Archives for May 2013

[March 16, 2011]

[January 28, 2010]

Nontraditional online news sources are more likely to hire people with broad bodies of knowledge (“adaptive expertise”) while traditional news organizations more commonly seek out those with solid technical skills, according to a recent study published in Journalism & Mass Communication Educator.

Dr. Serena Carpenter, an assistant professor in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, examined over a six-month period 664 online media job postings on JournalismJobs.com to gauge whether online news media employers prefer employees with specific skill sets or with knowledge spanning several topics.

Traditional news media were still most interested in hiring new employees with “nontechnical routine expertise,” such as solid writing skills, working under deadline, editing, teamwork and communication skills, and Associated Press Style. About equally, however, they also were seeking employees with “technical routine expertise,” such as content posting and management, image editing, blogging, video editing, and social media knowledge.

Nontraditional online news media were as interested in nontechnical routine expertise as traditional news media, but less interested in routine technical expertise (perhaps because they assumed new employees already had such skills or that they could be easily taught). Instead, nontraditional online news media were significantly more interested in hiring employees with adaptive expertise, such as knowledge outside journalism/mass communication, creativity, independent and critical thinking, leadership, and problem-solving abilities.

Regardless of their preferences, the job postings for traditional and nontraditional online news sources expressed interest in employees with some expertise in both areas, suggesting that teaching specific and broad knowledge areas should each have a place in the journalism and mass communication curriculum.

The study appears in the Autumn 2009 issue of Journalism & Mass Communication Educator.

CONTACT: Serena Carpenter, Assistant Professor, Arizona State University, Serena.Carpenter@asu.edu.

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[June 22, 2010]

A 30-year review of research comparing and contrasting accredited journalism schools with unaccredited ones shows many more similarities than differences, and no conclusive evidence that accredited ones are significantly or consistently better than un-accredited ones in any important way.

The literature review, by Dr. Marc C. Seamon, assistant professor of communication at Robert Morris University, was printed in the Spring 2010 issue of Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, a refereed quarterly published by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), Columbia, S.C. Journalism & Mass Communication Educator is the world’s largest and oldest scholarly journal devoted entirely to education and training in journalism, media, and other mass communication.

In the United States, accreditation of journalism schools is available from only one agency, the Accrediting Council for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (ACEJMC), headquartered at the William Allen White School of Journalism & Mass Communications, University of Kansas. ACEJMC accredits approximately one-quarter (about 110) of the journalism and communication colleges, schools, departments, and programs that are normally counted as such as in the United States (about 450).

Titled, “The Value of Accreditation: An Overview of Three Decades of Research Comparing Accredited and Unaccredited Journalism and Mass Communication Programs,” Dr. Seamon’s essay’s abstract reads, in part, that no study has “discovered evidence that accredited programs are strongly or clearly superior in major ways to unaccredited programs. In fact, studies generally find many more similarities than differences. A review of literature comparing accredited and unaccredited J&MC programs seems to suggest that ACEJMC accreditation is a credential whose reputation exceeds its actual benefit. Although the idea of a formal process by which programs can be evaluated and ‘certified’ as high quality is well intentioned, operationalization of that idea has proved to be difficult. Some accreditation standards ACEJMC has deemed most important (diver-sity and liberal arts curriculum) have resulted in controversial chapters in accreditation’s history.”

CONTACT: Dr. Seamon may be contacted at seamon@rmu.edu. Journalism & Mass Communication Educator’s editor, Dr. Dane S. Claussen of Point Park University, may be contacted at dsclaussen@hotmail.com.

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[October 17, 2011]

The October 2011 issue of the Journal of Communication Inquiry (JCI) marks the tenth anniversary of Hardt and Negri’s groundbreaking book Empire (2000) with a special theme issue devoted to its impact on critical communication studies.

The issue, guest edited by Jack Z. Bratich of Rutgers University, contains 19 essays from internationally recognized academics in communication, cultural, and media studies.

The focus of this issue resonates with the OWS (Occupy Wall Street) movement, as Hardt and Negri’s books (especially Empire) are believed to have predicted and helped shape the current wave of radicalism.

A key essay, “Corruption and Empire: Notes on Wisconsin” by M.R. Greene-May, directly links the concept of “corruption” from Hardt and Negri’s works to street action and thus would be useful in understanding current social activism.

Examining the (eventually failed) class struggle in Wisconsin that began with Gov. Scott Walker’s union-busting legislation earlier this year, Greene-May argues how framing the solution to the problem of union busting as an electoral solution (through the ballot box strategy of recall and referendums) threatens the possibility of compositional and autonomous politics in class struggle. By demonstrating how party politics can politically capture and exploit class composition, as in the case of Wisconsin, Greene-May asserts that events of class struggle should “create their own conditions of possibility unfolding in their own time” rather than being defined and controlled by “the terms of the debate” by others. This claim parallels Hardt and Negri’s argument of how a successful radical movement should be like a “swarm:” that despite being decentralized, spontaneous, and free-flowing, a radical movement can self-organize, self-regulate, and self-govern.

We encourage those who are interested in seeing how Hardt and Negri’s works connect to current events to check out our entire October 2011 special theme issue.  The Greene-May essay abstract can be accessed at: http://jci.sagepub.com/content/early/recent. (Full text download is available to Sage Journals Online subscribers.)

Contacts: M. R. Greene-May (essay), North Carolina State University, mrmaygreene@gmail.com, Jack Z. Bratich (guest editor), Rutgers University, jbratich@rutgers.edu, Hye-Jin Lee (managing editor, JCI), University of Iowa, hye-jin-lee@uiowa.edu.

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[May 19, 2010]

Sports reporters on the high school beat, often the youngest and most inexperienced in the newsroom, are also the most likely to believe they can operate by more relaxed ethical codes than their counterparts, according to a new survey.

The telephone survey, conducted by researchers in the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism at Penn State, asked 263 reporters who cover sports at the high school, college or professional level about their attitudes toward ethical codes and professional norms for reporters.

More than one-third of the reporters surveyed covered prep sports, and almost as many said they covered professional teams. Far fewer – 14 percent – said they covered college sports. Eighteen percent reported on several beats.

Researchers analyzed responses by beat and found that reporters covering high school sports were more likely than those on professional beats to advocate a more “relaxed” code of ethics for sports reporters than for other parts of the newsroom. Preps (high school) reporters also more often reported friendships with sources and endorsed home-team boosterism in stories than did those who covered pro teams.

At the same time, preps reporters were more likely to agree with the idea that sports journalism should work in a public-service, “watchdog” role.

Marie Hardin, associate director of research in the Curley Center, said the findings may reflect both the idealism and inexperience of reporters at the preps level. Reporters covering high school sports had less journalism experience than those on other beats, and 65 percent of reporters on this beat were under 40.

“These reporters – often the least experienced in a sports department – are also the closest to their communities and face different types of ethical issues than do other sportswriters,” Hardin said. “Their jobs are often just as much about public education as they are about sports.”

Results of the survey, “Sports Reporters’ Attitudes About Ethics Vary Based on Beat,” by Hardin and Bu Zhong, who both teach in Penn State’s College of Communications, is published in the Spring 2010 issue of Newspaper Research Journal.

Other questions on the survey—administered by students in COMM 412 Sports, Media and Society, one of the core class offerings of the Curley Center—asked reporters about job satisfaction. Reporters covering prep sports less often said they had considered quitting their jobs. They also more often said they saw their career futures as bright.

“This could be a reflection of their age,” Hardin said. “They’re younger and more likely in a career-building stage.”

Their optimism may also reflect the perception that their beats are more secure than those at the professional or even college level, added Hardin, where travel costs and competition from a variety of sources – including sports leagues – is cutting into sports-department budgets.

“Meanwhile, the high school beat is a staple in sports sections, and that’s not going to change anytime soon,” Hardin said. “These journalists may understand the key role they play for their papers and in their communities.”

Contacts: Marie Hardin e-mail: mch208@psu.edu or Bu Zhong e-mail: zhongbu@psu.edu.

<<RYCU