Newspaper Research Journal seeks reviewers
The Newspaper Research Journal, the peer-reviewed research publication of the Newspaper and Online News Division, is seeking new reviewers.
Interested people should send an email to nrj@newspaperresearchjournal.org. Editor Sandra Utt will forward a list of areas of interest for reviews.
As the journal’s site says, it “comprehensively answers questions about U.S. newspaper performance and related topics of interest. Significant themes of research range from balance and fairness to the use of computer analysis in newspaper reporting. NRJ is unique because it provides a forum for comprehensive, current research and discussion on print and online journalism, serving as a bridge between newspaper professionals and scholars.”
Call for entries: The division’s newspaper project award
CALL FOR ENTRIES:
2012 AEJMC NEWSPAPER AND ONLINE NEWS DIVISION NEWSPAPER PROJECT AWARD
May 1 deadline
The AEJMC Newspaper and Online News Division’s Newspaper Project Award recognizes publications produced by students and professors in journalism classes or as special curricular projects connected to courses. To qualify, the publication must have been edited and produced as part of the curriculum, text reported and written by students, and professors must have been responsible for editing and/or advising. Magazines, newsletters or Yellow Page-like compilations will not be accepted. Eligible publications must have been published in either the 2010-2011 or 2011-2012 academic years. Online newspaper publications are eligible and may be submitted on a DVD or CD. The following form should be filled out and accompany the entry: Read more
Call for papers: ACES award for for research on editing
Newspaper and Online News: ACES Award for Research on Editing
The Newspaper Division of AEJMC invites faculty and students to submit research papers in the inaugural competition for the ACES Award For Research On Editing. Deadline: April 1, 2012.
Sponsored by the American Copy Editors Society, the award will honor the best research about story editing, headline writing and other topics related to editing. The winner will present the research at the AEJMC conference in Chicago, August 9-12, 2012. The winner will also receive a $100 prize and complementary registration to the ACES conference for the following year.
Qualitative and quantitative papers in history, law, effects, processes, use, ethics and emerging technologies are welcome. Read more
East Carolina University fires student media adviser
East Carolina University today fired Paul Isom, its student media adviser, a few months after the student newspaper published the nude picture of a streaker at a football game.
The Student Press Law Center‘s story is here.
From the SPLC story:
“There’s no camouflaging what this is, which is retaliation for an editorial judgment made by the students that was completely within the students’ authority to make,” [Student Press Law Center executive director Frank] LoMonte said. “They’re clearly punishing the adviser for something he not only didn’t control, but legally couldn’t control.”
Isom said he has no problem fighting his termination, and isn’t ruling out legal action against the university.
“If I was not willing to stand up for a First Amendment issue, then I wouldn’t have been advising them the way that I was advising them,” he said. “I would have told them, ‘Yeah, don’t run any controversial pictures, don’t make anybody mad.’”
Publisher seeks online newspaper innovation in-house, online
Employees at both MediaNews Group and the Journal Register Company are being invited into an ideaLab — a group of company employees promised “the latest tools and… the time and money to experiment with them.”
“Each member of the ideaLab will be equipped, initially, with a Smartphone, tablet and laptop,” CEO John Paton said in his blog, announcing the addition of 25 MediaNews employees to the original Journal Register ideaLab project, begun last year. He added:
“The Company will carve out 10 hours a week from their regular jobs to allow them time to experiment with these tools and report back on how we can change our business for the better. And we will add an extra $500 per month to their pay. Other than that – there are no rules.”
Following his own “digital first” philosophy, Paton invited employees to apply for ideaLab membership by posting responses on his blog or sending him an email message answering the question, “In about 200 words or less, what would you do with the tools and time to improve our business?”
Discussions and links:
- Charles Apple on ideaLab announcement, at “The Visual Side of Journalism”
- Amy Gahran on ideaLab announcement, at Knight Digital Media Center blog.
- Newspapers’ Digital Apostle, David Carr profile of Paton in The New York Times, Nov. 13, 2011
Does The New York Times trust you?
Following a pattern set by many blogs and online journals, The New York Times has launched a policy of “trusting” some readers to post unmoderated comments on its content, as well as allowing “threaded” comments-on-comments.
More of the story:
- The Times to Change Policy… Nov. 30 story
- Dec. 1 Times Note to Readers About Comments (with more than 900 reader comments in two days)
- Finally…., Observer.com
- Changes Bring Out the Crazies, MediaBistro FishbowlNY
- Report by Mathew Ingram, GigaOm
- Report by Jeff Sonderman at Poynter
Some quick lessons for student journalists: Penn State scandal
While Patriot-News reporter Sarah Ganim has earned plenty of well-deserved attention and praise for breaking the story of alleged sex-abuse and coverups at Penn State, TVNewsCheck.com tells the story of the first runner-up.
Gary Sinderson, who covers the area for WJAC-TV, the Cox station based in Johnstown-Altoona, Pa., told TVNewsCheck that he had heard similar rumors but couldn’t verify them because:
1. Penn State is a tough nut to crack. (“You had a better chance of getting the truth out of the Kremlin than getting it out of Old Main or athletics.”) Perhaps that will change, because a bill would end the university’s exemption to Pennsylvania’s open-record laws.
2. His job meant he didn’t have time to pursue what has become the biggest story in college sports in decades. Sinderson wrote:
We both knew the truth of the story was in Harrisburg with the grand jury. The Patriot-News, to its credit, gave her the time necessary to work on the story.
Why couldn’t I report it? I didn’t have the time to get the needed verification to move the story ahead or to convince my bosses it’s not a rumor, but a real story. It’s just the nature of my particular job. I’m a one-man band, expected to crank out several stories a day. I may get a day or two to work on a large story, but not the time afforded to Ganim.
What lessons can we tell journalism students?
- Where you went to school doesn’t matter. Both Ganim and Sinderson are Penn State graduates. As journalists, our ultimate loyalty must belong to the public, not our alma mater.
- Age doesn’t matter. Ganim is 24; Sinderson has been reporting from Happy Valley since 1983.
- What matters is time. It’s important to feed the beast, but sometimes we have to be able to convince our bosses that a potentially bigger story is more important.
- Local reporting by full-time reporters has never mattered more. This wasn’t a story that a “citizen journalist” likely could break, given the time required, the need to understand the judicial system, the roadblocks thrown up by the University and the judicial system, and the conflicted loyalties between a journalist and an all-encompassing university and football dynasty.
- The research remains consistent: When it comes to providing new information, print journalists provide more new information than any other source.
Other lessons?
Newspaper story, online, has new life cycles, many questions
“Convoluted” is the key word in this graphic portrayal of the life of a news story today, thanks to our new post-blog, mid-Twitter, online universe:
The New Convoluted Life Cycle of a Newspaper Story
Lauren Michell Rabaino of The Seattle Times raises fascinating issues in that illustrated article at MediaBistro’s “10,000 words” blog, opening with the observation that, “News must be really hard to follow for an everyday consumer of a newspaper website.”
As an online producer for the Seattle paper, as well as blogger at laurenmichell.com and an active Twitter user as @laurenmichell, she gives examples from the BBC and Los Angeles Times sites, as well as her own publication. She reports on a recent critique of “episodic” news reporting and throws the idea of more wiki-like publications into the mix, along with a discussion of how to implement updates in content management systems.
Rabaino’s item also suggests there is plenty of room for descriptive and comparative research by AEJMC Newspaper & Online News Division members. After reading her piece, I just kept coming up with more questions… Read more
Sustainability, regeneration themes of convergence conference
A post from Newspaper and Online News Division chief Chris Roberts:
University of Alabama associate professor of journalism Dr. George Daniels was among the scores of attendees but among the few bloggers at the recent media convergence conference at the University of South Carolina, where the topic was sustainability and regeneration.
What those words meant was left to conference members, who defined it in terms of ecology, ethics, economics, and change. The keynote speaker was the University of Colorado’s Steve Outing, who used Skype because an injury left him unable to travel. Daniels noted that Outing offered a “multi-layered glimpse” of journalism’s future
This was the conference’s 10th year, and Daniels came away with five points from Columbia, S.C.:
1. Convergence is not about the tools, technology or legacy media, it’s about the audience and its role.
2. Modeling of What Convergence is still needs to be done with both theoretical development and new data-gathering.
3. Digital Media and their own sustainability are now worthy of discussion and dialogue.
4. There is still a digital divide when it comes to multimedia or convergence journalism education.
5. Longitudinal Research may be harder to come by, especially when media outlets have a “no survey” policy. What are the implications of this for future convergence/multimedia research?
Fall Leafxxx LeadTime is here
The Fall 2011 edition of LeadTime, the Newspaper and Online News Division newsletter, is available for downloading here and in the LeadTime archives.
Featured articles include the call for papers for the Southeast Colloquium (deadline Dec. 5), a profile of Curtis MacDougall and the division’s MacDougall student paper award, a visit to China with University of Memphis professors Jin Yang and David Arant, the news that the division is teaming up with the American Copy Editors Society to create the ACES Award For Research On Editing, and a “news ecosystems” panel report from the 2011 convention.
Chris Roberts, 2011-12 head of the division, also offers reflections on the Newspaper and Online News Division name change and other signs that journalism, like the word “media,” is plural.
