By Rachel Grant, University of Florida, Membership Co-Chair, rgrant@jou.ufl.edu

Lillie Fears (Arkansas State) was named coordinator of the Multimedia Journalism Program in the School of Media and Journalism at Arkansas State University.

Teri Finneman (Kansas), Candi Carter Olson (Utah State) and Jinx Broussard (Louisiana State) discussed suffrage history at the Bob Dole Institute of Politics in September during the launch event for KU’s celebration of the 19th Amendment.

Nick Hirshon (William Paterson) learned that the campus chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists that he founded and advises was named the Outstanding Campus Chapter in the northeastern United States, placing above every other student chapter in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, central and eastern Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont. The distinction placed the William Paterson Society of Professional Journalists among ten finalists under contention for the most Outstanding Campus Chapter in the nation.

Julie Lane (Boise State) published a book chapter titled, “”Cultivating Distrust of Mainstream Media: Propagandists for a Liberal Machine and the American Establishment.” The chapter is featured in Oxford University Press’ News on the Right: Studying Conservative News Cultures, edited by Anthony Nadler and A.J. Bauer. 

Jon Marshall (Northwestern) had an op-ed, “Like Watergate All Over Again? In Some Ways, Yes, but There Are Stark Differences,” published Sept. 25 in the Chicago Tribune.

The Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota hosted a symposium in September for scholars contributing to an edited collection on journalism and the rise of Jim Crow in the New South. The book project, co-edited by Kathy Roberts Forde and Sid Bedingfield, examines the various ways newspaper editors and publishers exerted influence and shaped outcomes in the South during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Forde says the book will “document the substantive role of the white press in actively building, nurturing, and protecting the white supremacist political economies and social orders that emerged in the region.” The book will also highlight the struggle by black leaders who used the tools of mass media to fight these oppressive new regimes. “We envision this collection as part of the growing effort among historians to reconsider the political role of news media during times of change,” Bedingfield said. “Historians rely on news outlets as sources of information about political change, but they frequently ignore the specific and substantive roles that journalists and other media figures played in fostering that change.”

By Perry Parks, Michigan State University, Membership Co-Chair, parksp@msu.edu

Teresa Mastin

Where you work: Michigan State University, Department of Advertising and Public Relations , Professor and Chairperson

Where you got your Ph.D.: Michigan State University, 1998

Current favorite class: All classes that allow myself and the students to connect by way of our past, present, and future, which is essentially every class I teach. I appreciate that infusing these concepts into each course helps us to think well beyond those of us in the room. I am currently teaching Contemporary Issues in Advertising (and Public Relations)

Current research project: The one that is most timely is revisiting two articles that myself and colleagues published in 2004 and 2005 that explored slavery reparation.

Fun fact about yourself: I am double middle child, that is, the fourth child of eight and the middle of the the girls. I am a classic middle child. 

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By Rachel Grant, University of Florida, Membership Co-Chair, rgrant@jou.ufl.edu

Erin Coyle (Louisiana State University) published an article in Communication Law & Policy with Stephanie L. Whitenack. The article uses legal analysis to explore how states assess relational privacy rights and public rights to access 911 recordings involving death. The article is now available online via Taylor & Francis. Here is the citation and link to the abstract: Erin K. Coyle & Stephanie L. Whitenack (2019) Access to 911 Recordings: Balancing Privacy Interests and the Public’s Right to Know about Deaths, Communication Law and Policy, 24:3, 307-345, DOI: 10.1080/10811680.2019.1627796. 

Kristin Gustafson (University of Washington-Bothell) and Amy Lambertwere awarded one of the top three out of about 60 posters presented at the University of Washington’s 15th Annual Teaching & Learning Symposium in Seattle. The Gustafson-Lambert poster, “Team Teaching Models for Professional Development and Peer Learning,” was judged one of three winners based on appearance, content and presentation. The poster shared two outcomes of their team-teaching experience with first-year students. They identified how the experience functioned as faculty development, and shared a new peer-observation model that builds on the expertise and insight gained through team teaching. 

Nick Hirshon (William Paterson University) was selected for one of the highest honors that can be afforded to a journalism educator in the United States, the 2019 David Eshelman Outstanding Campus Adviser Award as the nation’s top adviser of a campus chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. Hirshon’s students nominated him for the award. In its 41-year history, the award has almost exclusively been granted to advisers at universities with enrollments at least double William Paterson’s, and largely to the nation’s most prestigious journalism programs, such as Columbia University, the University of Missouri, Ohio University, the University of Maryland, the University of Central Florida, and the University of Iowa. No educator from the New York metropolitan area has received the award since a professor at Columbia University in 1998. The award will be presented at SPJ’s annual Excellence in Journalism conference in September in San Antonio, Texas.

Will Mari (Louisiana State University) has signed a contract with Routledge for a sequel to “A Short History of Disruptive Journalism Technologies 1960-1990,” part of Routledge’s “Disruptions” series. The follow-up project will be titled, “Newsrooms and the Disruption of the Internet,” covering the period from c. 1990-2010, with an expected release date in late 2021 or early 2022.

Cayce Myers (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University) received tenure and promotion to Associate Professor at Virginia Tech’s Department of Communication.

Madeleine Liseblad, Middle Tennessee State University, Membership Co-Chair, Madeleine.Liseblad@mtsu.edu

Mark Arbuckle

Where you work: I’m a Professor in the Department of Communication at Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kansas.

Where you got your Ph.D.: I earned my Ph.D. (2001) from the School of Journalism at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.

Current favorite class: A tie between History of Mass Communication and Law of Mass Communication. I also greatly enjoy teaching my Free Speech graduate seminar class.

Current research project: I have a manuscript under review at a law journal that chronicles the numerous warnings from lawmakers, FCC commissioners, and the courts, over the decades, against excessive media ownership consolidation. The manuscript concludes that current-day regulators should heed the warnings from the past and return to a regulatory philosophy that promotes ownership diversity and, thus, protects the public interest, journalism and democracy.

Fun fact about yourself: I was a Maytag repairman for 10 years in my parents’ appliance business before going back to school to complete my B.S. in journalism at the University of Central Missouri. I’m also a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist and have been writing and recording songs in my home studio, playing all the instruments myself, for 35 years.

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