September 2007
Upcoming Events | SJMC Media Hits | Awards and Kudos |
Publications, Presentations, and Research | Murphy Hall Happenings
The Institute for New Media Studies hosts its annual New Media Research@UMN Conference September 13-14, 2007. The conference is open to any University of Minnesota faculty, graduate students, researchers, or librarians working on projects in the area of new media and Internet studies. Kick off the new academic year by connecting with fellow new media researchers about their projects at this important cross-disciplinary collaboration. The New Media Research@UMN conference opens with a reception and poster presentation at 5 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 13 and continues with a half-day conference from 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday, Sept. 14 in the Digital Technology Center in Walter Library. Steve Jones, professor of communication, University of Illinois, Chicago, will give the keynote speech at 9 a.m. on Friday morning. Jones is co-founder and first president of the Association of Internet Researchers. He is a social historian of communication technology and his books have earned him critical acclaim and interviews for stories in Time, the New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Newsweek and numerous other newspapers and magazines.
The Minnesota Journalism Center is pleased to co-sponsor "From the Presidential Archives: the story of private polling and its implications for American democracy" featuring Lawrence Jacobs. The lecture will take place on Monday, September 17, 2007 at 5:30 p.m. in Wilson Library, 4th floor. Access to White House records is being narrowed as more types of communications are not being saved (including email) or are being removed by the White House from public viewing. The hidden story of private presidential polling illustrates the importance of maintaining robust access to presidential communications and decisions. Presidents since John Kennedy have developed an extensive polling operation but have used it in surprising ways. The event celebrates the 100th anniversary of the University’s Government Publications Library’s official federal depository status. Documents from the Library’s collection will be on display at the event. Jacobs is is the Walter F. and Joan Mondale Chair for Political Studies and Director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance in the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota. He is also Professor in the Department of Political Science. His books include Inequality and American Democracy, Healthy, Wealthy, and Fair, and Politicians Don’t Pander: Political Manipulation and the Loss of Democratic Responsiveness. This event is co-sponsored by the Friends of the University of Minnesota Libraries, the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, Minnesota Journalism Center, the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs, and the departments of History and Political Science.
Just as the Federal Communications Commission is poised to consider new regulations on violence on television, the Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law will host attorney Robert Corn-Revere to deliver the Twenty-Second Annual Silha Lecture on Monday, October 1, 2007 at 7 p.m. His lecture, “The Kids are All Right: Violent Media, Free Expression, and the Drive to Regulate,” will examine the conflict between the First Amendment and government controls over media content that reaches children. Robert Corn-Revere is a partner at the law firm of Davis Wright Tremaine in Washington, D.C. He has served as counsel in litigation and regulatory proceedings involving the Communications Decency Act, the Child Online Protection Act, FCC Indecency Rules, Internet content filtering in public libraries, and public broadcasting and cable television regulations. Corn-Revere was the lead counsel in United States v. Playboy Entertainment Group, Inc. (2000). He is the co-author of three-volume treatise, “Modern Communications Law” (West Group, Inc. 1999). The lecture will take place at the Cowles Auditorium in the Hubert H. Humphrey Center on the West Bank Campus of the University of Minnesota. The event is free and open to the public; no reservations or tickets are required.
Jane Kirtley was featured in a number of stories and interviews over the summer, including guest spots on Wisconsin Public Radio and TPT’s Almanac, where she discussed the proposed federal journalists' shield law and the implications of buy-outs and other financial problems at the two Twin Cities' daily newspapers. She was featured in an article about freedom of information and its importance in promoting democracy in the Dominican Republic, where a freedom of information law has only been in place since 2004. Kirtley was also quoted in various articles in numerous publications, including the Minnesota Daily (free speech on campus), two articles in the fall issue of Student Press Law Center Report (reporting of crime on campus, free speech on campus), the Pittsburgh (PA) Tribune-Review, Governing Magazine (current trends in state open government laws), the Baltimore Sun (public officials and the media), and the Star Tribune and Finance and Commerce (the media’s coverage of the 35W Bridge Collapse).
An article in the July 16, 2007 edition of the Star Tribune titled "Diligent student ad team at U takes national title" featured the award-winning 2007 National Student Advertising Competition (NSAC) team. The team was also featured in a story on the U of M homepage.
Brian Southwell, assistant professor and director of graduate studies in the SJMC, along with two of his colleagues in the School of Public Health, have been awarded a grant from the National Institutes of Health for a project titled "Development of Effective Interventions to Reduce Adolescent Use of Indoor Tanning." They will receive approximately $300,000 over two years for their research.
George Anghelcev, a Ph.D. student in the SJMC, and John Eighmey, Mithun Land Grant Chair in Advertising, won the Top Faculty Paper Award in the Advertising Division for the Annual Conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC). The paper is titled "Motivation Crowding: The Hidden Costs of Introducing an Incentive in Advertising to Promote Intrinsic Behavior." Anghelcev and Eighmey used motivation crowding theory to look at the psychological effects when incentives are introduced into a decision involving strong intangible values.
Congratulations to Liala Helal! She was a recipient of a 2007 Scripps Howard Top Ten Scholarship.The competition is open to full-time students entering their junior or senior year who are nominated by their schools, demonstrate an interest in a career in journalism as well as high academic achievement, have strong recommendations, and submit a personal essay. They are destined to parlay their scholarships into careers that make a permanent impression on journalism and democracy. The award is a $10,000 scholarship given to only 10 journalism students in the nation.
Erik Helin was a spring 2007 Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) winner for his project titled "The
Jane Kirtley delivered lectures and conducted workshops on freedom of information in the Dominican Republic between July 16 and 18 under the auspices of the U.S. State Department's Franklin Center in Santo Domingo. The programs were co-sponsored by the Pontificia Universidad Catolica Madre y Maestra. She delivered a lecture on "Access to Public Information as an Investigative Reporting Tool for Fighting Corruption" in Santiago on July 16; conducted an all-day workshop for journalists on "How to Report on Government and FOIA Issues" in Santo Domingo on July 17; and delivered a lecture on "Public Information as a Tool for Promoting Transparency and Trust in Public Administration" to FOI officers and public relations managers, in coordination with the Information Office of the Presidency in Santo Domingo on July 18. In August, Kirtley took part in two panels at the annual 2007 Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Annual Convention: "Of Propaganda, Patriotism and Patronage: The Legal, Ethical and Practical Implications of Journalists Working with Government Agencies" -- discussing issues arising from journalists at El Nuevo Herald in Miami simultaneously working for the U.S. government-sponsored Radio Marti and TV Marti and ""A Class in Privilege Then and Now: Is There Any Change?" -- discussing trends in the developing law of reporter's privilege, including the proposed federal shield law.
An article by Yoori Hwang and Brian Southwell titled "Can a personality trait predict talk about science? Sensation seeking as a science communication targeting variable" has been accepted for publication in Science Communication. This summer, Southwell was a guest speaker for the annual incoming student preparation workshop sponsored by the University's Multicultural Center for Academic Excellence.
Michelle Wood's "Rethinking the inoculation analogy: Effects on subjects with differing preexisting attitudes" was published in Human Communication Research. In August, she co-presented "Increased persuasion knowledge of video news releases: Audience response and public policy issues related to source disclosure" with Michelle Nelson (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and Hye-Jin Paek (University of Georgia) at the 2007 Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Annual Convention (Public Relations Division). The paper discusses audience response and public policy implications for disclosure of video news release (VNR) sources in broadcast news.
SJMC welcomes new faculty
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Ison joins
the faculty as an associate professor. Many people
will already recognize him from his service as a
teaching specialist and visiting associate professor
who adds his award-winning professional journalism
background to his track record of teaching
excellence. He will teach news reporting, advanced
reporting and mass media ethics. Ison was a journalist for more than 20 years with
the Star Tribune, where he worked his way up to assistant managing editor/projects.
Besides the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting, Ison has won numerous
awards from the National Press Club, Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inland
Daily Press and Associated Press, as well as state and local awards.
Rachel Davis Mersey joins us as
an assistant professor with a focus on journalism and new media.
Mersey, who received her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill, has research interests in the influence of new media on newspapers' community-building function. Her dissertation, titled “Preserving
Journalism: Moving from Print to Online,” examined whether the Internet can
wield the level of community influence once commanded by print newspapers. Mersey’s
background also includes significant professional experience, including working as a writer
and reporter at the Arizona Republic and for KPNX, the NBC affiliate in Phoenix. She will teach news reporting and writing, mass communication processes and structure, and information for mass communication.
Amy Kristin Sanders, J.D., University of Iowa and Ph.D., University of Florida-Gainesville,
joins the faculty as an assistant professor in media law. Sanders’ interdisciplinary research interests include broadcast indecency
and the Eighth Amendment, journalism ethics and public
access to information. Her work has appeared in Environs, a
publication of the University of California-Davis School of
Law. Her professional experience includes serving as the senior articles editor for the
Florida Journal of Law and Public Policy, and as copy editor and page designer for
the Gainesville Sun and the Brechner Report. She will teach news reporting and writing, introduction to mass communication, and law of internet communications.
Catherine Squires, Ph.D., Northwestern University, is the inaugural John and Elizabeth Bates Cowles Professor of Journalism, Diversity and Equality. Her work focuses on the interactions between racial groups, mass media, and the public sphere. Squires' first book, Dispatches from the Color Line, analyzes news coverage of controversies surrounding people of multiracial descent. She also has published work on African American-owned media, African American identity, and the public sphere in Communication Theory and the Harvard International Journal of Press and Politics. Her work has been included in the books Counterpublics and the State (SUNY, 2001), Say It Loud! African American Audiences, Media and Identity (Routledge, 2002), and reprinted in The Black Studies Reader (Routledge, 2004) and African American Communication and Identities: Essential Readings (Sage, 2004). Other articles concerning racial identity and the mass media have appeared in the Journal of Intergroup Relations and Critical Studies in Media Communication. Read the feature article about Professor Squires in the most recent issue of the Murphy Reporter.
Shayla Thiel Stern, Ph.D., University of Iowa, joins the faculty
as an assistant professor in new media. From 2004 to 2007, she was an
assistant professor in the College of Communication at DePaul
University in Chicago. Her research interests focus on the
intersections of new media and gender as well as critical and cultural
aspects of online journalism. Her first book, Instant Identity: Adolescent Girls and the World of Instant Messaging, was published by Peter Lang Publishing in March 2007. Previously, she worked as Music & Nightlife Editor for WashingtonPost.com, Affiliate Sales Manager at Cars.com, Television and Careers Correspondent for CNN.com, Community Content Manager for Edmunds.com, Content Manager for Recommender, Inc., Editor of the Journal of Communication Inquiry, and she has been a contributor to The Washington Post, Britannica, The Chicago Tribune, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. She has published academic articles in Feminist Media Studies and The Journal of Electronic Publishing as well as book chapters in Women in Mass Communication (Sage, 2006) and Girl Wide Web. Girls, the Internet and the Negotiation of Identity (Peter Lang, 2005). She also worked as a part-time announcer for WSUI-AM, the National Public Radio affiliate in Iowa City, IA.
Alums: Alumni societies offer ways for you to stay active
For more information on how to become involved with the University of Minnesota Alumni Association and the School of Journalism and Mass Communication Alumni Society, contact Erica Giorgi in the CLA External Relations office at giorg003@umn.edu or 612-625-8837.
Submit items for the October issue of the Murphy Monthly
Deadline for publication is Friday, September 21, 2007.
©2007
Regents of the University of Minnesota. All rights reserved.
The University of Minnesota is an equal opportunity educator and employer.
September 2007