of primarily Protestant media leaders approached the CCM to purchase the copyright, employ the existing staff, and continue publication.

Using a collaborative non-profit umbrella, the Media Action Research Center (MARC), the group took over publication with Issue #26 (January, 1984) and nurtured it until 1989, when the Center for Media and Values, in order to continue expanding, was incorporated as its own independent non-profit organization. After Media&Values ceased publication in late 1993, the Center, by then a major voice for media literacy in the United States, changed its name to Center for Media Literacy.

Breaking Ground and Building Support

The mid-1980s were a fertile time for the growing magazine. MARC had been formed in 1976 to create and publish the ecumenical adult education program: Television Awareness Training (TAT), considered by many to be one of the "grandparents" of media literacy in the US.

With its quarterly publication schedule, Media&Values provided a ready mechanism for continually updating TAT trainers and expanding MARC's educational agenda. A roster of columnists was added to explore the thematic idea of each issue from eight different perspectives: Youth, Children, Women, Family, Minorities, Social Justice ("Advocacy"), Pastoral Ministry ("Pastoring") and Global.

As the magazine grew, so did acclaim from media critics, journalists and trend-watchers. A 1986 feature story by Los Angeles Times television critic Howard Rosenberg applauded the magazine's "common sense" and noted that it "preaches thoughtfulness and awareness, not hyperbole and censorship."

Printing and distribution went from 3000 copies to eventually more than 10,000, but paid subscriptions never completely covered expenses. As the magazine perfected its thematic approach, targeted fundraising became possible and "co-sponsor" funding for each theme issue was solicited from private foundations as well as religious agencies and Catholic religious orders committed to social concerns such as the advancement of women, racial and ethnic diversity, the challenge of consumerism or the welfare of children.

The magazine's philosophy of "making the connections" between the emerging media culture and its historical, social, political, economic underpinnings paved the way for a steady stream of small grants from foundations including the Sidney Stern Memorial Trust, Trinity Church Grants Fund, the W.T. Grant Foundation and the Retirement Research Foundation and organizations such as the American Friends Service Committee, the Center for Population Options, the American Jewish Committee, United Methodist Women, the Oblate Fathers, the Marianist community, the Sisters of St. Joseph, the Sisters of the Humility of Mary and many other Catholic religious orders of women or men.