On the Challenges of Small Newsrooms and Mobile Communication

July 7, 2010 By Leave a Comment
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by Doug Fisher, University of South Carolina

Small, family-owned news organizations may have the best opportunity to take advantage of the digital pathway to reach their communities, but they also may be the most endangered by it and find it the most challenging.

I’ve come to that conclusion after working last summer in the newsroom of an 18,000-circulation community daily newspaper and after years of working with other editors and publishers at individual papers or small family-owned chains.

The health of these newsrooms is important to their communities. In many instances, as case studies at the Newspapers and Community-Building symposia have shown, they are among the few institutions willing and able to stand up to the power structure. Also, as has been widely noted, they generally are suffering less economically than their big-city counterparts. [Read more...]

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The Future of Communication: Theory and Methodology?

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By Dietram A. Scheufele, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Communication as a discipline has come to a crossroads. The “mass” in mass communication has morphed into different publics that generate, exchange, and use content in ways that were unimaginable just a decade ago. And these changes in how content is produced and communicated are paralleled by much more far-reaching shifts in how some cohorts in society interpret traditional notions of privacy, objectivity, and source credibility. And so far, our discipline has not done a very good job at offering answers to what have become increasingly pressing questions in various societal debates. How do social media change how we interact with one another? How does information get disseminated in a fragmented multi-channel media environment? And what does the future of (mass) communication look like?

The tricky part, of course, is that many of the answers to these questions transcend the boundaries of our discipline. This is particularly challenging for a young field, such as communication, that continues to struggle with its identity and its desire to compete on an even playing field with much larger disciplines, such as psychology and political science. And if we are not careful, we may follow these disciplines down some dead ends. A good example is the debate surrounding Republican Senator Tom Coburn’s proposal in October 2009 to prohibit the National Science Foundation from “wasting any federal research funding on political science projects.” Coburn, of course, used the label “political science” but targeted social science much more broadly. And his comments rekindled an old debate among political scientists about incremental disciplinary research versus big questions. Cornell’s Peter Katzenstein summarized this intra-disciplinary dilemma best: “Graduate students discussing their field … often speak in terms of ‘an interesting puzzle,’ a small intellectual conundrum… that tests the ingenuity of the solver, rather than the large, sloppy and unmanageable problems that occur in real life.” [Read more...]

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The Popularity of Twitter Among Celebrities: Tweets or Trouble?

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Tweet!By Cynthia Nichols, Oklahoma State University & Charles W. Meadows, The University of Alabama

From Taylor Swift, to former Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin, Twitter is quickly becoming one of the fastest growing social media networks among celebrities. Although social media outlets such as Myspace, and Facebook have been around for years, Twitter has only recently emerged into mainstream popularity, and everyone—from grandmothers, to fashion designers, to scholars, to celebrities—is jumping on board. Since its start in 2006, Twitter has grown rapidly to become the most popular micro-blogging Web site online. In fact, according to Nielsen, it grew a staggering 1,382% from February 2008 to February 2009, and has more than 7 million unique visitors every month [1]. However, this rapid growth leaves many people wondering: “What is Twitter?” and “Why should I use it?”

To clarify, Twitter is a micro-blogging service that allows users to send short text messages, otherwise known as “tweets,” to their Twitter page. Although there is a dizzying array of multiple-platforms available to support the service (mobile phones, computers, etc.), the restrictive 140-character length of the tweet minimizes the hassle and involvement for users. The simplicity of Twitter—which is one of its greatest strengths—keeps friends, families, and colleagues up-to-date on “What’s happening?” In essence, Twitter allows you to send a text message to the world. [Read more...]

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Moving to a Critical Future Without Moving Backward and Other Lessons from the Rear-View Mirror

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By Ralph Beliveau, University of Oklahoma
Bob Trumpbour, Pennsylvania State University, Altoona

In an article written over four decades ago, Jake Highton teased out the tensions between the “green eyeshades” and the “chi-squares.” Highton wrote about the differences between individuals with practical experience in the field and those who plied their academic craft with the statistical tools that were, and still are, embedded in the social sciences. Individuals such as Philip Meyer did much to connect social science with journalistic practices, yet the challenges faced in today’s complex landscape are unlikely to be resolved by the infusion of a single set of core practices into the media landscape. And what had been missing in these pictures of the arena of journalism education was recognition of critical approaches to the media that stretched back at least to the discussions of Lippmann and Dewey in the 1920s.

Despite a continuing line of critique from Lippmann and Dewey through the Chicago School, and the early years of critical theory, when a “green eyeshades and chi-squares revisited” article was presented at AEJMC in 1992 by Dickson and Sellmeyer, this critical line was ignored. The 1992 piece stated that “press criticism” was one way that scholars and theorists could offer “an area of research that (was) ultimately practical for newspapers.” So the debate between the “green eyeshades” and the “chi squares” and those assessing it suffered from a tunnel vision that left critical and cultural scholars on the sidelines. For some in the field, that omission may have been a desirable outcome. However, in a rapidly fragmenting and transforming media world, cultural and critical studies are more important than ever to better understanding the past, the present, and the future of our media environment. [Read more...]

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Technology, Text and Talk

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By Jim Benjamin, Director of the Graduate Studies in Communication, University of Toledo

The recent explosion of interest in social networking technology brings to light new dimensions of the spoken vs. written communication debate that occasionally emerges. Twitter uses written text, Facebook uses text and graphic images, “chat rooms” in on-line courses use text, and the “old” technologies of books and e-mails use written communication. Lecture captures, teleconferences, radio, television, and the “old” technologies of lectures, conversations, discussions, and telephones use oral communication.

The debate is ancient. Plato’s Phaedrus argued that the discovery of writing “will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.”

We know, of course, that speaking and writing are not mutually exclusive, that the existence of one does not preclude the existence of the other. You can as easily write the words for a speech as you can speak the written words aloud. We also know that the arts of writing and speaking are both valuable skills communicators must develop. As a journalism educator you need to write out your lesson plans and instructions for activities and scripts for programs, but as a journalism educator you must also speak in class, talk with your students individually, and transform the script into an oral performance. [Read more...]

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Advertising, Media and the Convergence Model

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By Tom Mueller, Appalachian State University

There’s a race underway at many academic institutions. A mass communication movement is working to build media interactivity, where the potential for convergence occurs. Convergence is a somewhat mythical place where all things come together into a concurrent stream of messaging and effect. To succeed, one needs to disseminate media through multiple channels. Where a print communication might have succeeded in the past, one must now craft the story, get it to press, post the blog entry, tweet the copy, launch the YouTube promo, alert LinkedIn and Facebook contacts and find a marketing partner to infuse revenue. It’s all in a day’s work for the modern, educated and converged communication professional.

A weblog created for the non-profit Center of Innovation in College Media stated that the University of Missouri now features a degree in “convergence journalism.” Department chair Lynda Kraxberger reported that students are given the opportunity to tell stories in the traditional way, but also integrate “information delivery platforms” such as live blogs and mobile devices. Terry Eiler, a professor at Ohio University’s School of Visual Communication, is quoted on the weblog regarding Ohio University’s graduate multimedia program. “At the core of the curriculum is the ability to learn,” Eiler said. “You don’t teach a software package – you teach the ability to learn.”

If learning is essential within the new convergence model, how must we, as advertising educators, modify and adapt our curricula? Advertising offers an essential component within the mass media industry; some would portend that adverting fuels media, which allows for free press, which fires the engines of democracy. With that relevant deliverable in our tool kit, we must find traction as we craft our own convergence initiatives. [Read more...]

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Four Authors/Five Books: A Reading Assignment for Media Educators and Scholars

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Four Authors/Five Books

By Cindy Royal, Assistant Professor,
Texas State University in San Marcos

The AEJMC conference in Boston offered many of the benefits I always enjoy and appreciate at the annual gathering: seeing old friends, networking with colleagues, meeting people with whom I have been communicating online and learning about research and teaching trends. But, the conference took a different tone this outing, as there was much discussion (both online and offline, in the sessions and in the hallways) of journalism professors being out of touch with the realities of online media and the digital economy (see Guy Berger’s MediaShift post “Two Recent J-Education Conferences Show Resistance to Change”). Criticisms included: questions and issues being addressed in sessions were outdated; research topics were tedious and mired in minutia; some social media applications, like Twitter, were viewed with disdain and condescension; and a general lack of understanding of the challenges and needs of the industries we support. As a profession, we have many big questions to answer, at such a critical time, that it has to be our responsibility as educators to assist in developing innovative solutions and drive the conversation.

It is exceedingly important that journalism as an educational and scholarly discipline embraces the new media environment and helps lead our graduates to enter their chosen fields with a spirit of innovation and the ability to influence direction. We often get wrapped up in the skills we teach. Should students learn HTML, video editing, Flash? Should they use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube? [Read more...]

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Social Media–Sources for News?

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Privacy and New MediaBy Dr. Jane Marcellus, Associate Professor
Middle Tennessee State University

Are posts on social media sites such as Facebook and MySpace public or private? Should journalists quote them? What about linking to someone’s social media site in a news story? Does it matter if the person is very young?

These questions have come up in a listserv discussion I’m part of. The original post concerned a local paper’s coverage of a 17-year-old charged in a vehicular homicide case. The paper linked to the 18-year-old victim’s MySpace page, which included photos of him and the motorcycle he was riding when he was killed (http://www.themonitor.com/articles/reflect-28475-bravo-ricardo.html).

A subsequent post concerned a different case, in which a paper had quoted Facebook posts praising a student who had died. The student’s friends were angry; they considered the posts private.

Good reporting or invasion of privacy? The answer isn’t obvious. [Read more...]

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Teaching Social Media

July 7, 2010 By Leave a Comment
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Teaching Social MediaBy Tricia Farwell
Assistant Professor, Middle Tennessee State University

Walk into any classroom with computer access, WiFi access or cellular phone service and you will, most likely, find at least one student on Facebook, MySpace or YouTube. The students will tell you how they “get” social networking sites. Put up a few (usually less than sober) pictures. Post a few status updates ranging from song lyrics to what they did last night. Et voila! You have instant social media expertise through user experience without training.

However, some industry professionals appear to be less confident about their use and understanding of social media; they are still trying to discover the most meaningful way to incorporate it into their profession. Slips such as the infamous Memphis Twitter post by a Ketchum Vice President have shown organizations how a misstep can be a public relations disaster. In this case, the employee posted to his Twitter feed while waiting to meet with the client (FedEx). The post (http://shankman.com/wp-content/uploads//keyinfluencertweet.jpg) read: “True confession but I’m in one of those towns where I scratch my head and say ‘I would die if I had to live here!’” Understandably, FedEx employees were upset and the Ketchum employee experienced how public social networking can be.

While these social networking may not change the messages that the organizations intend to deliver to the public, the tools are impacting the way the messages are delivered. Century 21, for example transferred its national television advertising budget to focus on online media (Bush). The switch provided the company a way to open the lines of communication with publics by using vehicles most often thought to be, if not free at least inexpensive (Johnson). [Read more...]

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Teaching Journalism in a Digital World

July 7, 2010 By Leave a Comment
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digital_personBy Stephen Lacy
Professor, Department of Communication and School of Journalism, Michigan State University

Digital distribution of information has created concerns about the future of news organizations. Observers have speculated on how the Internet has and will change journalism, with almost as many different conclusions as there are speculators. These concerns have caused journalism educators around the country to reevaluate how they teach journalism.

The Internet is a marvelous tool for the distribution of journalism and for allowing citizen participation in journalism. However, the Internet has had more impact on who participates in journalism than on the quality of journalism. When it comes to the opinion function of journalism, a well-constructed argument remains a well-constructed argument regardless of whether it appears as a blog or a column in a newspaper. In news, citizens continue to expect reporters to meet at least three goals: to provide a summary of important events, to translate complex issues into understandable intelligence, and to dig up and publish information that people in positions of power want to keep hidden. The essence of journalism is that journalists find, create and package information that people want and need. This remains true even in a three-screen, digital world.

If one accepts this proposition, then the role of journalism education is to help students learn how to create the journalism that accomplishes these three goals. To that end, here are some observations. [Read more...]

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