21st Annual Silha Lecture featuring Geoffrey Stone: On Wednesday, October 4, 2006, the SJMC’s Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law will host its 21st annual Silha Lecture. This year’s lecture, entitled “The Freedom of the Press v. The National Security,” will be delivered by Geoffrey Stone, professor and former dean of the University of Chicago Law School. Professor Stone is a nationally-known expert in the field of constitutional law and is the author of Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism (2004). Perilous Times received the 2005 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award and was named the Best Book in History by the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in 2004. The Silha Lecture will be held in the Cowles Auditorium of the Humphrey Institute at 7 p.m., and will be followed by a reception and book signing with Professor Stone. The Silha Lecture is free and open to the public. For more information, contact silha@umn.edu, call 612-625-3421, or visit www.silha.umn.edu.

Emerging Digerati: The Institute for New Media Studies will sponsor three Emerging Digerati lectures during the fall 2006 semester. The lectures will be held on the first Monday of each month, on October 2, November 6, and December 4, from 6-7:30 p.m. at the Weisman Art Museum. Emerging Digerati lectures feature U of M students’ work using digital tools and techniques. Lectures are free of charge and open to the public, and refreshments are provided. For more information contact inms@umn.edu or 612-625-0576.

New Media Research Breakfasts: The INMS is also hosting three New Media Research Breakfasts during fall 2006. The breakfasts are designed for industry professionals and University of Minnesota students and scholars interested in current research produced in the area of new media. New Media Research Breakfasts will be held on the first Thursday of the month, on October 5, November 2, and December 7, from 8:30-9:30 a.m. in 100 Murphy Hall (the Heggen Room). For more information contact inms@umn.edu or 612-625-0576.

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Scholars Walk Dedication: Join the University of Minnesota Alumni Association on Friday, September 29, to celebrate the completion of the Scholars Walk. The Scholars Walk honors great research and academic accomplishments of the U's greatest students and faculty. Lined with trees, shrubs, and benches, the walk also includes lighted glass-and-limestone monuments recognizing Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners; Rhodes, Truman and Marshall Scholars; members of top academic academies; and many more. The celebration will be held from noon to 2 p.m. on the Scholars Walk between the McNamara Alumni Center and Church Street. Visit the dedication web site for more info.

Stadium Groundbreaking: Join Goldy Gopher for a pre-game pep rally and help the University break ground on TCF Bank Stadium on Saturday September 30. Festivities will begin at 2 p.m. on the future site of the stadium: 4th and Oak Street parking lot on the East Bank campus. Visit the event web site for more info.

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SJMC adjunct instructor David Husom and his wife, Ann-Marie Rose, were profiled in an August 31 story in the Red Wing Republican Eagle. The story focused on their studio, the Hager City-based Husom & Rose Photographic Studio, which has printed the fine art edition of the Minnesota State Fair poster for the last three years. The pair was also featured in an interview aired on WCCO-TV news.

Professor Jane Kirtley was quoted by a number of media outlets on several of the nation’s top stories, including the media’s coverage of John Karr’s arrest for the murder of JonBenet Ramsey (Globe and Mail, August 18), Hewlett-Packard’s use of questionable techniques in gathering information about several journalists and its own board members (The Guardian, September 14), and the jailing of a blogger who defied a court order to turn over video taken at a San Francisco protest (Los Angeles Times, August 11). Kirtley was also cited in articles on various topics published in the Argus Leader (SD), Minnesota Daily, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Cox News Service, Sacramento Bee, and New York Times.

 

Teaching specialist Ken Stone was quoted in a September 18 Star Tribune story about the “disappearing” male television news anchor. Also quoted in the story was SJMC alumnus Lou Raguse (B.A. ’05), now an on-air reporter for KELO-TV in Sioux Falls, SD. “If you want to go into the business and are a man, it's a good time to do it,” Raguse says in the story.

Assistant professor Gary Schwitzer and his website, http://www.HealthNewsReview.org, continue to receive significant attention in the local and national media, including appearances on the CBS Public Eye website, Minnesota Public Radio’s Midmorning program, WCCO radio, the journal BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal), the June/July 2006 issue of Quill, the New Mexican (Santa Fe) newspaper, San Francisco public radio, San Diego public radio, and the North County Times of San Diego and Riverside (CA) counties. Schwitzer was also interviewed by Milwaukee Magazine for a July 2006 article on WTMJ-TV’s dismissal of medical reporter Kimberly Kane, and appeared on Minnesota Public Radio for a story on some of the flaws in peer-reviewed medical journals.

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Professor Hazel Dicken-Garcia has been named the 2006 recipient of the Kobre Distinguished Scholar Award, which is given for contributions to journalism history over the course of an academic career. The award, sponsored by the American Journalism Historians Association (AJHA), will be presented to Dicken-Garcia at a special luncheon at the AJHA annual convention in October.

Ph.D. student Kate Roberts Edenborg has been selected as the chief marketing officer on the board of directors for Minnesota Women in Communication (MWC), the organization formerly know as the Association of Women in Communications-Twin Cities chapter. MWC offers diverse networking and educational opportunities, and promotes communications’ role in business growth.

Recent SJMC alumna Kim Johnson (B.A. ’06) garnered two Emmy nominations in the Upper Midwest Chapter of the National Television Academy, which includes Minnesota, the Dakotas, Iowa and western Wisconsin. Johnson was nominated 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.

Associate professor Dona Schwartz is a 2006 Photo Review  prize winner  for her photo entitled “Grilled Chicken.”  The winners were chosen by Philip Brookman, senior curator of photography and media arts at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

Assistant professor Gary Schwitzer accepted an Award of Distinction from the Knight-Batten Awards for Innovative Journalism at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on September 18. The award was for his development of the HealthNewsReview.org website. The event included a symposium at which Schwitzer gave a presentation on the purpose and the goals of the website.

The SJMC’s 2005-06 student chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists was named Chapter of the Year for Region 6 at SPJ’s annual convention in August.

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The October issue of Mpls/St.Paul Magazine features SJMC lecturer Gayle Golden’s in-depth article on the death of Germain Vigeant, the University of Minnesota student who fell last January while exploring the Bunge grain elevators just north of the University’s St. Paul campus.  

Professor Kathleen Hansen and INMS director Nora Paul participated in a panel discussion entitled What is New About News: Challenges for Itasca County Journalism in the Digital Age on September 26 at the Grand Rapids Area Library. Paul discussed the changing nature of media and news delivery with special emphasis on smaller, local venues, and Hansen moderated the discussion between the audience and the panel, which included Britta Arendt, editor of the Grand Rapids Herald Review, Lee Johnson, editor of the Scenic Range News Forum, Marshall Helmberger, editor of the Cook/Orr Timberjay, and Scott Hall of KAXE's The Morning Show.

On September 21, Ph.D. student Nahid Khan spoke at a Bethel University conference entitled Journalism Through the Eyes of Faith. Khan’s talk was entitled “ Muslims in the Newsroom, News Coverage and the Nation's Story.” Khan’s research focuses on American news coverage of Islam in America and American Muslims as an American religious community.

Professor Jane Kirtley was a panelist for a number of scholarly presentations, including the “Edith Wortman Blue Ribbon Panel: The First Amendment and You” at the Association for Women in Communications’ professional conference on September 16; a panel on “FOIA 40 Years Later for the national Society of Professional Journalists convention on August 24; “Free Press in Indian Country: Dreams and Reality” for the Native American Journalists Association on August 11; and two panels at the Association of Educators in Journalism and Mass Communication conference San Francisco, both on August 3. Kirtley also delivered a lecture, “Citizen Rights to Freedom of Information,” at a conference in La Paz, Bolivia, on September 20. Sponsored by the Bolivian Anti-Corruption Community Action NGO in La Paz, Kirtley's participation via digital video was arranged by the United States embassy in La Paz and took place at the Rarig Center on the University of Minnesota campus.

An article by assistant professor Brian Southwell and American Institute of Physics colleague Alicia Torres on the connections between science news exposure and interpersonal communication appears in the September issue of Communication Monographs. Southwell was also an invited panelist at the 2006 Council of Engineering and Scientific Society Executives conference in Salt Lake City and a review panel member for a special National Institutes of Health study section in Maryland in July.

Ph.D. student John Wirtz is second author on the lead article in the current issue of Human Communication Research. The article, entitled “How does the comforting process work? An empirical test of an appraisal-based model of comforting,” was written with Susanne M. Jones, an assistant professor of communication studies at the University of Minnesota.

 

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Assistant professor Gary Schwitzer discussed news media ethics with five Indonesian journalists who were hosted by the Minnesota International Center on September 28.

Ph.D. student and instructor Rebecca Bolin Swenson hosted Chris Higgins, a director at Padilla Speer Beardsley, in her Jour 3202: Principles of Strategic Communication: Public Relations course. Higgins spoke to the class about the role of research within the public relations process and shared real-world examples of PR research from recent client projects.

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September 2006