Correspondence, diaries, speeches, lectures, writings, notes, research material, family papers, scrapbooks, clippings, and other papers relating chiefly to Ackerman's career as journalist and dean of Columbia University School of Journalism (1931-1956). Documents his work as United Press Associations correspondent within the Central Powers, chiefly Germany prior to World War I; special correspondent for the Saturday Evening Post in Mexico, Switzerland, and elsewhere during World War I; correspondent for the New York Times on a trip to Siberia in 1918; and chief of Philadelphia Public Ledger Foreign News Service, London, England, covering the Middle East and Europe including the League of Nations Assembly in Geneva in 1920 and the Irish rebellion (1919-1921). Includes drafts and related materials for Ackerman's writings including his biography of George Eastman (1930) and family papers including correspondence and other material of John F. Ackerman, Robert V. Ackerman, and Mabel VanderHoof Ackerman.

Also documents Ackerman's activities as a public relations consultant working with the American Valuation Association, the Eastman Kodak Company, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, and the Washington Cathedral, Washington, D.C.; his activities as secretary of the Pulitzer Prize Board (Columbia University); his involvement with the Maria Moors Cabot Prizes in journalism; his work as a trustee of the Oberlaender Trust pertaining chiefly to the relocation of German scholars and students in the U.S. after the rise of Adolph Hitler; his role in establishing a school of journalism in Chungking, China, in 1943-1945; and his work as a member of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

Subjects include the history of twentieth-century journalism; the effects of national and international events upon journalism; the relation of governments to the press, especially in matters of censorship and propaganda; effect on press freedom of the National Industry Recovery Act of 1933, Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, and Lend-Lease Bill of 1941; journalism education; Columbia University presidencies of Nicholas Murray Butler, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Grayson L. Kirk; American labor unrest in 1919; President Roosevelt's foreign policy and potential American involvement in World War II; the Far East, especially China and Japan; Latin America; and Russia.

Correspondents include Newton Diehl Baker, William Benton, Herman Bernstein, Nicholas Murray Butler, William R. Castle, Felix Cole, Kent Cooper, William Cullen Dennis, Allen Dulles, George Eastman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Abram I. Elkus, Frank Diehl Fackenthal, Douglas Southall Freeman, James W. Gerard, William Sidney Graves, Edward Mandell House, Roy Wilson Howard, Arthur Krock, David Lawrence, George S. Patton, J. Westbrook Pegler, Joseph Pulitzer, Ralph Pulitzer, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Basil Thomson, Hugh Robert Wilson, and Ahmet Emin Yalman.