Internship and Careers 2013 Abstracts

Reasons Underlying The Choice Behind Seeking a Major in Journalism: The Journalism Degree Motivations Scale (JDMS) • Serena Carpenter, Michigan State University; Anne Hoag, Penn State University; August Grant, University of South Carolina • Journalists are socialized into the profession through education. The purpose of the research was to develop and validate a measure determining the motivational variables underlying both intrinsic and extrinsic reasons why undergraduate students seek a degree in journalism, the Journalism Degree Motivations Scale (JDMS). It is important to examine motivations in order to understand why they pick the stories they do. Through a multi-method approach and exploratory factor analysis, it established a set of motivations that reflect existing theory and measures. The results show that the JDMS is composed of seven factors: social justice and responsibility, social prestige, sports media, public interaction, photography, writing, and a varied career.

Promotion and Tenure: Exploring the Guidelines of Journalism, Mass Communication and PR Departments in a Digital Era • Mia Moody; Yueqin Yang, Baylor; Poplar Yuan • This study examined tenure-review policies of 40 journalism, mass communication, and PR departments to identify trends and the impact—if any—that new media has had on tenure guidelines. The call for changes among departments can be traced back to more than 20 years ago, yet most of the documents in our sample are unreflective of a digital era. This analysis provides guidelines to help journalism, PR and communications departments transform their tenure and promotion guidelines for today’s technology-driven environment.

Hegemonic Masculinity in Sports Journalism: On the Field, but in the Classroom? • Sada Reed, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • Though the first American journalism school began in 1908, it wasn’t until the mid-1990s that sports journalism majors were created. By 2012, at least 10 American universities offered sports journalism tracks, and at least a quarter of mass communication-accredited institutions offered sports journalism courses. With the creation of these sports journalism-specific tracks comes new opportunity for educators to inform students about the role hegemonic masculinity, a critical theory that explains how ingroups maintain power, plays in sports journalism. Scholars regard sports journalism as a cultural maintenance site for hegemonic masculinity, as this theory has been used to explain the “common sense” ways in which outgroups are represented. This paper contains a brief overview of hegemonic masculinity, followed by a more in-depth section on hegemonic masculinity in sports and hegemonic masculinity in the classroom. The paper concludes with recommendations for educators regarding how to address hegemonic masculinity in the classroom and to ultimately create more critical, diverse student sports journalists.

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