COMJIG Request for Renewal with AEJMC
Presented to the AEJMC Board of Directors
July 15, 2013
Prepared by:
John Hatcher, outgoing head, University of Minnesota Duluth
Eileen Gilligan, incoming head, SUNY-Oswego
Dianne Garyantes, Vice head/programming, Rowan University
John Hatcher, outgoing head, University of Minnesota Duluth
Eileen Gilligan, incoming head, SUNY-Oswego
Dianne Garyantes, Vice head/programming, Rowan University
Attachments:
Letter
of support, Jeremy Littau, Leigh University, outgoing head of Civic and Citizen
Journalism Interest Group
Letter
of support, Chad Stebbins, executive director of the International Society of
Weekly Newspaper Editors
Letter
of support, Wilson Lowery, University of Alabama, graduate coordinator
Letter
of support, Tommy Thomason, Texas Christian University, director of the Texas
Center for Community Journalism
Letter
of support, Al Cross, University of Kentucky, director of the Institute for
Rural Journalism
Letter
of support, Jock Lauterer, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
director of the Carolina Community Media Project
COMJIG
Annual Report, 2013
COMJIG
Annual Report, 2012
COMJIG
summary of programming 2011-2013
COMJIG Request for Renewal with AEJMC
COMJIG Request for Renewal with AEJMC
A Google search using the words “community journalism” is
really all that is needed to show just how much AEJMC’s Community Journalism
Interest Group and its members have accomplished in 9 short years. Below the
Wikipedia entry is screen after screen of entries that are either directly
related to COMJIG – for example, the COMJIG blog, with its 260 entries and
24,003 page views – or programs and projects that have been undertaken by
COMJIG members. Often these are projects borne from ideas that began in the
COMJIG-sponsored events at AEJMC conferences over the years. Today, we can
boast of numerous community journalism-focused programs at top journalism
schools such as Ohio University, Texas Christian University and the University
of Alabama. We have a new peer-reviewed journal, Community Journalism, which showcases community journalism
research. And we have a growing network that closely connects students and
faculty with journalism practitioners.
It’s likely COMJIG will never be a division of AEJMC, but we
hope this document and the accompanying letters of support show that for a core
group of scholars and educators, the energy found in this interest group has
encouraged us to collaborate and work and to help make sure that AEJMC is
recognized as a leader in a growing, international interest in community
journalism: an intimate style of journalism that sees journalists as embedded
in their community situation.
Mission and goals
We hope this report and the accomplishments of COMJIG and
its members show how our work has been closely aligned with the Guiding
Principles established in 2004:
·
To
invigorate and inspire educators in community journalism by forming a national
cohort of like-minded scholars sharing their ideas, findings and work on an
annual basis.
·
To open a
national dialogue on community journalism by creating a networking system and
an annual focal point for educators in this field.
·
To foster,
encourage and reward superior academic work in community journalism through an
annual competition that would identify and showcase the best research papers
and creative teaching ideas.
·
To move
the field forward by supporting and affirming great teaching, publications and
research in the field.
·
To
stimulate new affiliations, research and publications by nurturing and
mentoring young academics in the field.
·
To make a
positive difference in the profession of community journalism by forging new
partnerships and building new bridges between the academy and the profession,
and by producing significant and practical research immediately useful to the
profession.
Defining COMJIG
“What is community
journalism?”
“How are you different
from the Civic and Citizen Journalism Interest Group?”
Hopefully, the days when these questions were asked are
behind us. While the members of COMJIG are keenly aware of our mission and
focus, we realize that this is not always clear to those on the outside – much
as it might be said these days for people trying discern how Electronic News might be different from
the Newspaper and Online divisions.
However, in perusing the mission laid out for this group in 2004, what we hope
you will see is that the accomplishments and the goals outlined in this request
align strongly with our mission.
As AEJMC’s Jennifer McGill told us recently, it was probably
a bad idea for COMJIG to hold its member meetings jointly with the Civic and
Citizen Journalism Interest Group. For the past two years, we have discontinued
this practice. What’s more, CCJIG’s name change to the Participatory Journalism
Interest Group will do even more to differentiate us. Further, we have included
in this request a letter from PJIG’s outgoing head, Jeremy Littau, stating his
own support for COMJIG as a separate entity.
At its core, COMJIG’s focus is on journalism produced by
people who are members of the communities they serve. Historically, this has
meant a strong focus on rural, print newspapers in geographically defined
communities. However, as noted in numerous scholarly articles, books and
elsewhere, the concept of community has been radically transformed with the
growth of online communities. Our group continues to explore in its research
and elsewhere how community journalism varies based on differences in ownership
structure, culture, media type, community type.
A bit of background
In August of 2004, the current outgoing head of COMJIG, John
Hatcher, was a fledgling doctoral student at Syracuse University’s Newhouse
School, when he attended AEJMC’s annual convention in Toronto. There, he ran
into community journalism scholar Jock Lauterer, whom he had first met in his
days at the now-defunct Center for Community Journalism based in SUNY Oswego. There’s
a meeting tonight that I want you to come to, Lauterer said. It’s about
community journalism and I want you there.
So, Hatcher went and he saw assembled many of the people who
had, for years, worked on their own to study and connect with the niche of
journalism that often was lost in discussions of larger media that cater to
mass audiences. Lauterer, the group learned, had partnered with Peggy Kuhr to
convince AEJMC to support the creation of a new Community Journalism Interest
Group.
It’s hard to know for certain how different the academic
landscape in the field of community journalism would be today without this
effort, but there is no denying that since that time, interest in community
journalism has exploded and COMJIG members have led the way. On a personal
note, one of the authors of this report (John Hatcher, now a tenured associate professor)
can attest that his research interests would likely have been pulled in a very
different direction were it not for the mentoring and encouragement of the
COMJIG family.
COMJIG’s recent
accomplishments
Here, briefly, are some of the highlights in the field of
community journalism COMJIG had been a part of, with a greater attention given
to activities accomplished since COMJIG’s last renewal in 2010.
·
Peer-reviewed
journal: The Texas Center for Community Journalism and COMJIG have agreed
on a memorandum to make the peer-reviewed journal, Community Journalism, the official journal of COMJIG. This request
is also before the AEJMC Board of Directors for its consideration this year.
·
Industry-faculty
connection: This year, the International Society of Weekly Newspaper
Editors gave a scholarship to COMJIG so its head, John Hatcher, could attend its
annual convention free of charge. It was agreed that this should continue each
year so that faculty with an interest in community journalism can connect with
community journalism practitioners from around the world. This, in turn, will
lead to encouraging faculty to share with students career opportunities related
to community journalism – including newspaper ownership. Included in this
request for renewal is a letter from ISWNE executive director Chad Stebbins
voicing his support for COMJIG.
·
Programs
with a community journalism focus: As the letters included with this
request show, we have a strong bond with the many, new community journalism
programs that have started in the United States even as we work to foster new
interest in community journalism in other countries.
·
Conference
programming with a focus on issues of diversity: We hope you will take a
moment and review the attachment that gives an overview of the programming that
COMJIG has worked to bring to AEJMC in the past three years. We think it shows
a strong desire to explore the relationship between community type and
journalism with a special emphasis on historically marginalized communities.
·
Encouraging
community journalism research: For so many decades, community journalism
has been relegated to the back of the room in divisions that are dominated by
the voices of big media. With its own interest group and membership, COMJIG can
showcase research in this area with a strong and direct emphasis on encouraging
new scholars and educators to focus their work in this area of journalism. In
2012, Sage published Foundations of
Community Journalism (Reader & Hatcher), a collected volume that has sold more than 400 copies and that
includes contributions from many COMJIG members.
·
Internationally
known blog: While some groups and divisions put out their obligatory
newsletters, COMJIG’s blog has gained high acclaim as a starting point for
scholars and others interested in learning more about community journalism.
·
Social
media growth: Since launching its Facebook page in 2012, the COMJIG
Facebook group has grown to 107 members as of the filing of this report.
Coupled with our email listserve and our active blog, communication with our
members and promoting our mission has become a daily activity.
COMJIG’s current
projects
·
Roots
Journalism Award: As noted in our annual report, this year we have created
our first Roots Journalism Award, recognizing an educator who has made a
significant contribution to community journalism. Going forward, we plan to
create a committee that will review nominations for this award and more
formalize the process.
·
Ten-year
anniversary and an emphasis on community: The new officers of COMJIG have
already begun discussion of how to properly mark COMJIG’s first decade as an
interest group with a focus on defining community and its role in shaping
journalism.
·
Diversifying
membership: In spite of a great deal of programming devoted exploring community
journalism produced by historically marginalized communities, it has been
admittedly difficult to diversify our membership. We aren’t done trying. This
year we hope to work with ISWNE to reach out to journalists and educators in
both indigenous communities in the United States, Canada and Norway as well as
journalists and educators in the developing nations of Africa.
· More graduate level
research: This year we intend to host a research
session at the Southeast Colloquium to encourage more graduate students to
submit work to COMJIG.
Membership trends
We are excited by our membership trends this year and we
credit this to a greater emphasis on communicating with our members throughout
the year. Even before the AEJMC conference registration push for this year, our
numbers are already at 79, suggesting we are well on track to top last year’s
figure of 80 as we move back upward toward our original numbers.
As Table 1 below suggests, there was a decline in membership
between 2010 and 2011. AEJMC’s business manager Jenni Meyer told us that this
followed a trend across AEJMC: “What
you see as your numbers have gone down has also happened to most every group.
As we have added new groups to the mix, members have joined the new groups, and
have often changed the second group they normally belonged to.”
Table 1: COMJIG
membership trends
|
Year
|
Membership
|
|
June 2013
|
79*
|
|
September
2012
|
80
|
|
September
2011
|
87
|
|
September
2010
|
106
|
|
September
2009
|
107
|
|
September
2008
|
105
|
|
September
2007
|
111
|
(Source: AEJMC business manager Jenni Meyer)
*AEJMC’s database was
down at the filing time for this report and this figure does not reflect
membership increase included with 2013 conference registration.
COMJIG’s niche in
AEJMC
In concluding, we hope you will take a minute and read the
letters of support for COMJIG. We think they speak volumes about who we are and
the role that we’ve played for AEJMC and its members. Even though we have a
strong, core group of loyal members, we think it is unlikely that we will push
for division status at any time. We believe strongly that the niche of
journalism that we are focused on must have its own distinct voice within the
larger body of AEJMC and hope that the AEJMC Board of Directors agrees.
It’s important to remember that the typically small news
organizations that we focus our work on comprise what Ohio University’s Bill
Reader has long called the “bottom of the iceberg” in the media landscape. In
recent years, we’ve seen the top of that iceberg melt, to continue the analogy,
while the community journalism landscape is flourishing in ways we could not
have envisioned even in COMJIG’s short lifetime. Were COMJIG to vanish, the
educators and scholars devoted to community journalism would continue to do
their work, but we firmly believe some momentum would be lost without a central
place for us to share our ideas and our passion.
Current and incoming officers
Current
Officers:
· Head: John Hatcher,
Minnesota-Duluth
· Vice head/programming: Eileen Gilligan,
SUNY-Oswego
· Research chair: Dianne Garyantes, Rowan
University
· PF&R chair: Al Cross, Kentucky
· Teaching standards chair: Andrea Frantz, Buena Vista
· Secretary/membership: Dana Coester, West
Virginia
· Professional liaison: Barbara Selvin, Stony Brook
· Graduate student liaison: Clay Carey, Ohio
· Past head: Joe Marren, Buffalo State
Incoming officers
· Head: Eileen Gilligan,
SUNY-Oswego
· Vice head/programming: Dianne Garyantes, Rowan
· Research chair: Mark
Poepsel, Loyola University New Orleans
· PF&R chair: Al Cross, Kentucky
· Teaching standards chair: Andrea Frantz, Buena Vista
· Secretary/membership: Dana Coester, West
Virginia
· Professional liaison: Barbara Selvin, Stony Brook
· Graduate student liaison: Clay Carey, Ohio
· Past head: John Hatcher, Minnesota
Duluth
Other Recent Past Heads:
· Andris Straumanis,
Wisconsin-River Falls
· Doug Fisher, South Carolina
· Liz Hansen, Eastern Kentucky
· Bill Reader, Ohio
· Peggy Kuhr, Montana
Founder/head emeritus: Jock
Lauterer, North Carolina
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