in Journalism and Mass Communication
By Jennifer A. Palilonis, Ball State University
After talking to a number of people from across the country at the AEJMC convention this year, I realized just how many of us are developing new courses that focus on multimedia and cross-platform storytelling. Of course, anytime we rethink curriculum, it’s a trick to balance the foundations of good journalism, more software and technical training, and how to determine what tomorrow’s journalists need to be successful. [Read more...]
By Paola Banchero, University of Alaska Anchorage
When a group of AEJMC members petitioned to establish the Religion and Media Interest Group in 1996, they set out to do fulfill four main purposes: 1. to serve and study the religion media; 2. to serve and study the needs of journalism educators who work at institutions with religious affiliation; 3. to encourage research about the relationship between religion and the media; 4. to demonstrate that media researchers, practitioners and educators recognize the value of religion in society, and to dispel stereotypical perceptions to the contrary. [Read more...]
Twitter has rolled out a new feature called Fast Follow: text “follow [account]” to 40404 and you’ll immediately start getting that account’s tweets via SMS—without ever signing up for Twitter >>> Four ways to use Fast Follow
Editor’s Weblog, Stephanie Chernow | The coffee shop is working with Yahoo Inc. to create the new website design which consists of six free channels: news, entertainment, wellness, business, career, and my neighborhood, Starbucks. The my neighborhood category is composed of hyper-local news which is based on the location of the specific Starbucks. [Read more...]
Slate, Christopher Beam | The proportion of full-time college professors with tenure has fallen from 57 percent in 1975 to 31 percent in 2007. The numbers for 2009, soon to be released by the Department of Education, are expected to dip even lower. [Read more...]
ATD, Peter Kafka | [...] That’s the conclusion of a new study sponsored by Next Issue Media, the “Hulu for Magazines” consortium that’s supposed to figure out the industry’s future.
It says iPad magazines and similar stuff will generate $3 billion in advertising and circulation revenue in 2014, assuming that the market expands beyond Apple (AAPL) to include Google (GOOG) and other competitors. But after you account for print dollars the digital versions will cannibalize, that nets out to $1.3 billion in incremental revenue. [Read more...]
DENVER, CO | Jan Slater, Illinois, was officially installed as the president of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) during a special ceremony at the association’s annual conference in Denver on Friday, August 6.
Slater will succeed Carol J. Pardun, South Carolina, as the 92nd President of AEJMC. Slater will officially begin her term on October 1.
To help kick off the new year, we asked Jan in an email to share some of her thoughts and plans for AEJMC during her term as president. [Read more...]
By Mary Beth Callie, Regis University
CIVIC & CITIZEN JOURNALISM | One of the most rewarding parts of my tenure as vice chair and now chair of the Civic and Citizen Journalism Interest Group has been the opportunity is to learn from its founders, who are still active in the group. In 1994, when the University of Missouri’s Ed Lambeth founded the Civic Journalism Interest Group and became its first chair, two of its future chairs—Jan Schaffer and Cheryl Gibbs — were on the front lines of the civic journalism movement, which emerged in the late 1980s.
Meeting and working with people such as Ed, Jan and Cheryl has been not only personally rewarding, but also a way of understanding how what started out being known as the public or civic journalism movement continues to strive for approaches to journalism that enhance our democratic way of life. [Read more...]
By Suzy Smith & Terry Heifetz, Ball State University
Social media has changed the way we interact within our communities. We use it to keep in touch with our families and friends, to connect with people who have common interests, to inform our social and professional groups about upcoming events or happenings, and even to share instant information about our feelings, our whereabouts and even share advice about places to go and things to do.
The news media has a long history with social media, although it is not obvious to most. From the early beginnings of the industry news has encouraged interaction between the audience and the news organization. Letters to the editor and phone call-in shows to the broadcast station are just two of the many ways that audiences in the past have played a part in interacting with the news. Technological advances have now made that interaction instantaneous. Discussion boards, twitter feeds, citizen journalism websites and Facebook groups, what we call social media, are among the many new outlets that provide audiences a way to take an active role in the news industry. [Read more...]
By Joe Bob Hester, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
JOMC 279, Advertising and Public Relations Research, is a required course for students majoring in advertising, public relations, or strategic communications in the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication. The primary goals of this course are for students to learn 1) to conduct research and evaluate information by methods appropriate to the advertising and public relations professions, and 2) to apply basic numerical and statistical concepts.
During the spring 2010 semester, I integrated social media, specifically Twitter, into all aspects of the course. I had previously used local/regional businesses as “clients” for a research project in the course. However, the benefit of working with real clients carried with it some fairly serious drawbacks, particularly the difficulty in finding appropriate new clients each semester. A previous instructor in the course had always used Super Bowl advertising as the topic for the research project since the course was usually taught in the spring semester. Now that the course would be taught year round, I was looking for a research project topic that would be appropriate regardless of semester. [Read more...]
