Author: Lisa Lyon Payne

CMA’s Nordin Award recipients named

CMR Staff Reports

College Media Review has awarded Patrick Howe and Brady Teufel of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, the 2019 Ken Nordin Award, which recognizes the top college media research publication appearing in College Media Review.

The paper, “The Best Medium for the Story: A Case Study of Integrated Student Media” was published in volume 56 of the 2019 College Media Review Research Annual. The award was chosen based on a panel of CMR Associate Editor Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver, CMA Research Chair Elizabeth Smith and CMR Editor Lisa Lyon Payne.

In the annual, Kopenhaver included an editor’s note that commends the authors for conceiving new models to ensure the best possible learning laboratory for achievement in student media. The 2019 CMR Research Annual, which compiles the publications in a bound annual volume, is available for purchase through the CMR Bookstore.

Continue reading “Study on integrated student media earns 2019 research award”

Review: ‘Media Law: A Practical Guide (Revised Edition),’ by Ashley Messenger

Reviewed by Carolyn Schurr Levin

Teaching media law to undergraduate journalism and communications students is challenging. The concepts are esoteric and complex, even for law students. For undergraduates, the laws often seem foreign and counterintuitive (tweets are copyrighted?!). Many of the media law textbooks and other resources are written by lawyers in language that seems directed to other lawyers or law students.

Luckily, in the mix of available course materials lies “Media Law: A Practical Guide (Revised Edition)”, by Ashley Messenger, who is NPR’s Associate General Counsel. This accessible and user-friendly book is an outlier. Although written by a lawyer, the language is direct and straightforward, exactly what you want for undergraduates, most of whom have never taken a law course before.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have been teaching media law in various iterations – with and without ethics, in person and online, to undergraduates and graduate students – for almost two decades. In my classes, I have used many of the available resources, including the first edition of Messenger’s book, as well as other media law textbooks. Some of them have worked; others haven’t. Messenger’s book works. Continue reading “New media law text encourages ‘thinking like a journalist.’”

Abramson details ‘wrenching transition’ of a new media world

Reviewed by Carolyn Schurr Levin

 Jill Abramson’s “Merchants of Truth” received a great deal of attention when it was published in February 2019. But, not for the right reasons. A day after its release, Vice News correspondent Michael Moynihan posted on Twitter paragraphs about his news outlet from Abramson’s book, side by side with similar paragraphs from The New Yorker, the Columbia Journalism Review, Time Out magazine, and other works. Abramson, who is the former Executive Editor of The New York Times, initially denied the allegations of plagiarism, claiming that some Vice News employees were unhappy with her portrayal of Vice in the book. Yet, she promised to carefully review the questioned passages.

After that review, Abramson acknowledged “citation errors” in the book, conceding that some passages included language that is “way too close for comfort” to its source material “and probably should have been in quotes.” In an interview with CNN, she said, “I made some errors in the way I credited sources, but that there was no attempt to pass off someone’s ideas, opinions and phrasings as my own.” Bill Keller, Abramson’s predecessor as the New York Times’ Executive Editor, tweeted support for his colleague: “Jill Abramson is a journalist of courage and integrity. She has written a great book on the profound transformation of the news business, richly documented and full of insight. It’s distressing that some apparent carelessness in attribution might overshadow her achievement.” Others were not as forgiving. 

Continue reading “Review: ‘Merchants of Truth: The Business of News and The Fight for Facts,’ by Jill Abramson”

AEJMC convention set for Toronto

CMA scholars will present original research pertaining to college media at the 2019 Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) convention in Toronto, Canada.

Kirstie Hettinga, Assistant Professor of Communication at California Lutheran University, and Alyssa Appelman, Assistant Professor of Communication at Northern Kentucky University, will present “ERRORS, REQUESTS, APOLOGIES: A case study of 50 years of corrections in a college newspaper.”

Robert Bergland, Professor of Journalism at Missouri Western State University, will present “Social Media Use of Award-Winning College Yearbooks.”

The Council of Affiliates and College Media Association sponsor this annual panel to showcase some of the top peer-reviewed scholarship on the topic. The panel will be moderated by CMA Research Chair Elizabeth R. Smith on Saturday, August 10 from 11 to 12:30 p.m.

Storytelling still at the heart of journalism

By Andrea Frantz
Buena Vista University

If I’ve learned anything in my 30 years of teaching journalism, it’s that change is hard, but inertia will be the death of any academic program.  What I teach today, at its heart, hasn’t changed a lot. Journalism has always been about great storytelling.  But it looks and sounds a lot different.

A 2018 Washington Postarticle by Christopher Daly, posits the seismic changes we have seen in the journalism field in the last couple of decades are not all dire.  According to Daly, “NPR is having a banner year, as are MSNBC and Fox News. The New York Times,The Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal are reporting record numbers of digital subscribers…Podcasting, which did not exist as a career five years ago, is exploding.”

In fact, it’s the podcast explosion that brings me to my own embrace of change.

Continue reading “Embracing change one sound byte at a time”

‘Express Yourself’ is this year’s theme

By Mark Witherspoon
Special to CMR

Registration is now open for the First Amendment Workshop at Iowa State University from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Friday, April 12.

This free workshop is designed for those interested in the First Amendment – students, teachers, advisers, media professionals and community activists – who want to create creative First Amendment activities in their communities. Sessions include a First Amendment refresher mini-course, discussion about current conflicts, an event planner how-to, a group brainstorm about ideas to educate others about the First Amendment and more.

Registration includes lunch, coffee breaks, a T-shirt and a First Amendment tool kit. Space is limited.

From April 8 to 12, the ISU campus will recognize each of the five freedoms in the First Amendment. The theme this year is “Express Yourself.”

Continue reading “Free First Amendment workshop to educate community”

Protecting the Future of Investigative Reporting

Book by Stephen Gillers

Reviewed by Carolyn Schurr Levin

For better or for worse, journalists became the story in 2018. In addition to being named as Time’s “Person of the Year,” journalists “taking great risks in pursuit of greater truths” were also honored by being called onto stage just before midnight to push the button that began the lowering of the Times Square New Year’s Eve ball, ushering in 2019. “In one of the world’s most famous public squares, it is fitting to celebrate free press and free speech as we reflect on where we’ve been during the past year and what it is we value most as a society,” said Tim Tompkins, president of the Times Square Alliance, the organizer of the New Year’s event.

Although Americans may no longer agree on much, we can probably all agree that 2018 was a difficult year for journalists, and not only because the phrases “enemy of the people” and “fake news” were bantered around so often that they no longer jarred us. (Remember the days when we were all able to agree upon whether a fact was true or false?) Head shaking and hand wringing aside, what can–and should–be done to protect present and future journalists? In “Journalism Under Fire: Protecting the Future of Investigative Reporting,” Stephen Gillers, the Elihu Root Professor of Law at New York University Law School, answers that question, offering provocative, if perhaps wistful, solutions.

Gillers begins with two premises. First, a free press is essential to American democracy. Second, because the First Amendment, legislation, and court opinions are the primary sources of press freedom, the meaning of freedom of the press must begin with what the law says. Based upon these assumptions, he examines the First Amendment’s Press Clause through the framers’ intended meaning, textual analysis, and an intricate and detailed survey of the preeminent press cases (New York Times v. Sullivan, Branzburg v. Hayes, Cohen v. Cowles Media, and all of the other cases we teach in our media law classes). He argues that, although the Supreme Court has in recent decades ignored the Press Clause, the clause nonetheless gives a distinct set of rights to the press that the Constitution does not give to all speakers. Those rights are not static, but must change and expand as new circumstances arise. The press, Professor Gillers argues, needs protection against liability for defamation and privacy invasion, for the right to protect confidential sources without risking jail, and for how it gathers news. Continue reading “Book review: Journalism under fire by Stephen Gillers”