2007 Quiz Bowl: Please join the SJMC Alumni Board for the 2007 Twin Cities Media Stars Quiz Bowl on Tuesday, January 23, at 6:30 p.m. at the McNamara Alumni Center, 200 Oak St SE, University of Minnesota. The Quiz Bowl will pit six teams from leading media organizations against each other, answering questions about Minnesota politics, sports, arts and entertainment, and more. This year’s competition will feature teams from KARE 11 TV, WCCO-TV, Risdall Advertising, Padilla Speer Beardsley, the Star Tribune, and the Pioneer Press. The Quiz Bowl will be hosted this year by Mike Gelfand, otherwise known as “Stretch” from the Morning Show on KQRS-FM radio. All SJMC alumni and students are invited; the suggested donation of $5 will support SJMC Alumni Board programming. For more information, e-mail Ami Berger, SJMC communications manager.

New Media Research Breakfast: The Institute for New Media Studies will host its monthly New Media Research breakfast on Thursday, February 1, from 8:30-9:30 a.m. in 100 Murphy Hall. The breakfasts are monthly gatherings of industry professionals and University of Minnesota students and scholars interested in current research produced in the area of new media. The breakfast is free and open to the public; reservations are required. To RSVP, e-mail Karen Kloser or call 612-625-0576.

Emerging Digerati: The Institute for New Media Studies will host its next Emerging Digerati event on Monday, February 5, at the Weisman art museum. The event will feature a reception beginning at 5:30 p.m. and three showcases beginning at 6 p.m.. The showcases will feature Mike Hallenbeck, a musician, composer, field recordist, and sound designer for theater and film, who will demonstrate in-progress compositions that use randomized playback to create multi-layered soundscapes; Robert Fraher of Interface Design, who will discuss the use of creative and analytical thought processes in interface design for the web; and Spark Festival assistant director Zachary Crockett, who will talk about the upcoming 2007 Spark Festival, a showcase of performance art. For more information, see www.inms.umn.edu or email Karen Kloser.

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Professor Kathy Hansen was interviewed by KARE-11 news on November 1 about the shift from print to digital communication methods.

Adjunct instructor David Husom, who is currently exhibiting a number of photographs at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, is the subject of two recent profiles: one in the November 18 Red Wing (MN) Republican Eagle and another in the November 19 San Diego Union. The exhibit featuring Husom’s photos is entitled “Where We Live: American Photographs from the Berman Collection” and will show at the Getty through February 25, 2007.

Professor Jane Kirtley was quoted on a wide range of topics in numerous media outlets in the fall and winter, including stories in the Providence (RI) Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Village Voice, the Minnesota Daily, the New York Sun, the Pioneer Press, the Times of London, the Associated Press, the Houston Chronicle, Forbes, the Portland (ME) Phoenix, the Hollywood Reporter, and the Star Tribune. Kirtley also made several appearances on local radio, including a guest spot on Minnesota Public Radio's "Midday" show with Gary Eichten on December 29 to discuss recent happenings in the Twin Cities newspaper industry, and an appearance on the Roy Green Show on CHML radio (a Canadian station) on January 9, discussing the ethics of the broadcasting and online posting of footage of Saddam Hussein's execution.

Nora Paul, director of the Institute for New Media Studies, made a number of appearances in the media in late fall and winter, including three appearances on KARE-11 news and a guest spot on WCCO radio’s “Dave Lee Show” to discuss the role of YouTube and blogs in the 2006 election. Paul was also quoted in the November 2 Pioneer Press in a story about a local Boys & Girls Club’s decision to open a video game center.

A new photo series by professor Dona Schwartz entitled “Soccer Mom” appears in the January 2007 issue of Popular Photography, along with a Q&A with Schwartz about the series. “Soccer Mom” is a collection of photos Schwartz took during her childrens’ soccer games, mostly of her fellow parents. “I'm very curious about my peers,” Schwartz says in the Q&A about one of the photos (at right). “What do they feel about going to these games?... I picked this image because it's about duty and self-sacrifice. We're doing this for our kids.” The Popular Photography story is available online here.

Assistant professor Gary Schwitzer was interviewed in the November 22 issue of the The Cancer Letter (a medical newsletter) in an article about the questionable ethics of some researchers and journalists in the way they disseminated news of a study on CAT scan screening for lung cancer.

On December 19, assistant professor Brian Southwell was interviewed on Minnesota Public Radio’s All Things Considered on the public’s response to the recent E.coli outbreak at Taco John’s restaurants in Minnesota and Iowa.

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SJMC senior Carla Ballecer has been named a 2007 Most Promising Minority Student by the American Advertising Federation. Ballecer, who will graduate in May 2007, is a double-major in strategic communication (in the SJMC) and marketing (in the Carlson School of Management). She is also the co-founder and vice-president of Professional and Cultural Opportunities (PACO), a University organization for students interested in international business. “I have no doubt that Carla’s critical thinking skills and creative insights will lead her to the top of the advertising world,” says SJMC professor John Eighmey, who nominated Ballecer for the Most Promising Minority Student competition.

SJMC student Allison Dinnocenzo, a senior on the strategic communications track, finished in the top 20 (out of 800+ entrants) in the Chevrolet Super Bowl Challenge to create the Chevy commercial for the 2007 Super Bowl. “Even though we did not make the top 5 it is incredibly exciting to know we were so close!” said Dinnocenzo, who was a student in John Eighmey’s Jour 4259 class and credits Eighmey and the course for helping her create the Chevy ad project.

Professor Ken Doyle has been elected to the Board of Directors of i-Learn.org, a Massachusetts non-profit corporation located in Cambridge, Mass., that develops, distributes, and supports innovative interactive distance-learning programs for peoples in the developing world.

Heath journalism graduate student Nicole Endres was one of several writers for the Minnesota Medical Foundation who received several communications awards in the 2006 Pride of CASE District V competition. CASE is the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. District V includes Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio.

Adjunct instructor and retired Pioneer Press publisher Harold Higgins is one of fifteen university educators to be selected as a Reynolds Fellow by the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism. As a Reynolds Fellow, Higgins will spend a week in January 2007 at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, attending sessions conducted by top business journalism professors and business journalists.

Alla Ilushka, an SJMC senior on the strategic communications track, was crowned Miss Minnesota USA on November 26, 2006. Ilushka will now advance to the Miss USA pageant, which will be televised nationally in April 2007.

Associate professor Mark Pedelty has received a Public Engagement Seed Grant from the University of Minnesota to support rehearsal space for The Green River Experiment. He and his students are using popular music to communicate environmental messages concerning the Mississippi River. A pilot campaign, the Horatio Project, involved web development, recorded music, art, and live performance on the Washington Avenue Bridge. The Green River Experiment will take that work directly into the community. Undergraduate groups will perform at a series of events, seeking new audiences to assist the Friends of the Mississippi River in their reclamation efforts.

 

Adjunct instructor Jim Pounds has accepted a new position as the marketing and public relations manager for Intermedia Arts in Minneapolis. Pounds was formerly a vice president and media director at Periscope Communications, also in Minneapolis. Pounds teaches Jour 4263: Strategic Communication Campaigns in the SJMC.

Health journalism graduate student Suzanne Sobotka won the national Science Journalism Student Award from the Society for Neuroscience. She attended the Neuroscience 2006 conference, the Society’s annual conference in Atlanta, and was paired with a senior science journalist during the conference.

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Visiting associate professor Chris Ison gave a presentation entitled "What's the media good for, anyway?" to the Minnesota Association of Government Communicators on Nov. 17. Ison also was on a panel sponsored by the Student Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists on Nov. 13 concerning the court case "Cohen v. Cowles Media" and the need for a federal shield law for journalists. He also conducted a training session for the Minnesota Daily projects staff on investigative reporting.

 

Professor Jane Kirtley gave a lecture on "Freedom of the Press in the United States" as a digital video conference with Palestinian journalists and academics in Jerusalem on January 10. The program was co-sponsored by a Palestinian think tank, the Al-Hares Center for Studies and Media, and the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem. Kirtley's participation was arranged by the U.S. State Department, and took place at the Rarig Center on the University of Minnesota campus. In November 2006, Kirtley delivered a number of lectures, including "Patriot Act II: No Problem for Libraries Now? Think Again," at the Wisconsin Library Association's 2006 annual conference, "Current Issues in U.S. Media Law," to the 2006 World Press Institute fellows, and “My Freedom or Yours: The Collision of First Amendment Freedoms" at the First Amendment Congress at Oklahoma State University. Kirtley was a panelist at the Practising Law Institute's Communications Law conference on November 9, on a panel entitled, "Newsgathering, Right of Privacy and Related Torts.” She also presented a paper entitled “A Child's Garden of Internet Cases from the USA,” at the Ad IDEM National Media Law conference in Montreal on November 18.

Professor Mark Pedelty's manuscript "Woody Guthrie and the Columbia River: Propaganda, Art, and Irony" has been accepted for publication in the journal Popular Music and Society for 2008 publication. The article is a study of popular music as strategic communication, examining Guthrie's work for the Bonneville Power Administration in 1941. Pedelty conducted the research in the Woody Guthrie Archives in New York City in January 2006, after having won the first ever Woody Guthrie Research Fellowship, sponsored by BMI (Broadcast Music Incorporated).

The photographs of professor Dona Schwartz were in three juried exhibitions in the fall and winter. They include the Center Awards Juried Exhibition at the Center for Photographic Art, in Carmel, CA; the Photo Review Best of Show at the University of the Arts Gallery in Philadelphia; and the New Works Gallery Online at the Silver Eye Center for Photography. Schwartz’s photos were also included in a photo benefit auction for the Camera Club of New York at Daniel Cooney Fine Art gallery in New York.

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Terrance W. Moore, an attorney with Steingart, McGrath and Moore, P.A. in Edina, delivered a guest lecture on broadcast regulation in Professor Jane Kirtley's Jour 3776: Mass Communication Law class on November 9. Also visiting Jour 3776 was attorney Stephen R. Bergerson of Fredrikson & Byron in Minneapolis, who visited on November 16 to discuss advertising regulation.

Assistant professor Gary Schwitzer hosted a number of guest lecturers in his Jour 3771: Mass Media Ethics class, including School of Public Health professor Mary Story, New York Times media columnist David Carr, SJMC senior fellow and retired Campbell Mithun CEO Howard Liszt, Padilla Speer Beardsley senior vice president Matt Kucharski, and Himle Horner Inc. co-founder Thomas Horner. Schwitzer also hosted
the following guest lecturers in his J8191 Health Journalism graduate seminar: MayoClinic.com senior editor Jay Maxwell, Minnesota Public Radio reporter Lorna Benson, physician and author Ron Glasser, Lee Aase of Mayo Clinic’s communications office, UMN Academic Health Center assistant vice president of communications Mary Koppel, and Children’s Hospital & Clinics senior media relations specialist Allison Sandve.

Gary Hill of KSTP -TV spoke about reporting for broadcast in visiting associate professor Chris Ison's Intermediate Reporting class, and Laurie Hertzel, writing coach and projects editor at the Star Tribune, spoke to Ison's Advanced News Writing and Reporting class about narrative writing.

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January 2007