Emerging Digerati: “Flash: From the Front Lines”: The Institute for New Media Studies will host an Emerging Digerati lecture and discussion on Monday, November 6 at the Weisman Art Museum from 5:30 to 7 p.m. The lecture will feature a “tour” of cutting-edge Flash projects, including rich internet applications, games, and CLA’s Media Mill project. We’ll talk about where Flash is headed and where Flash can take the web. Guest speakers include Steve Killingbeck, MMCP, ACE, the owner of www.Flash4Hire.com, and Colin McFadden, who works with CLA Video Services on the Media Mill project. The event is free and open to the public. E-mail Karen Kloser or call 612-625-0576 for more information.

New Media Research Breakfast: Note new date! On Thursday, November 9, 2006, the Institute for New Media Studies will host its monthly New Media Research breakfast from 8:30-9:30 a.m. in 100 Murphy Hall. The breakfast will feature INMS director Nora Paul and Sauman Chu, associate professor in the department of design, housing and apparel discussing the Digital Story Effects Lab (DiSEL) project. The breakfast is free and open to the public but reservations are required. To RSVP, e-mail Karen Kloser or call 612-625-0576.

Satish Korde on International Business and Branding: Satish Korde, Vice Chairman of Young & Rubicam Inc. and Y&R's first President and CEO of Client Solutions, will visit the University of Minnesota on Tuesday, December 5, for a public lecture on international branding and business. The lecture will begin at 6:30 p.m. in McNamara Alumni Center’s Memorial Hall. An informal reception will take place before the lecture at 5:45 p.m. Korde’s visit is sponsored by the Minnesota Journalism Center. For more information contact mnjrnctr@umn.edu.

“The First Face Transplant: Medical, Ethical and Media Perspectives”: On Thursday, December 7, a lecture and ethics discussion on the first face transplant will take place at 1:30 p.m. in the Great Hall of Coffman Memorial Union. A lecture by Dr. Jean-Michel Dubernard, who co-led the team that performed the world's first face transplant in November of 2005, will be followed by commentary and discussion by SJMC assistant professor Gary Schwitzer, along with Jeffrey Kahn from the University of Minnesota Center for Bioethics. Visit the event website for more information.

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An article co-authored by professor Ron Faber entitled “Estimated Prevalence of Compulsvie Buying Behavior in the United States has generated significant media interest. Well over 100 news stories were written about the article, including stories in the New York Times, Washington Post, L.A. Times, on the ABC and CBS news broadcasts, and in the international press The article, which appeared in the American Journal of Psychiatry, was accompanied by an editorial calling for the includsion of compulsive buying in the next edition of the DSM (the diagnostic manual for psychiatric diseases). Among the article’s findings was the surprising fact that compulsive buying is equally common in men and women.

An article written by Becky Jungbauer, a graduate student in the SJMC’s health journalism M.A. program, appeared on the front page of the Pioneer Press on October 28. The article, entitled “Health care choice limited for inner-city communities,” focused on how high-quality healthcare clinics are often difficult to access for inner-city residents. Read the article.

Professor Jane Kirtley is quoted in an October 12 article carreid by Cox News Service about Cox’s appeal of a denial of records request in a case regarding the public's right to know about illegal immigrant convicts who have not been deported as required by law. Kirtley also commented in the October 24 New York Sun in an article about a federal judge ordering The New York Times to identify confidential sources. A commentary authored by Kirtley was published on the NiemanWatchdog web site on October 16, about news councils and their potential to undermine press credibility. Also on October 16, Kirtley was a guest on the  Roy Green Show on Canadian radio, discussing the firing of Fox baseball commentator Steve Lyons after he made what the network considered insensitive racial remarks during a playoff game on October 13.

Cowles Media Fellow Sherrie Mazingo was quoted in an October 19 story on MSNBC.com about NBC Universal's plan to cut 700 jobs, cut $750 million in expenses, and close MSNBC-TV's headquarters in New Jersey.

On October 10, INMS director Nora Paul was interviewed and featured on WCCO’s “Good Question” segment about blogging during the 10 o'clock news. Paul was also quoted in an October 18 article in the Star Tribune about a video that appeared on YouTube about Congressional candidate Michele Bachmann.

Assistant professor Gary Schwitzer’s website, http://www.HealthNewsReview.org, was named Cool Site of the Day by The Kim Komando Show on October 6. In the two days after the mention, traffic to the site soared, registering more than 20,000 unique visits and more than one million hits.

Assistant professor Michael Stamm was interviewed on Minnesota Public Radio's  “All Things Considered” on October 6, in a story entitled “No ‘Next Year’ for Twins’ Broadcast Partner.”

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Professor Ken Doyle was elected president of the Minnesota Association of Scholars, a professional organization committed to promoting intellectual diversity and academic rigor in Minnesota's colleges and universities, and has also been appointed Acting Director of the Tocqueville Center for the Study of Liberty and Free Institutions.

Recent SJMC alumna Kim Johnson (B.A. ’06) is the winner of two College Emmy Awards, given by the Upper Midwest Chapter of the National Television Academy, which includes Minnesota, the Dakotas, Iowa and western Wisconsin. Johnson won in the College News category for “Stop on Red,” a story looking at the controversy over the Minneapolis stop light cameras, and in the College Programming category for “My Mom Got a Boob Job,” a point-of-view documentary on breast augmentation surgery. Johnson now works as a reporter for WDIO-TV News in Duluth. This is the fourth year in a row that an SJMC student has won both College Emmy Awards from the NTA.

Assistant professor Gary Schwitzer won an eHealthcare Leadership Award for his website, http://www.HealthNewsReview.org.  The award was presented November 6 at the 10th Annual Healthcare Internet Conference in Atlanta.  The e-Healthcare Leadership awards program recognizes the best health information Web sites.  

 

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Harold Higgins, Cowles Visiting Professor, made a presentation in Chicago on October 15 to the Inland Press Association board of directors on a plan for modernization of the National Cost and Revenue Study for Newspapers. The Cost and Revenue Study is the oldest and largest database updated annually on newspaper financial and operational statistics. Inland asked Higgins to redesign the study to include new newspaper business tactics that reflect the Internet. Higgins is teaching the Management of Media Organizations course at SJMC for the fall semester.

Assistant professor Jisu Huh’s co-authored paper, “Perceived Effects of DTC Prescription Drug Advertising on Self and Others: A Third Person Effect Study of Older Consumers,” was published in Journal of Advertising, 35(3). The paper was co-authored with Denise DeLorme and Leonard N. Reid.

SJMC adjunct instructor David Husom has several photographs in an exhibit at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The exhibit, entitled “Where We Live: American Photographs from the Berman Collection," will show at the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Center, from October 24, 2006 through February 25, 2007. The exhibition showcases the richness of American color photography in nearly 170 works by 24 contemporary artists. One of the photos by Husom, shown at left, is of the Mahnomen County Fairgrounds in Mahnomen, Minnesota, and is part of of Husom's "Fairgrounds" series, which depicts empty Midwestern fairground buildings.

 

Visiting associate professor Chris Ison gave a presentation entitled "Journalism Ethics: The Right Way is the Only Way," for the Minnesota High School Press Association on October 3, and also conducted a training session on investigating local government for reporters and editors of The Southwest Journal in Minneapolis on October 11.

Professor Jane Kirtley was a panelist at the American Society of Access Professionals’ annual symposium in Washington, DC on September 26. The panel was "FOIA in its 40th Year Goes Around the World."  Kirtley was also a panelist at the "Media Law Conference: Protecting the First Amendment in  Challenging Times," sponsored by the Media Law Resource Center, the Newspaper Association of America, and the National Association of Broadcasters, in Alexandria, Virginia on September 29, 2006.  The panel was "The Next Big Thing -- Hot Issues for 2007 and Beyond."  Kirtley's article, "Transparency and Accountability in a Time of Terror: The Bush Administration's Assault on Freedom of Information," has been published in the Autumn 2006 issue of Communications Law and Policy. Silha Fellow Ashley Ewald assisted in the research for the article. On October 18, Kirtley delivered a keynote address, "Media Ethics: An Oxymoron?" at the Second National Applied Ethics Conference in Ankara, Turkey, sponsored by Middle East Technical University. 

INMS director Nora Paul was on a panel for the Minnesota Association of Community Telecommunications Administrators on the impact of the Internet on community television on Oct. 12. On that same day, she also gave a presentation about INMS’s eyetracking project for the Usability Professionals Association. On October 5, she gave a presentation at the Educators Forum in a pre-conference workshop during the Online News Association conference in Washington D.C.

SJMC Ph.D. student Rebecca Bolin Swensen had a paper titled, "Conflict in the Kitchen: Shaping the Identity of Women, Wives and Patriots on the American Homefront" published in the spring/summer 2006 issue of Media Report to Women.

Assistant professor Gary Schwitzer and seven Canadian collaborators have been funded by the Office of Consumer Affairs, Industry Canada, for their project, “Hope or Hype in Cancer Reporting:  How do Media Reports of New Cancer Treatments Affect Consumers’ Perceptions of Effectiveness, Harm and Access?”  This is the first research collaboration between Schwitzer’s http://www.HealthNewsReview.org website and its Canadian counterpart, Media Doctor Canada (http://www.mediadoctor.ca/ ).  

 

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The Minnesota Journalism Center hosted its annual “Supply, Demand and Deadlines” workshop on economics journalism in Washington D.C. October 15-17, in partnership with the Minneapolis Federal Reserve. The workshop’s keynote speaker was Ben Bernanke, the Chair of the Federal Reserve. The 2007 SDD will once again be held in Minneapolis; contact mnjrnctr@umn.edu for more information.

Professor Ken Doyle is working to form a Minnesota chapter of the Circumnavigators Club (www.CircumnavigatorsClub.org), an educational and philanthropic organization for people who have crossed every meridian of longitude around the globe, not necessarily in a single trip. Among other activities, the Circumnavigators sponsor periodic contests for college juniors in which the prize is an expense-paid trip around the world. Once the chapter is formed, students at the University of Minnesota will be able to participate in the contests.

Star Tribune government and politics reporter Rochelle Olson spoke to visiting associate professor’s Chris Ison's Intermediate Reporting class on Oct. 5. Tahasha Harpole, the president of Know Your Health magazine, based in Minneapolis, spoke at Ison's Advanced News Reporting and Writing course on Oct. 3.

On October 24, lecturer Jennifer Johnson’s Jour 4990: Portfolio Development class hosted a midterm portfolio review. Student teams had their concepts reviewed by a team of four advertising professionals, including Christy Kendall, creative director/copywriter formerly of Campbell Mithun, Ryan Inda and Joel Stacy, copywriters from Carmichael Lynch, and Patrick Clifford, art director from Level.

Assistant professor Gary Schwitzer’s health journalism graduate seminar met at the Star Tribune with reporters Glenn Howatt, Maura Lerner and Josephine Marcotty and with reader representative Kate Parry. They also met at the Pioneer Press with health reporter Jeremy Olson and computer-assisted reporting specialist MaryJo Sylvester. Schwitzer’s Jour 3771: Mass Media Ethics class hosted guest speakers Kate Parry, Star Tribune reader representative, Minnesota News Council executive director Gary Gilson, and photojournalist (and SJMC adjunct instructor) Mike Zerby.

Assistant professor Michael Stamm was a guest lecturer in professor Megan Lewis' class in the Theatre Arts department on October 11. Stamm spoke on the history and aesthetics of radio drama.

John Beardley, former CEO of Padilla Speer Beardsley, visited Rebecca Bolin Swensen’s Jour 3202: Principles of Public Relations course on October 11. Beardley spoke about public relations theory in the day-to-day lives of public relations professionals.

Professor Dan Wackman hosted Lisa Jemtrud and Tony Smith from the Midwest Advertising Review Council of the Minnesota/North Dakota Better Business Bureau in his Jour 4274: Advertising in Society class. Jemtrud and Smith spoke about voluntary industry regulation of advertising in Minnesota.

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October 2006