Interviews — AEJMC Hot Topics

Discussing JMC with… Von Whitmore

June 23, 2010 By AEJMC Leave a Comment

Von Whitmore is a JMC Associate Professor and the Coordinator of Graduate Studies at Kent State University. She has professional experience as a reporter for radio and television in the Hampton Roads Virginia market and as the General Manager of Hampton University’s FM radio station, WHOV. Von’s teaching areas are in broadcast producing, graduate ethics and theory.

How do you define mass communication?

Mass communication involves the utilization of technology for the immediate or time delayed transmission of ideas to audiences of various sizes and at various distances. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Interviews Tagged With: Kent State University, Von Whitmore

Discussing JMC with… Judy VanSlyke Turk

June 23, 2010 By AEJMC Leave a Comment

Judy VanSlyke Turk is Director of the School of Mass Communications at Virginia Commonwealth University. Prior to joining VCU in March 2002, she was founding dean of the College of Communication and Media Sciences at Zayed University in the United Arab Emirates. Previously, VanSlyke Turk was also dean of the College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of South Carolina, director of the journalism and mass communications program at Kent State University and a faculty member at the University of Oklahoma, Louisiana State University and Syracuse University. Turk is a past president of AEJMC and is the current president of ASJMC, the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication.

How do you define mass communication?

I don’t think there is such a thing as mass communication anymore. Every communication is personal, segmented, targeted. It’s not a matter of reaching the masses with a message but in reaching large audiences via targeted, specialized messages. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Interviews Tagged With: Judy VanSlyke Turk, Virginia Commonwealth University

Discussing JMC with… Nancy Dupont

June 23, 2010 By AEJMC Leave a Comment

Nancy McKenzie Dupont came to the University of Mississippi after spending 17 years as a broadcast journalist. She was an anchor, reporter, producer and manager in markets from Phoenix, Ariz., to Charlotte, N.C. Her last job in the industry was executive producer and acting news director at WDSU-TV in New Orleans. Adviser to The Daily Mississippian’s online edition, Nancy also serves as a leader in the Radio-Television Journalism division of the AEJMC; she is also a member of the Broadcast Education Association. Dr. Dupont earned her Ph.D. in Mass Communications from the University of Southern Mississippi in 1997, and she and her husband, both Hurrricane Katrina survivors, now make their home in Oxford.

How do you keep your students excited about working in the field of communications in light of shrinking job opportunities?

While it’s true opportunities are shrinking in the traditional media, there are all kinds of other opportunities for young people who know how to effectively communicate. My students aren’t thinking only of newspapers, magazines, and broadcasting stations anymore. They’re figuring out how to be employed in new ways. In many ways, they keep me up-to-date about the opportunities. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Interviews Tagged With: Nancy Dupont, University of Mississippi

Discussing JMC with… Tricia Farwell

June 23, 2010 By AEJMC Leave a Comment

Tricia M. Farwell, assistant professor at Middle Tennessee State University, is the current teaching co-chair of the public relations division of AEJMC and secretary of the Entertainment and Sports Section for the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA). She holds degrees from Arizona State University and has worked in corporate public relations and advertising for more than 17 years. Farwell has presented research at the HIC on Arts and Humanities at theMPCA . Additionally, Dr Farwell has authored the book, Love and Death in Edith Wharton’s Fiction. When she is not teaching or researching, she can be found restoring or driving her 1998 corvette convertible with Barry, the Gnome.

How do you define mass communication?

This is becoming somewhat murky. Do we count cellular phones as part of mass communication? Do we confine the definition to what is considered “traditional media”? Do we cast the widest net and call it mass communication? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Interviews Tagged With: Middle Tennessee State University, Tricia Farwell

Discussing JMC with… Dan Reimold

June 23, 2010 By AEJMC Leave a Comment

Daniel Reimold is a Fulbright research fellow currently in Singapore documenting the history of the Singaporean student press while serving as a visiting scholar within the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication & Information at Nanyang Technological University. He runs College Media Matters (http://www.collegemediamatters.com), a blog on modern student journalism featured within The Poynter Institute’s “Blog Network” and in the “Blog Central” portion of the Web site for College Media Advisers. Refereed research papers he has authored or co-authored have been published in Newspaper Research Journal, Journalism History, and College Media Review and accepted for presentation at numerous conferences, including the International Symposium on Online Journalism and the AEJMC national convention. He earned his doctorate in journalism/mass communication from Ohio University, where he served as a Scripps Howard Teaching Fellow. He is a two-time AEJMC Great Ideas for Teachers (GIFT) Scholar; graduate student winner of the 2007 AEJMC “Promising Professors” honor; and a recent head of the Graduate Education Interest Group (GEIG).

How do you define mass communication?

It is still, as it has always been, a conversation with the world. Yet, the one-to-many model is *so* 1990s. The new models: many-to-many or even one-to-some, with the possibility of many happening across it sometime later. The means for this communication are also changing. The Wikipedia entry for mass communication notes: “It is usually understood to relate to newspaper and magazine publishing, radio, television and film.” Judges’ ruling? Incomplete. Mass comm. can also now occur via a number of new media means, including a Facebook status update, a blog post, a Twitter tweet, a Flickr photo set, a YouTube video, a mass e-mail, and a wiki entry. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Interviews Tagged With: Dan Reimold

Discussing JMC with… Michael Bugeja

June 23, 2010 By AEJMC Leave a Comment

Michael Bugeja, who directs the Greenlee School at Iowa State University, is author of Interpersonal Divide (Oxford University Press, 2005), which won the Clifford Christians Award for research in media ethics, and Living Ethics across media platforms (Oxford, 2008), which calls for a moral convergence to accompany the technological one.

Bugeja’s research has been cited in The New York Times, USA Today, the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, The Futurist, The International Herald Tribune (France), Toronto Globe & Mail (Canada), The Guardian (UK) and The Economist, among others. His articles have appeared in Journalism Quarterly, Journalism and Mass Communication Educator, New Media and Society, and Journal of Mass Media Ethics, among others.

Bugeja also writes professionally for such publications as The Quill, Editor & Publisher and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Bugeja became director of the Greenlee School in 2003. Previously he was a journalism professor at Ohio University and a media adviser at Oklahoma State University. In the 1970s, he worked as state editor for United Press International and holds a Ph.D. from OSU and a master’s from South Dakota State University.

How do you define mass communication?

This is an excellent question because we cannot yet answer it sufficiently enough to create a business model for major news outlets struggling with Internet and converged platforms. In the past, the power of the technology–whether it was a 64-inch six-color sheet-fed press or a 50,000 watt radio station–was aligned proportionately with the target market mass audience. The rule was, the larger the investment, the greater the audience or the potential for the mass. Now, a high school blogger has the means to broadcast, telecast or publish worldwide through the laptop in her bedroom; so technology and investment no longer are reliable gauges of mass audience.

To be sure, the technology of old media was its chief expense, as in the purchase and storage of paper and ink, or the cost and maintenance of a printing press, or the equipping of a broadcast tower and studio (not to mention a fleet of delivery trucks or television vans and the upkeep and insurance on them). The sheer cost of such technology kept the news in aristocratic hands. The democratization of media, which continues to this day globally, has taken news out of those hands and placed it in the populace’s, giving the audience a google of outlets associated with lifestyle choices or psychographics.

The disconnect between the power of the technology and the size of the audience has generated this question–how do we define a mass, by its potential for or actual audience?–data that can fluctuate wildly from day to day, yet again undermining business models based on reader or viewer audits by which to establish advertising rates. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Interviews Tagged With: Iowa State University, Michael Bugeja

Discussing JMC with… Candace Bowen

June 23, 2010 By AEJMC Leave a Comment

Candace Perkins Bowen directs both the Center for Scholastic Journalism at Kent State University and the statewide Ohio Scholastic Media Association.

She teaches media writing plus journalism teaching methods and desktop publishing for Integrated Language Arts majors.

A former high school journalism teacher with a BS in newspaper journalism and an MA in journalism education, Perkins Bowen is a past president and remains on the board of the Journalism Education Association. In addition, she heads the Steering Committee of the Student Press Law Center Advisory Council and is the current head of the Scholastic Journalism Division of AEJMC.

How do you keep your students excited about working in the field of communications in light of shrinking job opportunities?

Are job opportunities really shrinking? Or are they shifting and rearranging? Our democracy still needs an informed citizenry, and thorough, fair, honest and accurate information must be available. Journalists need to be flexible and creative in their approach to providing that. In today’s world, that also means being digital and thinking about audiences and trying new techniques. Doing THAT makes it easy to keep students excited — they can use Flash and Soundslides and all sorts of bells and whistles. The not-so-exciting part is when you must remind them of spelling and grammar and AP style and ethical considerations. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Interviews Tagged With: Candace Bowen, Kent State University

Discussing JMC with… Jimmy Ivory

June 23, 2010 By AEJMC Leave a Comment

James D. (Jimmy) Ivory is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (a.k.a. Virginia Tech), where he has worked since 2005. His teaching and research at Virginia Tech is primarily focused on media effects and communication technologies. Ivory recently founded the Virginia Tech Gaming and Media Effects Research Laboratory (VT G.A.M.E.R. Lab) a small research facility where students and faculty investigate the content and physiological, psychological, and social effects of video games, virtual worlds, and other media technologies. For 2008-2009, Ivory serves as the head of the Communication Technology (CTEC) Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC).

Before joining Virginia Tech, Ivory earned a Ph.D. in Mass Communication from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as well as an M.A. in Communication and B.S. in Journalism from the Department of Communication and Journalism at the University of Wyoming. Ivory lives in Blacksburg, Virginia, with his wife Adrienne.

How do you define mass communication?

I suppose I am not particularly concerned about any distinction between “mass communication” and any other categories of the communication pantheon (interpersonal, group, public, etc.), primarily because research seems to find time and time again that a lot of communication processes and effects occur in surprisingly similary ways across “levels” of communication. Whether we are talking one-on-one, watching television, reading a book, etc., there are consistent trends in our responses to messages and their sources. I think there are distinctions between the levels of communication, and they matter, but I guess they don’t bother me a lot given that there are often as many similarities in communication phenomena across levels as there are differences.

That said, I don’t buy into the idea that mass communication is dying or dead. Talk of social networking and user-generated content and things might prompt some to write an obituary for mass communication, but at the end of the day a lot of these formats still result in one person or corporation raking in cash generated via a lot of individuals’ media use in one way or another. Hmm. Maybe that’s a good definition of mass communication right there. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Interviews Tagged With: Jimmy Ivory, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Discussing JMC with… Serena Carpenter

June 23, 2010 By AEJMC Leave a Comment

Serena Carpenter joined the Arizona State University faculty in 2007 specializing in newer media after finishing her Ph.D. degree in Media & Information Studies at Michigan State University. Her research has been published in research journals such as Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, Mass Communication and Society, and Telecommunications Policy.

Carpenter teaches courses in the areas of online and broadcast journalism in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Carpenter has also taught courses at Michigan State University and Bloomsburg University. Her professional background includes working as a television reporter. Carpenter has produced an award-winning documentary on rural issues. She also works with journalists and faculty helping them transition to the online environment.

Her teaching and research interest areas include newer media, news quality, and sociology of news production. Carpenter is an active member of the Association of Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, International Communication Association, Broadcast Education Association and National Communication Association.

How do you define mass communication?

This definition is not my own, but I am not sure who defined it. Mass communication is organized communication to anonymous audiences. The communicator operates within an organizational setting.

However, we have to go beyond the mass-marketing mindset. Educators not only have to reevaluate skills courses that they are teaching, but they have to also concentrate on discussing how communication is changing among individuals, and how the news industry fits into people’s lives. In the past, the mass media were directed toward a large, heterogeneous audience whereas today’s consumer market is more fragmented and complex than the mass market, which translates into news media having less impact in a concentrated way. Organizations need to understand readers and how to connect to readers offline and online. Power has tilted in the direction of the people. The use of social media is one approach to connecting to readers and opinion leaders.

This also means teaching journalists to not only understand how to produce online content under the organization’s umbrella, but also to educate students on the economic, entrepreneurial, and relational aspects of the business and the implications of their actions. Scott Rosenberg, formerly of Salon.com, said that being part of a monopoly let journalists be ignorant about every aspect of the business besides the content. Today, journalists need to understand the broader components of the business to survive. This includes understanding their readers to a greater extent. This is why I also believe that mass communication theory courses should contain interpersonal communication theory as well. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Interviews Tagged With: Arizona State University, Serena Carpenter

Discussing JMC with… Dane Claussen

June 23, 2010 By AEJMC Leave a Comment

Dane S. Claussen is a Professor & Director of Graduate Programs at the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at Point Park University, Pittsburgh, Pa. He teaches Communication Law and Regulation; Applied Mass Communication Research Methods; Media Ethics and Professional Culture; Mass Communication History; Newspaper and Magazine Management; and Writing the Nonfiction Book. Dr. Claussen also regularly chairs master’s thesis committees and supervises many Directed Readings, Directed Research and Publication Project studies. (From August 2005 to May 2006, he also was Point Park’s first campus-wide Faculty Development Coordinator.) Since July 1987, Dr. Claussen has been President/Principal of American Newspaper Consultants, Ltd., a management consulting, expert witness, research, writing, editing, and publishing firm.

Dr. Claussen is Editor of the quarterly Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, one of the two major scholarly journals published by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

How do you define mass communication?

Some say “mass communication” is a dead term or a dead concept, but I disagree. The question is not whether there still is mass communication, because a lot of communication is still aimed at audiences larger than a few to a few dozen friends, neighbors, co-workers, and/or relatives, but how many is “mass”? And even this is not a new concept. When Robert Rhett’s famous Charleston newspaper had a circulation of only 550, was that really a “mass medium”? We treat it as such. So why isn’t a listserv with only, say, 550 names, or a blog with only 550 regular visitors, also a “mass” medium? It is. And we still have interpersonal media: cellphones, emails, IMs, Skype, etc. As for asynchronous media, such as TV on demand or Web sites, if the intended cumulative audience is intended to be more than only a limited number of persons as above, then it also is still a “mass” medium. I never thought that the term “mass communication” required simultaneous dissemination and/or simultaneous consumption, or that “mass” necessarily meant only numbers in the tens of thousands to hundreds of millions. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Interviews Tagged With: Dane Claussen, Point Park University