ISWNE/Huck Boyd Competition Call for Proposals

The International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors (ISWNE) is looking for paper proposals for its ISWNE/Huck Boyd Competition. Proposals should provide insight and guidance on issues and/or everyday problems within community newspapers, particularly at publications with less than 10,000 circulation. 

Here's a link to more information, including a PDF download of the competition submission requirements. Deadline to submit is Nov. 2. The ISWNE conference is July 20-24, 2022 in Lexington, Kentucky. 

COMIG seeks panel proposals for AEJMC New Orleans 2021

 Dear Community Journalism folks, 

 

We need your help brainstorming and planning panels for COMJIG for AEJMC 2021. We want our conference programming to be about you and relevant to you. So, think about the topics that interest you, the concerns you would like discussed at a national level and ideas that have emerged in your classrooms or excited your students. 

 

There are several large issues facing community journalism right now and, as an interest group, we want to include and represent as many unique voices as possible in our conference programming. 

 

Here is a template to guide you through the process of pitching panels. 

• Panel Title: Give your idea a creative name. 
• Panel Type:  
• If your panel idea is more academic in nature, pick Research.  
• If it's more about involving students or revolves around pedagogical practice, pick Teaching.  
• If it's about freedom of speech, the journalism profession, or ethical issues, then PF&R (Or, professional freedom and responsibilities) is what you want to select. 
• Panel Sponsorship: If you think there is another AEJMC division or interest group that might be interested in collaborating with COMJIG for the idea you have suggested, please list them. Consider which groups might compliment the idea of what will be talked about during the panel you’re proposing. We will follow up with the division or group you suggest when finalizing the panel proposals. 
• Description of Panel: In 150-250 words, describe what this panel is about and the discussion points you would like covered. Consider that we’ll use this description to help attract other divisions or interest groups.  
• Possible Panelists: Consider an array of diverse people and perspectives when pitching who you think would be good to invite. You don’t need to have your panelists locked down yet, you can treat this as who’d you like if the panel is accepted.  
• Moderator: You can recommend someone else or yourself for moderating the panel, should you intend to attend AEJMC in New Orleans next year.• Contact: Provide the best way for me to get in touch with you should I need additional information or clarification for the panel you have proposed. 

Please provide the information outlined in a Word document and email it to me at christina.smith1@gcsu.edu by September 10. 

 

I am excited to hear ideas from all of you. It is with your input and ideas that we will be able to create a program that truly represents the voice of its members. Once the program has been finalized, we will send you the details via email and post it on our blog as well as our Twitter and Facebook pages. 

 

Thank you for your continued support of COMJIG! 

 

Christina C. Smith 

Vice Chair 

Community Journalism Interest Group 

AEJMC's COMJIG announces paper call for August 2020 conference

AEJMC's Community Journalism Interest Group invites scholarly submissions from faculty and graduate students for paper and poster sessions to be presented at the 2020 AEJMC national conference in San Francisco, California, USA. The papers should advance theory and/or practice in community/local journalism and can use a variety of methods and approaches. The deadline for paper submissions is April 1, 2020. 

Scope: The concept of community has expanded to more than just a group defined by physical proximity. In the digital age, communities also are defined by the strength of social relationships amongst individuals and the interests that bring them together, irrespective of their geographic location. COMJIG encourages submissions that address this diversity within and about communities and the role(s) journalism plays in reporting about as well as informing these communities. COMIG also encourages submissions that provide action-oriented insight into trends and issues facing community journalism outlets that would be of use to practitioners in community journalism industries.

Research topics may include, but are not restricted to:

·       How and if news organizations—print and digital-- fulfill a community’s critical

information needs

·       How news organizations build audiences within their communities with or without

use of technologies such as social media

·       How community newspapers thrive or struggle to survive in present times and changes,

if any, in community journalistic practices in the digital age

·       How journalism entrepreneurs juggle advertising with community news reporting

·       The effects of the closure of community news outlets—print and online – on communities, specifically those in news deserts

·       How news organizations create and engage with communities through innovative practices

·       Conceptual ideas that push the meaning and our understanding of community

in new directions

·       Conceptual ideas that explore the meaning and interpretation of “local news”

in a global era

Awards: The Group awards top papers in the faculty and student categories. The authors of these papers will be invited to publish their manuscripts to COMJIG’s official, peer-reviewed publication, Community Journalism. Others also are encouraged to send their work to the journal for consideration.

Submission guidelines:

Format: Paper submissions should include a 100 to 150-word abstract and should not exceed 8000 words, including references, tables and notes. All papers should conform to APA style, Sixth edition. Papers must be typed in 12-point font using Times New Roman and paper text must be double-line spaced with 1-inch margins around each page. The pages should be continuously numbered. References must be provided. Tables or figures can be included within or at the end of the paper. An author can submit more than one paper to COMJIG but no more than two manuscripts. All submissions will be subjected to a blind peer review. 

Author Identification: All authors and co-authors should include their information when registering on the online system. It is the author’s responsibility to ensure that no identifying information is included anywhere in the paper or the properties section of the pdf document or it will be disqualified from the conference. Thus, authors are encouraged to submit early to fully check their submissions in the system for self-identifying information and any other technical glitches so they can resubmit their manuscripts, if necessary, before the system closes on deadline. Please follow the directions provided in “submitting a clean paper” section under the uniform paper call on the AEJMC website. 

Student Submissions: Graduate students are encouraged to submit papers to the group. Student authors should clearly mark their papers by including the phrase “STUDENT SUBMISSION” on the title page to be considered for the student paper competition. These papers should be authored by students only and not include any faculty co-authors.

Uploading Manuscripts: The papers should be submitted to COMJIG via a link on the AEJMC website. Please see the AEJMC’s paper competition uniform call for more information.

Presentation Requirement: For the manuscript to be considered for presentation in the panel or poster session at the conference, at least one of the authors must attend in person to talk about the research. An exception may be made for papers with ONLY student authors; if the graduate students are unable to attend, then they must arrange for someone else to present the research on their behalf.

Questions, Concerns, Clarifications? Please contact COMJIG Research Committee Chair Christina Smith, assistant professor of communication at Georgia College and State University, at christina.smith1@gcsu.edu.

Ideas to help brainstorm topics for panel submissions for AEJMC2020

Hello, all.

Conference panel submissions are now being accepted for the Community Journalism Interest Group for AEJMC 2020. To help get your creative/research ideas flowing, I’ve compiled a list of COMJIG panel topics presented over the past five AEJMC conferences. Here are those topics as well as possible ideas for potential collaboration with other interest groups and divisions:

2019

(PCIG, COMJ) PF&R Panel Session: "Understanding Trust in Local vs. National News"

(PJIG, COMJ) Research Panel Session: "Committing Acts of Journalism: The Role of Regular Actors and Strangers in (Community) Journalism Practice"

(COMJ, PCIG) Teaching Panel Session: "Filling Information Voids in News Deserts with Student-Produced News"

(EEND, COMJ) Teaching Panel Session: "Career Ready: Not Just A Lecture"

2018

(COMJ, RMIG) PF&R Panel Session: "Faith in the Beltway: Creating and Maintaining Community Bonds through Religious-Themed News Organizations"

(COMJ, HIST) Teaching Panel Session: "Innovating Ideas that Foster a Community and Its History"

(NOND, COMJ) Teaching Panel Session: "Journalists in the Hot Seat: Staying Safe in a Hostile Political Climate"

(MMEE, COMJ) PF&R Panel Session: "Working Conditions for Women in Digital Workplaces"

2017

(COMJ, MMEE) Teaching Panel Session: Teaching the Business of Community Journalism in the 21st Century

(COMJ, CCJA) Teaching Panel Session: Helping Students Build Community Outside and Inside Campus Newsrooms

(COMJ, PJIG) Research Panel Session: Defining Community and Participatory Journalism in the Social Media Era

2016

(COMJ, NOND) PF&R Panel Session: Imagining Digital Community: The Importance of Geography and Niche Focus to Entrepreneurial and Community Journalists

(COMJ, CCJA) Workshop Session: Putting the "Hyper" in Hyperlocal: Teaching Students to Get Excited About and Involved in Community Journalism

(COMJ, NOND) PF&R Panel Session: Imagining Digital Community: The Importance of Geography and Niche Focus to Entrepreneurial and Community Journalists

2015

(COMJ, Knight Foundation) Teaching Workshop Session: THIS HAS BEEN CANCELLED: Saving Community Journalism: What Journalism Professors Need to Know About the Business of Local News in the Digital Age

(ETHC, CJIG) PF&R Panel Session: Journalists in Fear: Covering the News Ethically Despite Death Threats, Terrorism, and Dangerous Stories

(GLBT, CJIG) PF&R Panel Session: San Francisco and the Heart of the LGBT Movement

(MAGD, CJIG) Research Panel Session: Creation of Community in the Magazine Form: Legacy to Online

(CCSD, CJIG) PF&R Panel Session: Resistance Journalism: Expression, Self-Empowerment, and the Creation of Counternarratives on Poverty Through Community Media

If you are interested in submitting a panel proposal, please visit the following link, which includes a template for panel submissions: https://comjig.blogspot.com/2019/08/panel-proposal-call-for-aejmc-2020.html.

Cheers. Happy brainstorming!!!

Christina Smith

Georgia College and State University

COMJIG Research Chair

christina.smith1@gcsu.edu

Happy 15th birthday, COMJIG

Today marks a special day for COMJIG.

it was 15 years ago that about 25 of us, led by the indefatigable Jock Lauterer, gathered in a poorly lit coferece room at Toronto's Sheraton Centre to form the Communty Journalism Interest group of AEJMC.

Fittingly, we are back at the Sheraton Toronto this year.

With recent develoments in journalism, the need for COMJIG has never been greater.

I hope you'll try to attend today's (Friday's) research session (4:45 p.m. in the Cedar Room - mezzanine). If you can't make that, come by the business meeting at 6:30 in the same room to wish COMJIG a hapy birthday and many more. - Doug Fisher

Al Cross on NPR on key Ky. congressional election

Good to hear COMJIG's Al Cross on NPR's "Morning Edition" today discussing one of the midterm election's hot contests, Kentucky's 6th District congressional race.

https://www.npr.org/2018/10/12/656814421/kentucky-midterm-house-race-6th-congressional-district-issues

COMJIG Social in San Francisco!

Please put on your conference calendar the COMJIG social! It will held Saturday, Aug. 8, at 9 p.m. at the Belden Taverna: http://www.btaverna.com/#!dinner/c22ew

Tell them you're with the Community Journalism Interest Group and you should be seated upstairs.

See you there!

Community Journalism in Charleston, S.C.

The New York Times ran an interesting article yesterday about how the local newspaper in Charleston, S.C., The Post and Courier, covered the church shootings last week. Here's the link:

At Charleston Newspaper, Covering the News, and Choking Back Tears

AEJMC Preview: Street newspapers as outlets for new narratives on what it means to be 'poor'

It isn’t too early to start talking about AEJMC programming, is it?

With the national conference a short summer away, I thought I’d offer a bit of information on one of the panels the Community Journalism Interest Group is bringing to San Francisco.

COMJ is co-sponsoring a PF&R panel entitled “Resistance Journalism: Expression, Self-Empowerment, and the Creation of Counternarratives on Poverty Through Community Media.”

Here’s the formal panel description: 

Millions of people in the U.S. struggle with financial need and homelessness. However, news and entertainment media often ignore the lived experiences of those living in extreme poverty or cast them in condescending stereotypes that reinforce dominant ideologies about what it means to be poor, in the process reinforcing and worsening social stratification.

During this panel, scholars and activists will discuss the ways “street newspapers” and similar publications produced by the poor, who are often ignored or marginalized by mainstream media, empower writers to create their own counternarratives about poverty and advocate for change. Street newspapers, also sometimes called homeless newspapers, are urban newspapers generally written and distributed by current or former homeless individuals. 

Panelists include:

• Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the San Francisco Coalitionon Homelessness. The coalition publishes Street Sheet, the oldest continuously published street newspaper in the U.S.

• Lisa "Tiny" Gray-Garcia, founder of POOR Magazine, a poor people/indigenous people-led grassroots organization developed to provide media access to and advocate for people in poverty.
   
• Bob Offer-Westort, editor of Street Sheet.
   
• Paula Lomazzi, CEO of the Sacramento Homeless Organizing Committee. The committee publishes a street newspaper called the Homeward Street Journal.
   
• Dr. Cindy Vincent, assistant professor at Salem State University. Dr. Vincent’s research focuses on representations of class in the media and the role of participatory media in civic engagement and social justice.

Your humble blog post author will be the panel moderator.

I hope you will be able to join us for this interesting and important panel discussion, which is co-sponsored by COMJ and the Cultural/Critical Studies Division.

Panel Date: Sunday, Aug. 9

Panel Time:  11 a.m.

Check it Out...

COMJIG member Barbara Selvin's article has just been posted by Nieman Reports: Local Weeklies Are Covering the Communities Big Dailies Ignore
It's a great read. Thanks, Barbara!

COMJIG Call for Papers

The Community Journalism Interest Group (COMJIG) is seeking original, non published research papers to be considered for presentation at the 2014 AEJMC national conference in Montreal, Canada. The deadline for paper submissions is April 1, 2014.

This theme for this year’s submissions will be “The Next 10 Years of Community Journalism.” 2014 represents the 10 year anniversary for the community journalism interest group. COMJIG’S goal is to identify and present original, meaningful research that advances the understanding of the role of journalists and news organizations as members of communities, geographic or digital. We emphasize that community need not just be defined as within traditional geographical or social boundaries, but that given technological advances it may also be applied to journalism and its relationship to communities of interest online. Papers could address issues such as how “community’” is defined or how its meaning changes in an increasingly digital media environment. In addition, while the interest group will seek to offer a diverse program, we hope to receive some submissions that address the theme “The Next 10 Years of Community Journalism.” To mark the 10-year anniversary, we will offer a special referred research panel on the future of community. The top submissions relating to the theme will have the opportunity to be considered for submission to the peer reviewed journal Community Journalism, COMJIG’S official publication.

Paper submissions should include a 100 to 150 word abstract and not exceed 8,000 words, including references, tables and notes. All papers should conform to APA style, Sixth Edition. Graduate students are encouraged to submit papers.

All research papers must be uploaded to the group via a link on the AEJMC website. Please see AEJMC’s Paper Competition Uniform Call for more information.

Additional questions should be directed to COMJIG Research Committee Chair Hans K. Meyer (meyerh@ohio.edu).

COMJIG honors its founder with "Roots Journalism Award"

COMJIG Founder, Jock Lauterer, right, receives the Roots Journalism Award from outgoing head of COMJIG, John Hatcher. 

In August of 2004, Jock Lauterer (now director of the Carolina Community Media Project), gathered a group of community journalism educators in a room at the AEJMC conference in Toronto, Canada, and announced that he and colleague Peggy Kuhr had convinced AEJMC leaders to approve the creation of an interest group dedicated to community journalism.

At AEJMC's annual conference this year, COMJIG's current officers wanted to find a way to recognize and thank Lauterer for launching this group and for his commitment to the study and practice of community journalism. We needed look no farther than the words of Lauterer himself when searching for a name for the award to honor him. This is what Lauterer wrote in the Forward to the 2012 book, "Foundations of Community Journalism," 

Lately I have begun to think of community journalism under a slightly different concept—that of “roots journalism.” Like roots music, roots journalism reflects the indigenous culture through storytelling.

When the great bassist Christian McBride was asked what guided his music, he replied that he tried to keep his repertoire “rooted in the groove.” It is that commitment to “rootedness” that has been community journalism’s credo from the start, and which has propelled community newspapers and many other community journalism efforts through “the Great Recession” and beyond.

The officers of the Community Journalism Interest Group hope this award is at least one small way of thanking Lauterer for his unending passion and support for all things community.  

Here it is: COMJIG'S Refereed Paper Research Session

COMJIG'S Refereed Paper Research Session has been assembled and is scheduled for Saturday, Aug. 10, from 5:15 p.m. - 6:45 p.m.

The session is titled: “Community Journalism in the Centennial Year of AEJMC: Connection and Engagement with Audiences.” Our presenters are: 

"A plain circle: Imagined Amish and Mennonite community in the national edition of The Budget," Michael Clay Carey, Ohio University.

"A rural drought in a national flood: Washington State residents' assessments of local news,"Doug Hindman and Michael Beam, Edward R. Murrow College of Communication, Washington State University.

"Community journalists and relationships with sources and local organizations," Richard Johnson, Arizona State University.

"Patch.com's online community journalism; Professionalism, localism, and the journalistic field," Burton St. John, Old Dominion University, Kirsten Johnson, Elizabethtown College, and Seungahn Nah, University of Kentucky.

"The new community influence: iHigh producers, their communities, and content decisions," Sarah Cavanah, University of Minnesota, and Julie Jones, University of Oklahoma.

Please come out to hear this fascinating discussion about community journalism in the 21^st Century.