Thanks, and congrats to the new officers

Still coming off that Chicago conference high while dealing with the normal workload at Hometown U.? Yeah, I know, me too. So that's why this missive is a few days late (got home Sunday night and it's now Wednesday).

Supposedly Newton once said that if he saw far it was because he stood on the shoulders of giants. I know what he meant. If there was any success at all during our Chicago conference workshops it was due to the effort and hard work put in by the other COMJIG officers because it seemed to me that I spent my time chasing down mundane details. The big pic -- and the application of the small stuff that they sweated -- was handled by everyone else.

I also want to thank the other officers for all their help this past year when I was head of the interest group. We had an interesting discussion about the future of COMJIG during our members' meeting in Chi-town, but I'll let the new head of the group, John Hatcher, fill everyong in about that. It is said that the devil is in the details, but this time the excitement will be in the details. John will tell everyone more about it.

In the meantime, I hope everyone has a great start to the semester and a fulfilling academic year. See you in D.C. in August.

Thanks,
Joe

What happened to my COMJIG blog?

Yes, you might have noticed it has a new look - a logo, new stuff on the sidebar, etc.

We have switched from Blogger's old, HTML-based template to its new XML-based templates that have "gadgets" (another name for widgets) that mean we don't have to go in and hard code everything whenever we want to make a change.

We've kept all the old features and added some others, such as the ability to mark a post recommended or not recommended.

The logo was adopted at this year's business meeting. It's nothing fancy, but it incorporates what we are all about -- community AND communication.

Please, let Doug know if you have any suggestions or comments.

COMJIG business meeting

If you are in Boston, please make time to come to the COMJIG business meeting from 6:45-8:15 this Thursday at the Sheraton as part of the AEJMC convention.

As we have in the past, we will first meet jointly with Civic and Citizen Journalism and then adjourn to our own short meeting.

The following people have agreed to stand for nomination and election, but nominations also will be taken from the floor:

Head - Doug Fisher
Vice Head - Andris Straumanis
Research - Joe Marren
Teaching - Eileen Gilligan
PF&R - Ralph Hanson
Secretary- ????

As you can see, we need a secretary. If you are interested, please let Doug know (dfisher@sc.edu)or come prepared to nominate yourself.

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Also, here are two versions of a possible logo for the group. It might give us visibility or at least a unified look for the Yahoo Group, the blog and any mailings, etc.





Thanks,
Doug