How Student Journalists Use Email in the Newsroom

Sara Baker Netzley
Bradley University 

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Abstract 
This article examines the way in which student journalists use email on the job. College students working at campus newspapers across the country participated in an online survey asking them how often they use email to conduct certain newsgathering tasks, including using email to conduct interviews with sources. It also asked about their perceptions of the quality of such interviews and their use of social media such as Facebook and Twitter. The findings could have implications for how these students will conduct themselves in professional settings upon graduation and how journalism educators should approach this topic in the classroom.

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Efforts to serve their communities strengthening

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Editor’s note: This is the second in a two-part series examining the state of college media advising. The first part discussed the role of the adviser, salary/compensation packages and job status. This part profiles student media operations, including demographics, budgets, financing support, and staffing.

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By Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver
Associate Editor, CMR

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At no time in the evolution of college student media has change been so rapid or provided so many questions and challenges as today. Nor is any media operation immune from the effects of this change.

Newspapers command the status of the most numerous of campus student media, and, as such, have been affected to a greater extent by the changes in the way we deliver information today, just as professional newspapers have faced growing challenges.

Caroline Little, CEO of the Newspaper Association of America, commented, “Newspapers continue to command a huge audience and remain the most-trusted source of news and information. While that will not change, there has been a key shift in the way information is delivered and audience is engaged” (Little, 2014).

Continue reading “Research (Vol. 52): Campus media reflect changing information landscape”

Is there a doctor in the newsroom?

Carol Terracina-Hartman
Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania
Robert G. Nulph
Missouri Western State University 

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Abstract 
This study looks at campus media programs nationwide, focusing on the roles of campus media advisers and skills instructors and their credentials and relationships with award-winning program. Data show a strong majority of advisers leading award-winning programs have 15+ years working in professional media. Additionally, non-terminal degree holders teach 67 percent of skills classes related to campus media participation. But, the literature indicates university administrations often sacrifice professional media experience for doctorates in advertising for new hires. As survey responses and prior research indicate, increasing numbers of advisers compose their own job descriptions; data collected in this new line of research has potential to alter administrative definitions and classifications of adviser and skills instructor positions.

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Faring Well Despite Uncertain Times

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Editor’s Note: This is the first in a two-part series on college media advising. This first article discusses the role of the adviser, salary/compensation packages and job  characteristics. Part 2 will appear next week and profiles student media operations, including demographics, budgets, financing support, and staffing.

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By Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver
Associate Editor, CMR

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As the song says, “The times they are a-changin’”(1964). And that is true of the college and university student media scene as well.

The three decades since this survey was first conducted have witnessed tremendous changes in the way student media advisers do their jobs and in the way the media themselves deliver the message. The biggest change, of course, is in the media themselves which these individuals advise.

In order to trace those changes, over the past three decades the College Media Association has regularly surveyed its membership to provide longitudinal data on the role, responsibilities, working conditions, compensation and status of college and university student media advisers in the U.S. These surveys request data about the media operations they advise as well. This is the eighth survey in that series; the first was in 1984, followed by replications roughly every four years up to this one in 2014. Continue reading “Research (Vol. 51): College Student Media Advisers Fare Well”

Observations of 15 media scholars from seven countries

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Hardcover: 240 pages; Publisher: Routledge (Sept. 18, 2014)

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Reviewed by Carolyn Schurr Levin

Because the ethics of online journalism has created so much debate, hand wringing, and frustration, and because I teach a course in Media Ethics every semester, I was especially anxious to read the collaboration of “emerging best practices,” set forth in the recently released Ethics for Digital Journalists: Emerging Best Practices, edited by Lawrie Zion, associate professor of journalism at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, and David Craig, professor and associate dean at Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Oklahoma.

In this thoroughly researched work, 15 journalism professors and media scholars from seven countries have joined together to connect ethical principles with in-depth guidance on best practices in a wide range of areas. Each contributor has a chapter, with chapter titles including “Fostering and Moderating Citizen Conversations,” “The Case for Curatorial Journalism…Or, Can You Really Be an Ethical Aggregator?,” “Live Tweeting: The Rise of Real-Time Reporting,” and “Data Journalism.”

Continue reading “Book Review: ‘Ethics for Digital Journalists: Emerging Best Practices’”

Award is memorial to James Foley

In honor of the courageous men and women who risk their lives in order to report from the world’s most dangerous places m eiMedia has established the James Foley Memorial Scholarship in memory of the photojournalist who was tragically executed while covering the war in Syria.

This $5,000 photojournalism scholarship covers tuition, program fees and meals for participation in our Urbino program, jointly sponsored by James Madison University and Iowa State University. The winner will work with two award-winning photojournalists in an experiential program that runs through the month of June 2015. The recipient is responsible for his/her own airfare. Continue reading “Scholarship for photojournalists to study abroad”

Debra Chandler Landis is College Media Review editor

Dear Colleagues,

A few years ago when I began writing for the College Media Review—thank you, Robert Bohler, for saying yes to my ideas and publishing my work!—being asked to edit the College Media Association’s flagship journal was not on my radar screen.

But, as we tell our students, be open to change and new ventures.

I felt humbled and honored when Bob Bergland asked me to become managing editor for CMR. And now, as Bob has moved to the CMA Executive Board as secretary, I have assumed the editorship.  Thank you, Bob, for your kind words and support!

Because CMR is now online—when I started writing for it, it was a print publication—CMR is evolving.  We are striving, for example, to update popular articles more frequently on the CMR site while continuing to have a strong research publication presence. Also look for greater use of social media.

Continue reading “New editor takes helm at CMR”

Bob Bergland says Aloha as he moves to CMA board

Aloha.

In Hawaiian, the word is used for both “hello” and “goodbye.” So, fellow CMA members, I say to you “Aloha,” both greetings and farewell.  I have been appointed to serve you on the Executive Board, so I greet you as its new Secretary, effective at the fall convention in Philadelphia. But, because of those duties and a conflict of interest (the Board votes on College Media Review matters), I bid you farewell as CMR Editor, having served since replacing Robert Bohler in April of 2012.

In that time, we’ve published many useful sourced articles and essays that are relevant to all of you, ranging from college media legal issues to making the transition to online, thanks to the work of Managing Editor Debbie Landis and our many contributors. For my part, I’m proud of the number and quality of refereed submissions and the fact that early this year we were able to publish an inaugural issue of the Research Annual, a print compendium of scholarly work published electronically since CMR went online at the end of 2011. Right now we are putting the finishing touches on the second Research Annual, which will be completed over Christmas break. Continue reading “CMR editor transitions to organization’s board”

Covering Suicide on College Campuses

Jena Heath
St. Edward’s University
Brooke Blanton
St. Edward’s University

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Abstract: Student journalists and their faculty advisers face particular challenges when confronted with covering suicide on their campuses. We examine these challenges by analyzing coverage and interviewing student journalists and their advisers about their editorial decisions. The interviews are designed to assess how often college media outlets comply with recommended professional guidelines for covering suicide and to shed light on the decision-making process. The results point to the need to better educate student journalists and advisers about the interpretation and use of these guidelines and to help them navigate pressures to minimize even coverage that conforms with them.