Richard Vatz | |
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| Born | December 21, 1946 |
| Occupation(s) | Professor, Towson University |
Richard Eugene Vatz (born December 21, 1946) is an American academic, lecturer and writer who is a professor of Rhetoric and Communication at Towson University.
Vatz is a Faculty Fellow at the Eastern Communication Association (ECA) and has been honored by the National Communication Association (NCA).
Vatz has been member of the Towson Board of Trustees for several years and an associate psychology editor for USA Today magazine[1] since 1987. He has been a member of the National Communication Association since 1969.
Vatz wrote The Only Authentic Book of Persuasion: the Agenda-Spin Model, (McGraw-Hill, 2017), and he is co-editor of Thomas Szasz: The Man and His Ideas (Transaction Books, 2017). He has also published articles, reviews and lectures on the preeminence of rhetorical study, political rhetoric, rhetoric and psychiatry and media criticism.
Vatz has spoken at Hillsdale College and the University of Richmond . He has taught a course called "Persuasion".
He is married to Joanne Pychock Vatz; the couple have two children and one grandchild.
During the 1970s, Vatz published the article, "The Myth of the Rhetorical Situation," in the journal Philosophy and Rhetoric. In it, he critiqued Lloyd Bitzer's 1968 article "The Rhetorical Situation" in the same journal and this has served as the basis for his world view on persuasion; namely, that rhetorical study is conceived most advantageously for the field through a model of competition for agenda and spin, not as controlled by some objective view of reality. Vatz maintains that the latter view makes rhetorical study simply a copy and mouthpiece of other social sciences, fields that are anti-rhetorical.
In January 2009, Vatz published a follow-up piece to the "Myth" article in the NCA's January, 2009, Review of Communication. The article was titled "The Mythical Status of Situational Rhetoric: Implications for Rhetorical Critics’ Relevance in the Public Arena." Vatz argued there that the "Myth" perspective was the appropriate rhetorical approach to the study of persuasion. In contrast, the perspective offered in "The Rhetorical Situation" was anathema to the academic status of rhetorical study, as it implied that situations caused the production of rhetoric rather than high-ethos rhetoricians' choices. This caused what audiences perceived as dominant situations and their meaning.
In 2012, Vatz published The Only Authentic Book of Persuasion: the Agenda-Spin Model and a new co-edited book Thomas Szasz: The Man and His Ideas and others. He has also published articles on political rhetoric and media criticism in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Washington Times and The Los Angeles Times. Vatz has presented hundreds of convention papers and panels at the National Communication Association and Eastern Communication Association (ECA), the SSCA, and elsewhere, including regular analyses of political rhetoric in seminars at the NCA with progressive colleagues.
Vatz has appeared on CNN’s Crossfire, Larry King Live, The Phil Donahue Show, and William F. Buckley's Firing Line. He appeared for over forty years as a guest on WBAL Radio in Baltimore. He has recently appeared on Fox television in Baltimore and Washington.
He has also appeared frequently on WBFF-TV, WMAR-TV, primarily on their talk show "Square Off" hosted by Richard Sher, Maryland Public Television, WJZ-TV, and WBAL-TV.
Over his career Vatz published in The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, The Los Angeles Times and multiple other publications; he wrote and writes on conservative perspectives generally.
Vatz was a blogger for Red Maryland and blogged several pieces a year on national conservative perspectives on rhetorical theory, media criticism and contemporary political issues.
