Mellen, Roger P.

Roger P. Mellen is Assistant Professor of Broadcast Journalism in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communications at New Mexico State University. He has also been a faculty member at George Mason University, University of Maryland, and American University. Mellen completed his doctoral work in History at George Mason University, focusing on colonial Virginia print culture.

The Origins of a Free Press in Pre-Revolutionary Virginia. Creating a Culture of Political Dissent

2009 0-7734-3877-7
This interdisciplinary study examines the origins of the freedom of the press in Colonial Virginia tracing the development of print culture. It demonstrates how changes in the dominant medium of communication were an important enabler of the cultural development that allowed for the growth of political dissent. Virginia’s traditional culture of deference was gradually replaced by a “culture of dissidence” and from that emerged the first constitutional right for press freedom in the Virginia Declaration of Rights.