a department of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota,
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- SJMC Happenings
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Chris Ison presented a workshop for the Minnesota Associated Press on March 14 called "Documenting the News: Using the Freedom of Information Act and Minnesota Government Data Practices Act to Do Better Journalism." The presentation kicked off the AP's observance of "Sunshine Week."
Guest speakers in Ison's Media Ethics class included Star Tribune editor and senior vice president Anders Gyllenhaal, Minnesota News Council director Gary Gilson, and First Amendment attorney John Borger of the Faegre & Benson law firm. John Stefany, a computer-assisted reporting specialist in the Star Tribune's investigative unit, also gave a presentation on C.A.R. reporting to Ison's Public Affairs Reporting class on March 8.
Professor Jane Kirtley was a panelist for “Access and the Courts” at the 2005 National FOI Day conference, "Congress and the Courts: Confronting Secrecy," on March 16 at the Freedom Forum in Arlington, VA. Kirtley was also a “Roundtable Participant” at the the 5th Annual Hurley Symposium, "The Seduction of Secrecy: Toward Better Access to Government Information on the Record" at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, on March 17. The symposium aired on C-SPAN 2 on March 18. Visit the symposium webiste for more information, including a PODcast and transcript.
Kirtley was also the keynote speaker at the Media and the Law Seminar 2005 ("Delivering the Message: Is the Public Well Served?") held by the Law Society of Alberta (Canada) in Calgary on April 9, 2005. The title of her
speech was: "The Odd Couple: Judges and Journalists Have More in Common Than You Think." She also appeared on a panel at the conference entitled"You Be the Judge: How Well is the Public Informed by the Justice System and the Media?"
Best Buy’s head of Strategic Planning, Kim Garretson, is the “client” for Pat Strother’s JOUR4263: Strategic Communication Campaigns course. Garretson has visited Strother’s course twice in the past month, as the class works on a new, top-secret area of new business for Best Buy. The SJMC will compete against the University of Missouri in presentations for Best Buy on May 3rd and 5th.
Professor Gary Schwitzer hosted a number of guest lecturers in his JOUR8192 health journalism seminar including: Sharon Begley of the Wall Street Journal; Irving Gottesman, PhD, of the University of Minnesota departments of Psychology and Psychiatry; Harry Hull, MD, Minnesota Department of Health; Jeff Bender, DVM, UMN Veterinary Public Health; and Susan Kline, MD, MPH, UMN Medical School.
Professor T.K. Chang hosted John Mason, weekend anchor of KSTP-TV's 5 Eyewitness News, in his Jour 1001: Introduction to Mass Communication class. Professor Chang was recently recommended by both the SJMC faculty and CLA Dean Rosenstone for promotion from the rank of Associate Professor to Professor. The recommendation now goes to the Provost and the Board of Regents for final action.
Rene Sanchez, senior reporter for the Star Tribune national desk, spoke to Professor Donald Brazeal’s In-depth Reporting Class on March 29. Three days after his coverage of the Red Lake School shooting appeared in the Sunday Star-Tribune, Sanchez talked about his experiences in stepping into difficult reporting situations and about trends in long-form journalism. Rob Daves, Director of Research for the Star Tribune, spoke to the Jour 4731H honors seminar students about demographic trends in media consumption. The class is taught by Professors Dan Wackman and Kathleen Hansen.
The SJMC Alumni Board is looking for new board members! As the school year winds down, the Alumni Board is seeking new members for 3-year terms beginning in Fall ’05. We have 4-5 openings, and are seeking a cross-section of SJMC alums with both news/editorial and strategic communications backgrounds. The Board is responsible for the SJMC Mentoring Program, the annual Alumni Award for Excellence, and other programs designed to enhance the SJMC student experience and support faculty and staff initiatives. The Board meets about 7-8 times during the school year for about an hour, and involves a small amount of additional planning work—but not such a major time commitment that you shouldn’t consider it! It’s a fulfilling way to give something back to your School and our great students and staff. If you would like to learn more, please contact Board president Len Mitsch at 651-286-6706 or Board past president Steve Gordon at 612-347-1412. Interested alumni may also contact Jean Kucera, Assistant to the SJMC Director, at jkucera@umn.edu, or Ami Berger, SJMC Communications Manager, at aberger@umn.edu for more information.
Alumni Association focus groups:The University of Minnesota Alumni Association is partnering with Questar Research to conduct alumni survey research which will provide valuable insight into alumni wants and needs. The first step in this process is conducting small focus group discussions with different alumni groups, including members and non-members of UMAA. The focus groups will be held on the evening of Thursday, April 21, 2005. Any alumni who would be willing to participate and share their opinions are invited to contact Maureen Arbogast, UMAA Marketing Manager, at arbog009@umn.edu or 612-626-4836.
Ever wonder what happened to your U of M friends and classmates? The UMAA’s newest member benefit, M Alumni Online, is an online directory of more than 350,000 University of Minnesota-Twin Cities campus alumni and friends. Use M Alumni Online to reconnect with old friends, take advantage of valuable career networking tools, or volunteer as an alumni career advisor to share your professional expertise with new graduates and alumni. Go to www.alumni.umn.edu/malumnionline to access the directory and register online with your UMAA membership ID number.
Aaron Brown, the anchor of "News Night with Aaron Brown," CNN's flagship evening newscast, and a former student of the SJMC, will be the keynote speaker at the University of Minnesota Alumni Association's 101st Annual Celebration, Tuesday, May 10, 2005, at Coffman Memorial Union and Northrop Auditorium. The social hour and dinner will be from 5:30-7:30 p.m. at Coffman; the program will begin at 8 p.m. in Northrop. For more information, visit www.alumni.umn.edu/annualcelebration.
Professor Jane Kirtley was interviewed by WCCO and KARE-11 news on March 9, discussing the departure of Dan Rather as anchor of the CBS Evening News. In the aftermath of the shootings at Red Lake High School, Kirtley was cited in a March 26 Star Tribune article entitled “Measuring the media coverage against Columbine.” Kirtley was also a guest, with Tom Prichard of the Minnesota Family Council, on “Access Minnesota,” a radio talk show produced by the Minnesota Broadcasters Association. The topic was "Indecency," and the interview aired on more than 40 Minnesota radio stations in two separate programs on March 20 and 27.
Howard Liszt, SJMC senior fellow, is quoted in the March 20 Star Tribune in an article discussing the challenges facing Twin Cities ad agencies. In the article, Liszt notes that the past five years were "a real punch in the gut" to the ad business, since employee head count is down one-third from four years ago, and agencies are facing the end of the business model they've used for 75 years.
Professor Linda Jean Kenix is quoted in the April 10 Pioneer Press in an article discussing the online activities of Jeff Weise, the shooter in the Red Lake High School shootings. "There's a long-standing fascination with violence and people on the edge of society, but how those stories were told to a mass audience is very different in the 1920s compared to how it's told today," Kenix says in the article. "When you were reading stories about Bonnie and Clyde, they were these sweeping mysteries that painted these kind of mystical people. But on the Internet…it's a much different playing field. There's nothing controlling the content going out."
Professor Kathleen Hansen has won the Special Libraries Association's David Rhydwen Award for Outstanding Scholarly Contributions to News Librarianship. Hansen is the first winner of the award; the award announcement notes that "Hansen has studied the role of the news library and information technologies in news making for more than 20 years. Her work is considered foundational for scholars of news librarianship." The award will be presented during the SLA's annual conference in June at a special dinner hosted by the news library division.
Jennifer Moore, a second-year Ph.D. student in Mass Communication, has been awarded a 2005 National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Research Grant. Her project, entitled "Negotiating Consolidation: The State of Small Radio Groups,” seeks to better understand how radio station owners who operate independently of national media corporations are able to remain in business despite a climate of media consolidation and deregulation. Professors Hazel Dicken-Garcia and Brian Southwell served as faculty endorsers for Moore’s project.
SJMC public relations undergraduate students Stephanie Snyder, SaraMari Orth, and Jon Dean received all three of the top prizes in the Dr. Willard Thompson Scholarship Awards. Snyder submitted the top-scoring entry this year, earning recognition as “Best of PRSSA” as well as the first prize award of $2000. Orth was awarded the second prize of $1000 and Dean earned a third prize of $500. The Thompson scholarship is sponsored by the Minnesota PRSA, and entries are judged by a panel of accredited professionals. Students are judged based on performance on a given communications case study, as well as standing within their PRSSA chapter, communications experience, and a faculty letter of recommendation. A number of other SJMC undergrads were given honors for their work this spring; see http://sjmc.cla.umn.edu/studentawards2005.html for a full list.
The Minnesota Daily won a number of awards in the 2005 Society of Professional Journalists Region 6 Mark of Excellence Awards, announced April 1. The Daily took first prize in the “Best All-Around Daily” category in addition to numerous individual awards, including first prize in sports column writing for columnist Aaron Blake and second prize in general news reporting for reporter Kari Petrie. See http://www.mnspj.org/04moeawards.asp for a full list of winners.
Nora Paul, Director of the Institute for New Media Studies, and Kathleen Hansen, Professor and Director of the Minnesota Journalism Center, have pubished an article entitled “ ‘Modding’ Education: Engaging Today’s Learners” in the latest issue of The International Digital Media & Arts Association Journal. The article describes the work of Paul, Hansen, and their colleague Matt Taylor from the Dunwoody College of Technology in creating a computer simulation game for students in the information-gathering class. The project uses the game engine from the computer simulation game “NeverWinter Nights.”
Professor Gary Schwitzer presented the results of his latest research project, an analysis of health policy news coverage on three award-winning TV stations, to the 6th annual national conference of the Association of Health Care Journalists, March 31-April 3 in Chapel Hill, NC. At that meeting, Schwitzer also completed his second term and fourth year of service as a member of the AHCJ Board of Directors.
Maia Dock, a master’s student in Health Journalism, is the author of a regular column entitled “Body Wellness News” in Today's Health and Wellness magazine. Her column summarizes new research on various health-related topics and uses a star-based rating system to show the strength of the research. Dock is also a registered dietitian and a candidate for the MPH degree in Nutrition at the U of M’s School of Public Health.
Professor Brian Southwell received an annual renewal from the National Science Foundation, based on year one performance, for his on-going evaluation of the Discoveries and Breakthroughs Inside Science television news project run by the American Institute of Physics.
The SJMC will host the annual Midwest Graduate Student Conference on April 15 and 16, 2005. The conference provides an opportunity for graduate students from several Big Ten schools to meet and present their research in a supportive environment. Interested graduate students should submit an extended abstract (1000 words maximum) of a completed research or of a work in progress by February 10, 2005. Acceptance notices will be sent by March 10, 2005. Submit proposals to Adina Schneeweis at giur0002@umn.edu or place hard copies in her mailbox in Murphy 119. For more information, visit the conference website at http://midwestconf.sjmc.umn.edu/ or contact Adina Schneeweis at giur0002@umn.edu or Katie Foss at beckx058@umn.edu.
The Minnesota Journalism Center will host the 28th annual Frank Premack Memorial Awards on April 18, 2005. This year’s event will feature a conversation with Stuart Rothenberg, editor and publisher of The Rothenberg Political Report. The event will be held at 7:30 p.m. in the Coffman Memorial Union Theater on the University of Minnesota’s East Bank. The event is free and open to the public; no RSVP is needed to attend. For more information contact the Minnesota Journalism Center at (612) 626-1723 or mnjrnctr@umn.edu.
The Institute for New Media Studies will host a New Media Breakfast on Wednesday, April 20, 2005, from 8-9:30 a.m. in Murphy Hall Room 100. The topic will be the Digital Think project, co-produced by the INMS and the Media Center at the American Press Institute. Mauricio Arango, creator of the Digital Think site, Nora Paul, editor of the series, and a surprise digital thinker or two will discuss the project and what they are hearing about the inspiration for creating clever and compelling content. See www.inms.umn.edu for more information or contact inms@umn.edu.
The Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law will host its annual Silha Forum on the evening of Wednesday, April 27, 2005, in the Ski-U-Mah room of the McNamara Alumni Center. The panel discussion is entitled “Confidential Sources: Where Ethics and Law Collide,” and will feature David Kidwell, an award-winning investigative reporter for The Miami Herald who spent more than two weeks in jail in 1996 for refusing to testify about a jailhouse interview he had conducted with an accused child killer. Other panel members include Kerri Miller, host of Minnesota Public Radio’s “Midmorning” program, and Paul Hannah, an expert in media law and a partner with the law firm Kelly & Berens in Minneapolis. Jane Kirtley, Silha Professor of Media Ethics and Law, Director of the Silha Center, and a member of the SPJ Minnesota-Pro Chapter Board, will moderate. Light refreshments will be available starting at 6:30 p.m., with the program following at 7:00 p.m. The event is free and open to the public, and no reservations are required. For further information, visit www.silha.umn.edu or contact the Silha Center at 612-625-3421.
The SJMC's annual Spring Celebration, honoring scholarship/fellowship recipients and graduating students, will be held on Thursday, May 5, at 5:30 p.m. at the Radisson Metrodome Hotel. For more information, contact mnjrnctr@umn.edu.
The Minnesota Journalism Center and the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis will co-host the annual Supply, Demand & Deadlines Workshop June 12-14, 2005. "Supply, Demand & Deadlines: A Workshop on Economics for Journalists," provides mid-level reporters, editors and producers from the business, economics, political and policy beats with insights into how to cover some of the most important but difficult economic and business issues facing our communities. The workshop will include extensive opportunities for journalists to work through sample stories, case studies, and critiques of journalistic work in these subject areas. Visit http://www.mjc.umn.edu/sdd2005/index.htm for more information and to register.
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April 2005