Hoffer, Thomas W.

Dr. Thomas William Hoffer was born on May 31, 1938, in Toledo, Iowa, the son of Martin H. and Margaret K. (Plum) Hoffer. In 1961, Hoffer enrolled in Officer Candidate School in Newport, RI. Later that year, he was stationed at the US Naval Base at Yokosuka Bay, Japan. He was promoted to Lieutenant (junior grade), served in the Pacific from 1961 until 1964, and retired from active duty in order to enroll at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (Hoffer remained in the Naval Reserves for several more years). His service during that time included an assignment in Vietnam. Hoffer attended the University of Wisconsin in 1964, where he earned a Masters Degree in Speech Communication in 1969. His M.A. thesis was "Norman Baker and American Broadcasting." Hoffer continued his doctoral studies at the University of Wisconsin, focusing on film and mass communication. From 1972 until his retirement in 1996, Hoffer was a professor in the Department of Communication at Florida State University (FSU). He was particularly interested in mass media, photojournalism, and documentary film, and taught classes in documentary film making before the establishment of the FSU Film School. When he retired in 1996, he became the founding publisher of The Franklin Chronicle, a local newspaper distributed in Franklin, Gulf, and Wakulla counties. He died in Tallahassee on December 9, 2006.

Communications professor.