Faculty Profile for Dr. Tom Grimes

Biography Section

Biography and Education

Biography and Education
After I received an MS degree from Columbia University, I held the positions of field reporter and morning news anchor from 1974 to 1976 at KXAS-TV (NBC) Dallas/Fort Worth. I was a reporter for the nightly news analysis program, Newsroom, from 1975 to 1977, which aired on the PBS member station, KERA/13 Dallas/Fort Worth. I then rose to news director and principal news anchor for both KERA-FM and KERA-TV Dallas/Fort Worth. I anchored both the local version of Morning Edition for KERA-FM, and the nightly television news broadcast, Newsday, for KERA-TV. In addition, I was a correspondent for several PBS news specials (e.g., Inflation: The Sky’s The Limit, 1976), and the principal host for the PBS nationally televised series Exchange (1981), which was the summer replacement for Bill Moyer’s Journal.

Before I moved to Dallas, I previously worked at WCBS-TV in New York as a production assistant, and then at ABC News in New York as an assistant to ABC Evening News anchor Harry Reasoner from 1973 to 1974.

After I received a PhD from Indiana University in 1986, I accepted a faculty position at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. In 1992, I accepted an endowed chair as Ross Beach Professor of Communication at Kansas State University (1992-2005). I also held a joint appointment in the Department of Psychology at The University of Kansas (2001-2006) and was a research fellow at the Menninger Psychiatric Clinic in Topeka (2002-2003) where colleagues and I from The University of Kansas and the Anna Freud Centre for Families and Children (located at the University of London) conducted and published research focusing on media psychology.

I joined Texas State University in 2007.

Teaching
I teach Mass Communication Theory, Introduction to Mass Communication, Mass Media and Society, and Media Psychology. At Wisconsin and at The University of Kansas, I chaired or have been a member of several PhD committees in both Communication and Psychology (experimental and clinical), as well as master’s degree committees in both Communication and Psychology.

Service
I have edited two academic journals and currently acts as a reviewer for the Journal of Psychiatry, Acta Psychologica, and the Journal of Psychiatric Research. I have been or am now an outside reviewer for a variety of Communication journals such as Human Communication Research, Communication Research, Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, Media Psychology, and Journalism & Mass Communication Monographs. I have also been a proposal reviewer for both the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Mental Health. I have reviewed program proposals for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Research
These are the most cited instances (by other scholars) of my published research:

Grimes, T. (2021). Two lessons for doing better empirical work. Journalism & Mass Communication Monographs 23(2), 149-153.

Daily, S.L., Howard, K., Roming, S.M.P., Ceballos, N., & Grimes, T. (2020). A biopsychosocial approach to understanding social media addiction. Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies, 2, 158-167. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbe2.182

Robinson, A., Bonnette, A., Howard, K., Ceballos, N., Dailey, S., Lu, Y, & Grimes, T. (2019). Social comparisons, social media addiction, and social interaction: An examination of specific social media behaviors related to major depressive disorder in a millennial population. Journal of Applied Biobehavioral Research, 24(1), 1-14. e12158. https://doi.org/10.1111/jabr.12158

Ceballos, N. A., Howard, K., Dailey, S., Sharma, S., & Grimes, T. (2018). Collegiate binge drinking and social media use among Hispanics and non-Hispanics. Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, 79(6), 868–875. https://doi.org/10.15288/jsad.2018.79.868 doi: 10.15288/jsad.2018.79.868

Grimes, T., Anderson, J. & Bergen, L. (2008). Media violence and aggression: Science and ideology. Los Angeles, CA. Sage Publications.

Grimes, T. & Anderson, J. (April 2008). Special issue of the American Behavioral Scientist, a social science journal published by SAGE Publications.

Grimes, T. & Drechsel, R. E. (2006). The word-picture problem in television news. In A. Reynolds and B. Barnett (Eds.). Communication and Law: Multidisciplinary Research Approaches. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum and Associates.

Grimes, T., Bergen, L., Nichols, K., Vernberg, E., & Fonagy, P. (2004). Is psychopathology the key to understanding why some children become aggressive when they are exposed to violent television programming?, Human Communication Research, 30(2), 153-181. (lead article in this issue)

Gibbons, J., Vogl, R, Grimes, T. (2003). Source confusion for characters in a TV news story. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 47(1), 99-112.

Grimes, T. & Drechsel, R. E. (1996). Word-picture juxtaposition, schemata, and defamation in television news. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 73(1), 169-180.

Glenberg, A. & Grimes, T. (1995). Memory and faces: Pictures help you remember who said what. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21(3), 196-206.

Grimes, T. (1991). Mild auditory-visual dissonance in television news may exceed viewer attentional capacity. Human Communication Research, 18(2), 268-298.

Grimes, T. (1990). Audio-video correspondence and its role in attention and memory. Educational Technology Research & Development, 38(3), 15-25.

Grimes, T. (1990). The encoding of TV news messages into memory. Journalism Quarterly, 67(4), 757-766.

Drew, D.G., & Grimes, T. (1987). Audio-visual redundancy and TV news recall. Communication Research, 14(4), 453-461.