Indiana University School of Journalism » Uncategorized

Schiller responds to audience questions

Jessica Birthisel — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:42:48 +0000

National Public Radio CEO Vivian Schiller spoke Oct. 19 at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater as the School of Journalism’s second Speaker Series guest. Below are highlights from the question and answer session with the audience that followed the talk.

Photo by Jeremy Hogan

Schiller told students to "experiment like crazy" as they follow their career pursuits.

Read an article about Schiller's talk.
Buck meets with students
to share career advice (Nov. 12)
Fox Sports' Buck talks
on lifelong love of sportscasting (Nov. 11)
Big Ten Network to air NSJC symposium (Nov. 4)

Q: Is there a need for a public version of NPR that could bring quality journalism to television similar to a BBB model?

Schiller said that she gets “really oooshy” about government-funded journalism content and is not interested in pursuing it. “Plus, I have to say they’re really not beating down our door to give us a ton of money.”

Q: A lot of journalism is dismissed by large segments of the audience if it doesn’t align with preconceived notions, such as ideas about liberal bias. How do we get past this?

Schiller said there is always going to be a section of the audience that is looking for substantiation of their point of view. NPR tries “really, really hard” to be completely unbiased and to just provide information that people need to make their decisions, said Schiller.

Q: Do you see the future of decline of newspapers and the increase in online and multimedia journalism as a good thing?

Schiller described both print and online platforms as “empty vessels,” explaining that what matters is what you put on these platforms.

“There’s nothing inherent about the Internet or a blog that makes it less credible,” said Schiller, adding that on the contrary, Internet has more flexibility, making it much less static than a piece of paper. “Personally, I like to read the printed page, but I don’t think democracy will crumble if newspapers go away. I think democracy will crumble if journalism goes away.”

Q: What would be some of the qualities and characteristics of an ideal applicant for an NPR position?

Schiller joked that beyond basic morality, she considers the highest standard of a human being to be “insatiable curiosity.” Additionally, Schiller wants a job candidate to be proficient in multiple platforms, to have a good grounding in the basics of journalism as well as energy and enthusiasm.

Q: In objective journalism, is there a space to confront biased sources when you believe they are off mark?

“Being a journalist and not being biased doesn’t mean that you have to leave your intelligence at the door,” said Schiller, describing it as the responsibility of a good reporter to challenge sources if they are providing skewed information. “It’s the role of the journalist to always be skeptical.”

Q: As you said, the average age of an NPR listener is 49. How do you plan to target the next generation of listeners?

Schiller said that NPR has to be wherever the audience is, whether that’s on Facebook or on iPhones. “We need to be in front of them. Otherwise how is anyone going to know what we offer?”

Q: How is NPR looking at international news in the future?

Schiller said she hopes to move beyond basic international stories at NPR’s 17 international bureaus and dive deeper into overseas issues just like they already do with American issues. She also hopes to train international reporters to provide content on multimedia platforms.

Q: A lot of people are resistant to digital platforms. How can you, especially with older audiences, fight that resistance?

Schiller answered that because of the abundance of content on the Web, “the law of averages tells you that probably most of it is not going to be very good. By not very good, I mean not real journalism.” She said online operations are providing quality content and this content will rise to the top to find an audience.

Q: What are the implications of having NPR correspondents and contributors such as Cokie Roberts and Juan Williams participate on other news stations like ABC and Fox News, respectively?

Some such journalists, like Roberts, are employed equally by both companies and therefore present no ethical problems. For others, she said, the situation is “a tricky one that we are wrestling with.” On the one hand, these appearances are promotion for NPR. On the other, she is not in favor of reporters expressing their opinions publicly. Additionally, NPR journalists often represent “the left” in topic debates, a representation she said she’s not comfortable with.

Video vault: Origins of TV News

SoJ Web Report — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 12:05:16 +0000

For his new book, The Origins of Television News in America: The Visualizers of CBS in the 1940s, assistant professor Mike Conway spent a decade tracking down pioneers of television news. He videotaped many of his interviews with these famous and little-known early broadcasters as he documented the evolution of this then-novel medium from 1941-48.

Here, Conway shares clips from some of the interviews:

Don Hewitt

"It was like covering a football game."

Don Hewitt explained why he thought coverage of the 1948 political conventions was such an important moment in the development of television news. After covering sports events, TV producers were ready to tackle a convention, and to do that as well as radio broadcasters. (Hewitt died in 2009. Interview from 2003 by interviewer, Mike Conway and photographer Jim Wrocklage.)

View the clip (2.78MB)

Robert Skedgell

"Television was a mystical thing in the sky."

Robert Skedgell, who died in 2006, explained how he was promoted from copy boy to become the first television news writer at CBS in 1941. (Recorded in 2003 by interviewer Mike Conway and photographer Jim Wrocklage.)

View the clip (1.89MB)

Robert Bendick

"We learned a great deal, and then we translated that into live cameras."

Robert Bendick, who died in 2008, explained the visual transition from movies to television that he learned while working with Gilbert Seldes and Worthington Miner at the experimental television station at CBS in the late 1930s and early 1940s. (Recorded in 2003 by interviewer and photographer Mike Conway)

View the clip (4.25MB)

Chester Burger

"He should act like a guest in your living room."

Chester Burger described how the mid-1940s CBS television news staff experimented with different people on camera, trying to learn who would work best on television, finally settling on Douglas Edwards in 1948. (Recorded in 2003 interviewer, Mike Conway and photographer Jim Wrocklage.)

View the clip (5.69MB)

Read about the new book, The Origins of Television News in America: The Visualizers of CBS in the 1940s.
Read about Conway’s interviews with Walter Cronkite and Don Hewitt, who moved to television in the early 1950s and whose work set the standard for network news.

Miller reflects on conference experience

SoJ Web Report — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 20:36:22 +0000

Courtesy photo

Sophomore Courtney Miller explored the markets in Dubai while visiting for the Education Without Borders conference. She was one of 36 presenters at the event, which brings together students and scholars to brainstorm solutions for global issues.

Multimedia
View Breaking Boundaries, Courtney Miller's video. (33.77MB)
Related
Read about Courtney Miller's video presentation.

Sophomore Courtney Miller presented a video about her experience in South Africa with volunteer group to a conference in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in late March.

At the Education Without Borders conference, hers was one of only six multimedia presentations among 36 finalists on the schedule. (Read the full story.)

Here, Miller writes about the experience:

My 15 minutes of fame

By Courtney Miller
March 29-April 1

Arriving:
It was 3:30 a.m. and I was lying down for the first time in days. Twenty hours of travel is draining, but I was wide-awake. In the morning I would begin my adventures in Dubai, the world’s playground. I was anxious, nervous and most of all excited. If you told me a month ago I would be here, I would have laughed in your face. I never thought a short film I created my freshman year in college could take me so far.

This exceeds all my expectations. The buildings are more elaborate than the pictures, the food more exquisite, and the people more interesting. This conference is going to change my life. I can feel it.

Adventuring:
We had one day to explore before the conference began, and we went to the mall. Half the city is under construction. This was our best bet to see what makes Dubai famous. Now, I know. The infrastructure is extraordinary, and the detailed architecture screams wealth. Dubai is one of the most extravagant cities I have ever visited.

It did not take long for the mall to overwhelm us. It was far too big. We left in search of a more cultural experience. Our next stop was the Gold Souk. It is one of many markets in Dubai. With my blonde hair and puzzled expression, I obviously was a tourist. I attracted the vendors like a flower to bees. Luckily, my new friend from the conference, Pawel, is Arabic and could get us where we wanted to go.

The bright colors of authentic, hand-made pashminas and stores filled with gold and jewels made me think I was Aladdin in the Cave of Wonders. We were feeling adventurous and decided to make our own route. We traveled through questionable, run-down alleys and found ourselves in the midst of the spice market. I tasted Arabic chocolate, fresh cashews and dried cranberries.

We returned to the hotel after our visit to the market and met the other presenters for the conference. There were 36 students total, from six continents, joined together to propose different ways to solve the world’s greatest problems.
It was refreshing to talk to students whose interests are similar to mine. My passion strengthened, and I was further convinced that this was the career I wanted to pursue. I was living out of a suitcase, staying in one of the most majestic cities in the world, with students from all over the world, and I was completely in my element.

The conference:
What do I want to be remembered for? At a conference like this, I expected to gain some perspective. Now, I am asked what I want to be remembered for, and I cannot come up with a decent answer.

It’s the first official day of the conference. I am beginning to realize just how prestigious it really is. People like the ex-president of India, A. P. J Abdul Kalam, and the chief executive of Rolls Royce, Sir John Rose, are here to speak to us. I am impressed, and I’m thinking to myself, “What do I have to offer?”

The people here are proposing ideas from every angle you could imagine, such as global solutions and economic recovery, a sustainable future for the planet, and the role of education in meeting global challenges. It was inspiring to meet so many proactive students with such different aspirations but one resonating vision. I just did not see similarities between the majority and me.

There were six multimedia presenters at the conference, and I was one of them. The others were graduate students or getting their doctorates, strictly academic. My presentation was not a research paper that studied why the economy crashed. It was not a proposal on how to reduce our carbon footprint. It was an informal, inspirational speech, like at a graduation. It discussed why we were all there in the first place. Then it was over – my 15 minutes of fame.

Afterward:
It started like a ripple. At first it was small, but as time passed it got bigger and bigger. People came up to me to talk about my presentation. By the end of the conference, people who did not even see it said they had heard it was great. They congratulated me and thanked me for offering something different and entertaining.

Some were mainly interested in the service work I did in South Africa. Others wanted to know what my next project would be, if I might want to work with their organizations. This is exactly the response I wanted. My name was out there and it was for something I could be proud of.

This was one of the first times I felt like I knew how to contribute to this social movement. I am not a future politician, nor am I a future economist. I have something, something unique that many people need. I have the skills and resources to help people tell their stories and raise awareness. For social entrepreneurs, a messenger is exactly what is needed to promote projects and spread the word. As a documentary filmmaker, I can fill this void.

I want to be remembered as someone who despite her flaws and limitations overcame obstacles to fight for human rights. Consider this the beginning of a long journey. Consider this my debut.

Ethics, frames, terrorism

Gena Asher — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 15:30:05 +0000

The article below, by associate professor Steve Raymer, was featured in the February issue of News Photographer magazine, the publication of the National News Photographers Association. It is presented here with permission from NNPA.

Ethics, Frames, Terrorism

Journalism is about being faithful to the facts.

By Steve Raymer

As I write, the national and international photography contests are being judged once again. And if the winners over the past few years are any guide, first-place awards will go to stories about more bloodletting between Israel and its neighbors, more wounded veterans, more drug dependency in Afghanistan, and more women being abused at home or abroad, along with spot news photographs of Baghdad car bombings, firefights between U.S. troops and Islamic militants, and that ever familiar image of someone dying of AIDS.

No, I’m not a weary photographer or callous professor, just a journalist who is increasingly concerned about how we “frame” stories that deal with some of the world’s most vital life-and-death issues. Since the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, media scholars have been taking a closer look at how we journalists use a central organizing idea, called a “frame” in academic-speak, to make sense of everything from terrorism and to ethnic cleansing. And the picture they paint is disturbing.

All too often, we frame stories about Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Darfur, and the so-called war on terrorism in terms of empathy and suffering. That is, we often take a compassionate or intimate look at combatants, innocents caught in the crossfire, or beleaguered aid workers – a micro view of the news that we assume, often erroneously, will illuminate a larger, more newsworthy issue.

And this includes pictures that win contests. In fact, in simplifying, prioritizing, and organizing a story, which is what framing is all about, the iconic image that looks into someone’s eyes – preferably someone in agony – has become a key piece of journalistic shorthand.

The problem, according to researchers, is that we frame up events in terms of compassion and suffering because we often don’t know much about the story or we don’t want to appear to be taking sides by trying to explain the dark side of the news. Too often, say scholars, telling a story in terms of one person, one neighborhood, or one village is an evasion of our responsibility to make tough judgments about the facts we discover firsthand, which is what journalism is all about.

“We are in a suffering sweepstakes,” says Jeffrey Dvorkin, distinguished professor of journalism at Ryerson University in Toronto and former vice president for news of National Public Radio in Washington, DC. “But no one is going to win this sweepstakes. These personal stories are easy to do, there’s plenty of emotion, and it’s easy to keep a focus.”

More than a half dozen new scholarly books suggest this “close-up, concerned photographer” view of the world often does a disservice to our audience, which frequently wants clarity, context, and sometimes a sense of justice – who is morally right or wrong, guilty or innocent. Once more, researchers say far too many of our readers now suffer from something called “compassion fatigue” – a loss of sympathy for the suffering of others – after years of seeing a convulsed world populated by victims of crime, cancer, cocaine, and, of course, terrorism.

Media scholars like Dvorkin say the way we report everything from wars and acts of terrorism to major cultural changes closer to home often fails to illustrate a larger problem that is truly newsworthy. What, for examples, drives young men into the arms of Taliban extremists in Pakistan and Afghanistan, or how are Americans who practice Islam treated by the local police in Smalltown U.S.A.? These are questions that can only be explained with longer, more contextualized narratives – words and images working together to answer questions about “why,” “how,” and “what does this mean?”

“The public needs a fuller picture,” says Dvorkin, a former CBC news field producer and NPR ombudsman. “We need to find new ways to add context and explanation to these stories that tear the hearts out of our chests.”
Two recent news stories come to mind: the massacre of 164 persons in Mumbai, India, in November by gunmen linked to a Pakistani extremist group and, more recently, the Israeli military thrust into Gaza, a punishing assault that killed some 1,300 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, along with some Hamas militants. In both instances, journalists often framed the story in terms of terrorism, a term that is supposed to help readers and viewers understand or interpret many post-9/11 conflicts.

The problem, of course, is that one person’s terrorist can be another person’s freedom fighter, and it’s not for us to judge. Some news organizations, like the British Broadcasting Corporation and Reuters news agency, flat out ban the use of the word “terrorist” in stories, captions, and Internet Web pages. BBC guidelines say that the “careless use of words which carry emotional or value judgments” undermines its credibility with a global audience, adding that “the word terrorist itself can be a barrier rather than an aid to understanding.”

Reporting the Mumbai massacre, The New York Times struggled with how to describe in text, multimedia packages, and headlines the masked gunmen who used automatic weapons and hand grenades to mow down civilians and police at two luxury seaside hotels, a train station, a café, a hospital, and a Jewish cultural center. As public editor Clark Hoyt wrote in the Times, “They were ‘militants,’ ‘gunmen,’ ‘attackers’ and ‘assailants.’ Their actions … were described as ‘coordinated terrorist attacks.’ But the men themselves were not called terrorists.”

Why? Because, as the editors of a notable book called Framing Terrorism: The News media, the Government and the Public suggest, calling someone a terrorist often is a trap – a phony way of bundling key ideas, stock phrases, and pictures that “reinforce certain common ways of interpreting developments … without knowing much, if anything, about the particular people, groups, issues, or places involved.” If someone is a terrorist, he or she is, indeed, an enemy of all civilized people, says the Times’ Hoyt.

“Language has been weaponized,” says Dvorkin in Toronto. “If all Palestinians are, for example, terrorists, then it’s easy to dismiss their actual situation. Whatever Israel does is justified.”

Of course, we can twist ourselves into a pretzel to avoid the appearance of taking sides. I tell students that there is a grave danger in being so scrupulously neutral that you fail to tell the story, giving, in effect, a free pass to people who murder in the name of politics or ideology, or who destroy the environment in the name of profit. The key is not to adopt the language of one side or another, whether it is Washington’s “War on Terrorism” or causes closer to home like AIDS and homelessness. Instead, we need to be committed to explaining issues, trends, and ideas in ways, or frames, that are truthful to the facts we discover.

Mindful that a 1991 study that showed television viewers are more likely to find society or government responsible for problems and solutions if the frame was a “theme” rather than an individually focused “episode,” it is time we rethink our storytelling techniques. After all, journalism is about being faithful to the facts and to our readers and viewers, not winning photo contests.

Raymer, a National Geographic magazine staff photographer for more than two decades, teaches photojournalism, media ethics, and international newsgathering at Indiana University in Bloomington. He is the author and photographer of Images of a Journey: India in Diaspora.

Carol Polsgrove

SoJ Web Report — Thu, 15 May 2008 13:16:07 +0000

Associate professor S. Holly Stocking wrote this biography about professor Carol Polsgrove. It was published by the Dean of Faculties office in honor of retiring faculty and presented in a booklet at a ceremony April 16.

As the daughter of American missionaries to Nigeria, Carol Polsgrove grew up knowing what it was like to be on the outside looking in. Home-schooled, she early on made books her constant companions, finding in the words of others a refuge for her sense of isolation and an outlet for her increasingly curious and restless mind. Books swept her into the very center of unknown realities, and years later, a stranger in the United States, she grew convinced that those with the capacity to cross social barriers and see what others have not seen can, and indeed should, work to illuminate those unseen worlds.

Writers, she came to believe, can matter, not just to individuals, but also to entire communities and cultures. It is a conviction that drove her work as a journalist covering hidden social injustices and the often slow degradation of the environment. It is a conviction that later motivated much of her academic work on politically and culturally significant writers and editors, and one that she passed on to generations of aspiring journalists and academics in her classes.

An affinity for crossing and recrossing boundaries, particularly those often erected between the academy and the more freewheeling worlds of politics and journalism, revealed itself in the late 1960s as Carol worked on her doctorate in English literature from the University of Louisville. At the same time she began her teaching life, she worked for the Associated Press and the Lexington Herald-Leader and freelanced for magazines and newspapers.

Four years later, promoted to associate professor at Eastern Kentucky University, she took a year’s leave of absence to freelance, mostly for the political magazine, The Progressive, from a rented apartment in the shadow of an oil refinery in Point Richmond, Calif. For the next dozen years, she devised ways to work as an editor and writer and a lecturer in journalism, based largely in the San Francisco Bay area, a region she embraced for its diversity and political verve and came to call “home.” She wrote reviews and articles for a variety of magazines during this time and later, including The Progressive, Sierra, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, and the American Prospect, and she served as an editor for both Mother Jones and The Progressive.

Finally, in 1989, pressed to find secure employment to support herself and her young daughter, Cora, Carol found a permanent academic home in Indiana University’s School of Journalism. It was here that she knit together the richly textured threads of her professional life, finding a strong academic focus writing histories of communities of editors and writers living through and contributing, in ways large and sometimes disappointingly small, to momentous periods of political and cultural change. Uninterested in traditional academic prose, she applied her considerable gifts as a writer and editor to fashion artful historical narratives derived from extensive archival research and in-depth interviews.

Carol’s first book, It Wasn’t Pretty, Folks, But Didn’t We Have Fun?: Esquire in the Sixties (W. W. Norton, 1995) told the riveting story of the community of journalists who, under the creative leadership of editor Harold Hayes, produced a magazine that revealed the currents and undercurrents of the profound cultural shifts that marked the 1960s in this country. The book was reissued in paperback by RDR Books (2001) under the title, It Wasn’t Pretty, Folks, But Didn’t We have Fun?: Surviving the ’60s with Esquire’s Harold Hayes.

A second book, Divided Minds: Intellectuals and the Civil Rights Movement (W. W. Norton 2005), explored the boundary-crossing work of public intellectuals during the civil rights era, revealing the important gatekeeping roles of book and magazine editors and the often disquieting influence of the Cold War on intellectuals’ public discourse. The book led to work on the advisory committee for Reporting Civil Rights, a two-volume anthology published by the Library of America.

A third book, nearing completion, returns Carol to her African roots. Tentatively titled Writers in a Common Cause: Ending British Rule in Africa, this book explores the work of West Indian and African writers who engaged in a publishing campaign against British rule in Africa from a base in London.

As a teacher, Carol was twice awarded the school’s Gretchen Kemp Award for outstanding teaching. She created many new courses, including the Partisan Press, Journalism for Social Change, Magazines in the Sixties, the Media and the Civil Rights Movement, and Literary Journalism, which became a permanent course in the curriculum and a student favorite. Always interested in expanding her students’ horizons (they have “insufficient primary reality,” she once told a colleague), she took students on field trips to jails, courtrooms, city council meetings, the French Lick casino and other places off the manicured campus path. She even took one group of graduate students to the Gulf, to cover the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in Mississippi and Louisiana.

As a university citizen, Carol served on a variety of school and university committees where she could raise her voice for diversity and work to ensure that the voices of others were heard. She chaired the Bloomington Faculty Council mediation committee and served as a member of both the Commission on Recruitment and Retention of Non-White and Women Faculty and the statewide advisory committee of the Division of Labor Studies. Many younger faculty members, especially women, found in her a mentor who encouraged them without glossing over the challenges of academic life.

Now, on the verge of retirement, Carol describes herself as an Unreconstructed Californian who has somehow managed to find happiness in this slow-moving college town in the Midwest. But though she has found a hard-won personal contentment here, it is doubtful that she will shut her eyes to the discontents of the world around her. There are too many stories to be told, even in the heartland, and if Carol holds true to pattern, she will write some of these stories, proving once again that writers can matter.

S. Holly Stocking
Associate Professor
School of Journalism

Christine Ogan

SoJ Web Report — Thu, 15 May 2008 13:09:24 +0000

Roy W. Howard Professor David Weaver wrote this biography about professor Christine L. Ogan. It was published by the Dean of Faculties office in honor of retiring faculty and presented in a booklet at a ceremony April 16.

Christine Ogan retires this spring as professor of journalism and professor of informatics after a long and distinguished career at Indiana University that began in 1976 with her appointment as a lecturer in the Department of Speech and Drama at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis and a part-time assistant professor in the School of Journalism at IU-Bloomington after completion of her Ph.D. in mass communication research from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

In the 32 years that she has served Indiana University, her appointments have included assistant, associate and full professor of journalism as well as a joint appointment as professor of the new School of Informatics launched in 2000.

Before then, she completed bachelors and masters degrees at Bowling Green State University and taught in the English department at John Hay High School in Cleveland, in the Speech and Drama department at Ithaca College in New York, in the English department at Ankara Koleji in Turkey, in the English department at Hacettepe University in Ankara, Turkey, and in the English department at North Carolina Central University in Durham.

In the School of Journalism here at IU, she has taught a wide range of courses, including beginning news writing, international communication, communication and development, and information technology issues.

In addition to significant and innovative research that includes three books and numerous articles and chapters concerning communication and national development, women in media management, and the use of media by Turkish migrants in Amsterdam, she has served in a number of administrative positions that include Director of Graduate Studies and Director of the Bureau of Media Research in the School of Journalism, and Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Research in the School of Informatics.

She has also served as a Fulbright Senior Lecturer and Researcher at the Middle East University in Ankara, Turkey, as the Park Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and as a Visiting Professor at Hong Kong Baptist University. She was the Interim Director of the Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics at IU in the spring of 2007 and a co-director of a National Science Foundation-funded workshop on gender equitable outcomes in IT higher education in September of 2007.

Her work has been recognized and honored by the Office for Women’s Affairs Distinguished Scholar Award in March 2002 for outstanding scholarship and efforts to enhance women’s lives through research, as well as the Gannett Center for Media Studies at Columbia University in New York where she was a Research Fellow in the fall of 1986. She also received a mid-career faculty fellowship from IU in 1990-91.

Over the past 32 years, she has worked tirelessly to advance the cause of communication research and to enhance the role of women in this research and in higher education more generally. She has earned a reputation as a tough but caring teacher who sets high expectations for her students, but never higher than those she sets for herself.

I have worked with her on several studies, and I know firsthand from these experiences of her integrity, high standards and incredible capacity for hard work. She simply will not give up in the face of many obstacles that would stop most scholars. Ever since coming to Bloomington in 1974, she has met and overcome numerous barriers to her own professional advancement, rising to become the second woman to attain the rank of full professor in the School of Journalism in 1994 after being hired as a fulltime faculty member in 1981. She has supervised more theses and dissertations than almost any other faculty member in the School of Journalism during this time and has given generously to her students while holding them to very high standards.

Her research on Turkish migrants in Amsterdam has required not only Turkish language skills, but also extraordinary perseverance in completing in-depth interviews with total strangers living in a highly concentrated and complex urban environment. Years of research went into her book, Communication and Identity in the Diaspora, which is a landmark study of the uses and impact of mass media and will be cited for years to come in studies of media and cultural identity.

In her years at Indiana University, professor Ogan has been a model of the ideal teacher-scholar-administrator. She has held herself and her students to the highest standards and has striven mightily to be the complete academic citizen, participating outside her home unit on the faculties of African Studies, West European Studies, Middle Eastern Studies and Central Eurasian Studies as well as on a variety of important university committees such as the Board of Review, Grievance, Affirmative Action, and Faculty Affairs. Some have found her to be a tough critic, but they know that she is as tough on herself as on others, and that she is, at heart, someone who wants the best for her students, her field, and her university.

She will be sorely missed and very difficult to replace, but we know that she will not stop studying and writing and teaching about communication in her retirement. We won’t be able to really replace her, but we will try to carry on her outstanding work and high standards in the years to come.

David Weaver
Roy W. Howard Professor
School of Journalism

J200: Profiles of Grace Carpenter

SoJ Web Report — Mon, 12 May 2008 18:56:52 +0000

Kim Trager-Bohley’s J200 Reporting, Writing and Editing I class used a group interviewing approach to report on retired office services assistant Grace Carpenter.

ACEJMC issues accrediting press release

SoJ Web Report — Sun, 11 May 2008 13:17:13 +0000

Read "ACEJMC grants re-accreditation."
Read "ACEJMC recommends re-accreditation."
Read "ACEJMC accreditors to evaluate program."
Visit the ACEJMC Web site.

Lawrence, Kan.—The Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications (ACEJMC) accredited two new schools at its May 2-3 meeting in Arlington, Va.

Newly accredited schools were the Department of Communication and Journalism at the University of New Mexico and the Department of Communication at Jacksonville (Ala.) State University.

The council elected three new members and re-elected one member to three-year terms on its accrediting committee. David Boardman, editor of the Seattle Times, was re-elected. Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University; Phil Dixon, chair of the journalism department at Howard University; and John Cochran, senior Washington correspondent for ABC News, were elected new committee members.

Pam Luecke, Donald W. Reynolds professor of business journalism for the Department of Journalism and Mass Communications at Washington and Lee University, was elected chair of the accrediting committee. Carla Lloyd, associate dean of scholarly and creative activity for the School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, was elected committee vice chair.

The council made accreditation decisions for 21 schools and now accredits 112 in the United States and one outside the country. The council conducts voluntary reviews for schools with professional journalism and mass communications programs.

The following schools received provisional re-accreditation in 2006 for their undergraduate programs and were granted full re-accreditation: the Department of Communication and Journalism at Auburn University; the Division of Journalism at Florida A&M University; the Department of Journalism at New York University; and the Department of Mass Communications at Southern University.

The following schools received provisional re-accreditation for the undergraduate programs: the School of Journalism at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale; the Department of Journalism at San Francisco State University; and the Department of Journalism at Temple University. The council grants provisional status when it identifies weaknesses that can be corrected within two years.

The undergraduate communication department at Buffalo State University received provisional accreditation.

The Department of Mass Communications at Winston-Salem State University was denied accreditation. In 2006, the department received provisional initial accreditation, but was denied at the revisit this year.

The council also re-accredited the following undergraduate programs at 10 schools: the Department of Journalism and Public Communications at the University of Alaska Anchorage; the Department of Journalism, Media Studies and Public Relations at Hofstra University; the Donald W. Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno; the School of Journalism and Broadcasting at Oklahoma State University; the School of Journalism and Mass Communications at San Jose State University; the Department of Communication at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga; the Department of Communications at the University of Tennessee, Martin; the School of Journalism at Indiana University; the A.Q. Miller School of Journalism and Mass Communications at Kansas State University; and the School of Journalism at Michigan State University.

The graduate program in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications at San Jose State University also received re-accreditation.

The council’s fall meeting will be Friday, Aug. 29, in Chicago at the Westin Hotel on Michigan Avenue. Anyone wanting additional information about council activities may contact Susanne Shaw, ACEJMC executive director, Stauffer-Flint Hall, 1435 Jayhawk Blvd., University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045. Telephone: (785)864-3986. E-mail: sshaw@ku.edu.

2008 scholarship winners

SoJ Web Report — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 19:53:34 +0000

At the March 29, 2008, annual Scholarship Awards ceremony, these students won scholarships:

Sara Amato, Society of Professional Journalists’ Bettie Cadou Memorial Scholarship
Kathryn Armson, Richard Gray Scholarship
Natalie Avon, David E. and Ruth (Padget) Albright Writing Scholarship and Trevor R. Brown International Teaching Scholarship
Casey Baksa, John Johnson Wheeler Scholarship
Cory Barker, Margaret H. Knote Journalism Scholarship
Joanna Barnett, O’Bannon Journalism Scholarship
Andranise Baxter, Sarah Bence Scholarship and Journalism Alumni Scholarship
Kamilla Benko, School of Journalism Scholarship
Amy Bishop, J. E. O’Brien Scholarship
Hannah Bolter, Journalism Alumni Scholarship
James Brosher, Ernie Pyle Scholarship
Lauren Brucker, Ernie Pyle Scholarship
Larry Buchanan, Journalism Alumni Scholarship
Brian Buckey, Jack Backer Scholarship
Christine Burianek, Margaret H. Knote Journalism Scholarship
Biz Carson, School of Journalism Scholarship
Mindy Cimini, School of Journalism Scholarship
Ethan Cirmo, Pat and Diane Siddons Indiana Daily Student Scholarship
Megan Clayton, Ruth (Squibb) Chapman Journalism Scholarship
Jordan Cohen, Margaret H. Knote Journalism Scholarship
Chip Cutter, Charles and Nancy Teeple Business Writing Scholarship
Ashley DeRousse, School of Journalism Scholarship
Adryan Dillon, James R. and Susan (Bassett) Hetherington Scholarship
Liz Dilts, Ross Hazeltine Travel Scholarship
Stephanie Doctrow, School of Journalism Scholarship
Matt Dollinger, Steve Guback Scholarship
Kyle Dugger, William Randolph Hearst Foundation Scholarship and Ferree Freshman Scholarship
Margaret Dunphy, School of Journalism Scholarship
Kaylyn Easton, Marjorie (Smith) Blewett Scholarship/Internship
Tom Edwards, Roy W. Howard Scholarship
Alex Farris, Jack Scott Scholarship
Sarah Frantsi, Journalism Alumni Scholarship
Kari Friedlander, Margaret H. Knote Journalism Scholarship
Audrie Garrison, John Matthew Jackson Memorial Scholarship
Anna Guanzon, School of Journalism Scholarship
Katie Hagan, Jack Scott Scholarship
Kelly Hagen, Ferree Freshman Scholarship
Maggie Hames, Journalism Alumni Scholarship
Meg Hamill, Roy W. Howard Scholarship
Abby Henry, Roy W. Howard Scholarship
Stephen Hicks, Ferree Freshman Scholarship
Kellen Hubert, Steve and Becky (Gunden) Smith Scholarship
Kristina Hunter, Palladium-Item Scholarship
Lee Hurwitz, Roy W. Howard Scholarship
Sarah Hutchins, Richard Gray Scholarship
Emelie Johansson, Ferree Freshman Scholarship
Alex Kenny, Margaret H. Knote Journalism Scholarship
Rebecca Kheel, William Randolph Hearst Foundation Scholarship and Ferree Freshman Scholarship
Hillary Kladke, School of Journalism Scholarship
Sara Ko, Dick Yoakam Broadcast Journalism Scholarship
Jackie Kochell, Ernie Pyle Scholarship
Clare Krusing, Dick Yoakam Broadcast Journalism Scholarship and Trevor R. Brown International Teaching Scholarship
Zina Kumok, Scripps Howard Internship
Jeffrey Laboon, School of Journalism Scholarship
Kristina Lafree, Louise (Hess) Miller Scholarship
Nadia LaMantia, Journalism Alumni Scholarship
Garrett Lawton, G. Cleveland Wilhoit Scholarship
Evan Mannweiler, Jan and Paul Abramowitz Scholarship
Regan McCarthy, Ernie Pyle Scholarship
Collin McCollough, John E. and Mary Stempel Memorial Scholarship
Anne McElherne, Joseph A. Berman Scholarship and Journalism Alumni Scholarship
Courtney Miller, Ernie Pyle Scholarship
Kyle Mitchell, Bond Smith Sublette and A.J. and Bettie Smith Scholarship
Sam Mooney, Ernie Pyle Scholarship
Sean Moore, Robert Williamson Memorial Scholarship
Katie Myrick, Robin Fogel Avni Scholarship for Design and Journalism Alumni Scholarship
Kelsey Nash, Louise (Hess) Miller Scholarship
Rorye O’Connor, Journalism Alumni Scholarship
Kristi Oloffson, Timothy A. Franklin Scholarship
Zach Osterman, Jack and Helen Fesko Scholarship
Rachel Pankiw, Carolyn (Lucas) Tufford Journalism Scholarship
Georgia Perry, Counts/Ahlhauser Scholarship
Caitlin Peterkin, Robert R. and Mary (Pence) Cosner Scholarship
Jared Poertner, Eugene C. Pulliam Scholarship
Shabrelle Pollock, Ernie Pyle Scholarship
Genevieve Postlethwait, Ernie Pyle Scholarship
Kevin Pozzi, Louise (Hess) Miller Scholarship
DeAntae Prince, Charles and Nancy Teeple Soccer Writing Scholarship
Danielle Pritchett, School of Journalism Scholarship
Mary Reisert, Margaret H. Knote Journalism Scholarship and Public Relations Achievement Scholarship
Danielle Rindler, School of Journalism Scholarship
Beth Rosenbarger, Frances G. Wilhoit Research Award for best undergraduate research paper
Megan Samuels, Justin M. Druck Scholarship
Mike Sanserino, Poynter Internship and Scholarship
Zach Schalk, Ernie Pyle Scholarship
Rachel Schoumacher, John F. McLeod Scholarship
Wes Scott, David L. Adams Scholarship
Rachel Skybetter, Journalism Alumni Scholarship
Joe Slabaugh, Patricia Beach Smith Scholarship
Candace Smith, Journalism Alumni Scholarship
Stefanie Smith, Chris Savage Memorial Scholarship
Jordan Snow, School of Journalism Scholarship
Brian Spegele, Ralph L. Holsinger Scholarship
Lizzy Street, Charles F. Hardy Memorial Scholarship
Lauren Switzer, Lola Graham/Theta Sigma Phi Scholarship
Bertrand Teo, Ernie Pyle Scholarship
Lisa Totino, School of Journalism Scholarship
Erica Walker, Jack Scott Scholarship
Samantha Weiss, Journalism Alumni Scholarship
Brian Welk, Ferree Freshman Scholarship
Katie Wickham, Philip Ward Burton Advertising Scholarship and Trevor R. Brown International Teaching Scholarship
Ashley Wieckiewicz, Aileen Snoddy Scholarship and Journalism Alumni Scholarship
Lea Wilcox, Louise (Hess) Miller Scholarship
Tessa Wilhelm, John F. McLeod Scholarship
Lorin Williams, Jack Scott Scholarship
Ashley Wilson, Peter Jacobi Scholarship
Meg Woods, Lewis B. Edwards Journalism Scholarship and Linda (Nichols) Mayes Memorial Scholarship
Melanie Woodworth, Gretchen A. Kemp Scholarship
Savannah Worley, Journalism Alumni Scholarship
Erin Wright, Fort Wayne Journal Gazette Scholarship
Charli Wyatt, Frances G. Wilhoit Research Award for best graduate research paper

J210: Visual Communication

Tim Street — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 17:03:30 +0000

Web sites for every student in J210 during Fall 2007. Each page contains a self-portrait and biography, plus pages of the student’s photography, design and video assignments.