Helping faculty build community and statehouse news partnerships

 There are a couple of interesting community journalism conferences this month https://www.uvm.edu/ccn/events

One focuses on university-sponsored news operations covering statehouses Sept. 28-30 at Missouri.

The other (Sept. 8 online) is aimed at improving the faculty resources page put out by the University of Vermont's Center for Community News. You can find the page here. 

 https://www.uvm.edu/ccn/faculty-resources

AEJMC 2022: Community Journalism Paper Call (Deadline April 1)

The Community Journalism Interest Group (ComJIG) invites scholarly submissions from faculty and graduate students for its competitive paper and poster sessions to be presented at the 2022 AEJMC national conference in Detroit, Michigan, USA.

In addition to the Top Faculty ($100 and plaque) and Top Graduate Student ($150 and plaque) paper awards, ComJIG has a special call and $150/plaque prize for the top graduate student paper with a niche focus on social justice in context of community journalism. All papers should apply or advance theory and/or professional practice in community/local journalism and can use a variety of methods and approaches. All papers up for the graduate student awards cannot be co-authored by a faculty member – indicate in your submission if you want to be considered for it. The deadline for paper submissions is April 1, 2022.

The Scope: Community journalism is in the midst of a paradigm shift in both research and practice. New technologies, an increase in the digital divide, the ongoing shift from print to digital, the encroachment of a global community on local reporting, and the increasing distrust of mainstream news outlets and its effects on audience perceptions of hyperlocal news, to name a few, represent a moving target for community reporting.

The concept of community has also expanded to include well more than just a group defined by characteristics of physical proximity. In the digital age, communities also are defined by the strength of social relationships among individuals based largely on the interests, beliefs, and ideologies that bring them together, irrespective of their geographic location. ComJIG encourages submissions that address these issues as well as this diversity within and about communities in whatever forms they take. It also encourages submissions on the role(s) journalism plays in reporting as well as informing these communities. In addition, it encourages submissions that provide action-oriented insight into effects, trends, and issues facing community journalism outlets that would be of use to industry practitioners. We also encourage research that looks at community journalism (or even community itself) within a broad ideology.

Research topics may include, but are not restricted to:

· Social justice at the community level – coverage, influence, responsibility, etc.

· 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 digital technologies

· 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 or in relation to the digital divide

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

· Conceptual ideas that push our understanding of community in new directions

· Conceptual ideas that explore the meaning and interpretation of “local news” in a global era

The Awards: ComJIG awards top papers in the faculty and grad 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. In addition, and new this year, an award will be given to the top graduate student paper focused on this year’s niche call – social justice and community reporting.

The 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 Aaron Atkins, assistant professor of communication, digital media, and journalism at Weber State University, datkins@weber.edu

Akron's Devil Strip local news co-op shuts down unexpectedly

It's unclear how a news co-op could shut down suddenly and unilaterally.

But the sudden demise of Akron's Devil Strip may be an important learning moment as the push to find new community news business models continues.

https://www.niemanlab.org/2021/10/lauded-local-news-co-op-shuts-down-without-warning-leaving-its-co-owners-in-the-dark/

Call for Contributors: Issues Facing Contemporary American Journalism: History, Context, and Perspectives

There is currently a call for book chapters and essays for the upcoming book Issues Facing Contemporary American Journalism: History, Context, and Perspectives, in development with Routledge in the Journalism Insights series with an anticipated publication in 2023. 

From primary author and editor Dr. Hans Schmidt, here's the call information: 

Call for Book Chapters and Essays: Issues Facing Contemporary American Journalism: History, Context, and Perspectives

 

Proposal Submission Deadline: December 1, 2021 (early submissions appreciated)

Chapters Due: May 1, 2022

 

I am inviting chapter and essay proposals for the book Issues Facing Contemporary American Journalism: History, Context, and Perspectives being developed for publication by Routledge in the Journalism Insights book series (early 2023 publication anticipated).

 

Contributions could take two forms.

 

Chapter Submissions: Chapter submissions would address a historical background of the chapter topic, as well as historical and contemporary issues, challenge, and context related to this topic. Completed chapters should be 3500-4500 words in length.

 

Essay Submissions: Essay submissions would address tangential perspectives, first-person experiences, or topics related to each primary chapter. Completed essays should be 1200-2000 words in length.

 

Chapters topics include, but are not limited to, the following.

 

■ A Free Press: A Confusing History and Uncertain Future (U.S. focus)

■ A Free Press: A Confusing History and Uncertain Future (International focus)

■ Journalistic Objectivity: A Gold Standard or Myth?

■ The Challenge of War and Conflict Reporting

■ Reporting on Terrorism and the War on Terror

■ The Challenges of Pandemic Reporting in an Era of Hyperpartisanship

■ Environmental Reporting and the Problem of Mis(Dis)information

■ The Return of Fake News

■ Local News in Crisis

■ Can Journalism Survive Social Media?

■ Enduring Inequities in Journalism: Gender in Sports and News

■ Covering Activist Athletes

■ Reporting on Social Justice Movements

■ Reporting on Crime and Criminal Justice: Challenges and Biases

■ Citizen Journalism: A New Approach?

■ Moving Forward: Directions for a Sustainable Model for Journalism

 

Chapter/essay proposals should include:

(1) Author credentials

(2) Identify if proposal is for a chapter (3500-4500 words) or supplementary essay (1200-2000 words)

(3) Topic (Please select a topic from the list above, or propose another topic.)

(4) A 200-300 word (approximately) description of what you plan to develop in either the chapter or essay.

 

For more information, or to submit a chapter or essay proposal, please email the primary author and editor, Dr. Hans Schmidt (hcs10@psu.edu). The deadline for chapter and essay proposals is December 1, 2021. Early proposals are appreciated and will be reviewed as soon as they are received. The deadline for chapter and essay submissions is May 1, 2022.

When a newspaper chain lets a community's small daily newspaper deteriorate

From The Rural Blog

All across America, small newspapers are shriveling, mainly because digital media have taken much of their advertising base. Quantifying that on a national scale would be very difficult; the U.S. has more than 6,000 newspapers, most of them small. But a story about one, The Hawk Eye of Burlington, Iowa, is emblematic of the problem, which is worst for small daily papers bearing a burden of debt incurred by hedge-fund buyers like GateHouse Media, which took over Gannett Co. and its name.

Elaine Godfrey, who grew up near the Mississippi River town of 24,000, writes for The Atlantic about The Hawk Eye under the new Gannett: "Its staff, now down to three overstretched news reporters, still produces a print edition six days a week. But the paper is dying. Its pages are smaller than they used to be, and there are fewer of them. Even so, wide margins and large fonts are used to fill space. The paper is laid out by a remote design team and printed 100 miles away in Peoria, Illinois; if a reader doesn’t get her paper in the morning, she is instructed to dial a number that will connect her to a call center in the Philippines. Obituaries used to be free; now, when your uncle dies, you have to pay to publish a write-up. These days, most of The Hawk Eye’s articles are ripped from other Gannett-owned Iowa publications, such as The Des Moines Register and the Ames Tribune, written for a readership three hours away. The opinion section, once an arena for local columnists and letter writers to spar over the merits and morals of riverboat gambling and railroad jobs moving to Topeka, is dominated by syndicated national columnists."

Using the recently created Burlington Breaking News Facebook page to solicit comments, Godfrey got dozens: "Readers noticed the paper’s sloppiness first—how there seemed to be twice as many typos as before, and how sometimes the articles would end mid-sentence instead of continuing after the jump. The newspaper’s remaining reporters are overworked; there are local stories they’d like to tell but don’t have the bandwidth to cover. The Hawk Eye’s current staff is facing the impossible task of keeping a historic newspaper alive while its owner is attempting to squeeze it dry."

Social-media sites that pop up when a newspaper withers "can be a useful resource, and a good source of community jokes and gossip. But speculation and rumor run rampant" on the Facebook page, Godfrey writes. "When a member hears something that sounds like gunshots nearby, she’ll post about it, and others will offer theories about the source. Once, I read a thread about an elementary-school principal suddenly skipping town. Some thought he might have behaved inappropriately with a student; one person said he’d been involved with a student’s mother; another swore they’d seen security-camera footage of the principal slashing tires in a parking lot at night. I checked The Hawk Eye and other outlets, but I couldn’t find verification of any of those stories."

The guessing is hard for Dale Alison, former Hawk Eye editor, to watch. "He often interjects in the comments to correct false information. Sometimes he posts news himself. . . .  People want to know what’s going on, Alison told me; they just don’t know how to find the answer, whom to call, where to look. That’s what reporters are for."

Godfrey touches on another national trend seen all over the country: "In the absence of local coverage, all news becomes national news: Instead of reading about local policy decisions, people read about the blacklisting of Dr. Seuss books. Instead of learning about their own local candidates, they consume angry takes about Marjorie Taylor Greene," the radical Republican congresswoman from Georgia.

And she senses an even more disturbing trend, relayed by Mayor Jon Billups, who was fired as The Hawk Eye's circulation director in 2017: "Since the purchase of the paper, he’s noticed a growing negative self-image among residents, he told me. Fewer people see Burlington as a nice place to live; they seem to like their neighbors less. 'We’re struggling with not having [this] iconic thing.' As mayor, he helped start a newsletter to keep residents updated on city projects. 'It’s a matter of time before our local paper does not exist.'"

Like many towns with shriveled papers, Burlington has an online news site, the Burlington Beacon, founded by Jeff Abell, soon joined by William Smith, both former Hawk Eye reporters. "The Beacon is far from profitable. Until recently, Abell paid Smith from his own pocket. The two work out of Abell’s comic-book store in downtown Burlington," Godfrey reports. “Jeff and Will are doing their best,” Alison told her in an interview at the newspaper's building, now for sale. “But doggone it, it would take 150 years to build up what they had here.”

Godfrey reflects, "When people lament the decline of small newspapers, they tend to emphasize the most important stories that will go uncovered: political corruption, school-board scandals, zoning-board hearings, police misconduct. They are right to worry about that. But often overlooked are the more quotidian stories, the ones that disappear first when a paper loses resources: stories about the annual Teddy Bear Picnic at Crapo Park, the town-hall meeting about the new swimming-pool design, and the tractor games during the Denmark Heritage Days. These stories are the connective tissue of a community; they introduce people to their neighbors, and they encourage readers to listen to and empathize with one another. When that tissue disintegrates, something vital rots away. We don’t often stop to ponder the way that a newspaper’s collapse makes people feel: less connected, more alone. As local news crumbles, so does our tether to one another."

New Tow Center report paints detailed, sometimes troubling, picture of community journalism

Tow Center report based on 2020 survey and compared with similar in 2016. Newspaper centered.

[D]espite seeing potential for the industry, 61 percent of respondents in 2020 hold a “slightly negative” or “very negative” opinion about the prospects for the future of small-market newspapers. Four years ago, the situation (to our surprise) was reversed, with 61 percent of 2016’s sample being “very positive” or “slightly positive” about the future of their industry.

https://www.cjr.org/tow_center_reports/life-at-local-newspapers-in-a-turbulent-era-findings-from-a-survey-of-more-than-300-newsroom-employees-in-the-united-states.php

Al Smith, who co-founded Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues after weekly-newspaper publishing career, dies at 94

Albert P. Smith Jr.

Al Smith, who published weekly newspapers in Kentucky and Tennessee and co-founded the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky, died Friday, March 19 at home in Sarasota, Florida. He was 94.

From 1974 to 2007, Smith was the host and producer of Kentucky Educational Television’s “Comment on Kentucky,” the longest running public-affairs show on a PBS affiliate, taking leave in 1980-82 to serve as federal co-chair of the Appalachian Regional Commission for Presidents Carter and Reagan.

After selling his newspapers in 1985, Smith broadened his civic work. He and his friend Rudy Abramson, who died in 2008, thought up the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues in the late 1990s, and he persuaded his onetime New Orleans intern, Hodding Carter III, to take it past the study stage with a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which Carter headed. He was chair emeritus of the institute’s Advisory Board. He was a charter member of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame and a fellow of the national Society of Professional Journalists and former president of the Kentucky Press Association, a role in which he helped pass the state's main open-government laws.

Smith’s greatest legacy was the many people he helped along the way. He mentored younger journalists and others who crossed his path. He was a kind, generous man and a wonderful (if long-winded) storyteller, with a Shakespearean grasp of political foible and triumph. His curiosity was more than a journalist’s quest for a story; it was a wider curiosity that reflected his love for humanity and its condition. That quality brought him a wide circle of friends from all walks of life. That is reflected in this sidebar of remembrances and tributes on The Rural Blog, an Institute publication.

Two statewide awards are named for him. One is given by the rural-journalism institute and the Bluegrass SPJ Chapter for public service through community journalism (he was its first recipient); the other is a $7,500 award from the Kentucky Arts Commission, which he once chaired, to a Kentucky artist who has achieved a high level of excellence and creativity.

Survivors include his beloved wife of almost 54 years, Martha Helen Smith; his children, Catherine McCarty (William) of Birmingham, Ala.; Lewis Carter Hancock of Louisville and Virginia Major (William) of West Hartford, Conn.; an “adopted” son, Huaming Gu of Shanghai, China; and his sister, Robin Burrow, of Abilene, Texas. He is also survived by five grandchildren, Evan and Connor (Ikue) McCarty, Lauren Hancock, and Susannah and Ava Major; and numerous cousins.

A memorial service will be held at a later date. The family suggests instead that memorial contributions may be made in Al’s honor to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, 343 S. Martin Luther King Blvd., #206 BLD, Lexington KY 40506-0012, and to The Hope Center.

Tim Crews, late California editor-publisher, wins Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, integrity and tenacity in rural journalism

Tim Crews of the Sacramento Valley Mirror held up a toothbrush outside a county jail after serving five days in 2000 for refusing to give up an anonymous source. (Photo by Rich Pedroncelli, The Associated Press)

Tim Crews, a rural editor-publisher who fought for open government in California and went to jail to protect his sources, is the winner of the 2020 Tom and Pat Gish Award from the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues (publisher of The Rural Blog). The award recognizes rural journalists who demonstrate outstanding courage, integrity and tenacity in rural journalism.

Crews died at 77 on Nov. 12 after a long illness and nearly 30 years as publisher and editor of the twice-weekly Sacramento Valley Mirror in Willows, a town of 6,000 and the seat of Glenn County, pop. 28,000. He was known for relentless open-records requests and for spending five days in jail in 2000 for refusing to reveal sources for a story he published about theft of weapons by a former California Highway Patrol officer.

Crews told the Poynter Institute in 2017 that his twice-weekly paper averaged more than 20 records requests a year, sometimes going to court fight for access. In 2013, a judge said his suit to force a school district to turn over 3,000 withheld emails from the superintendent was frivolous, and ordered him to pay $56,595 in attorneys' fees and costs when his income was 20,000 a year. An appeals court reversed the ruling, and that helped Crews earn the California News Publishers Association Freedom of Information Award. He also received the California Press Foundation’s Newspaper Executive of the Year Award in 2009.

As Crews fought battles for open government, he was known as "an old-time community journalist who stood up for regular people and published obituaries for free," The Associated Press reported after his death. "He dashed about the town of Willows, population 6,000, in red suspenders and with a bushy white beard, covering crime and politics but also community events."

"Tim Crews exemplified the best in rural journalism: broad community service that includes holding local officials and institutions accountable," said Al Cross, director of the institute and extension professor of journalism at the University of Kentucky. "We wish Tim had received the Gish Award while he was still with us, but we are still pleased to recognize his service."

Tom and Pat Gish at award announcement

The award is named for Tom and Pat Gish, who published The Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg, Ky., for more than 50 years and repeatedly demonstrated courage, tenacity and integrity through advertiser boycotts, business competition, declining population, personal attacks, and even the burning of their office by a local policeman who state police believe was paid by coal companies.

The Gishes, who died in 2008 and 2014, respectively, were the first winners of the award, in 2005. The other winners, in chronological order, have been the Ezzell family of The Canadian (Texas) Record; Stanley Dearman (former publisher, now deceased) and Jim Prince (publisher), The Neshoba Democrat, Philadelphia, Miss.; Samantha Swindler of Portland, Oregon, for her work at the Jacksonville (Texas) Daily Progress and the daily Times-Tribune of Corbin, Ky.; Stanley Nelson and the Concordia Sentinel of Ferriday, La.; Jonathan and Susan Austin, publishers of the now-defunct Yancey County News in Burnsville, N.C.; the late Landon Wills of the McLean County News in Calhoun, Ky.; the Trapp family of the Rio Grande Sun in Española, N.M.; Ivan Foley of the Platte County Landmark in Platte City, Mo.; the Cullen family of the Storm Lake (Iowa) Times; Les Zaitz of the Malheur Enterprise in Vale, Oregon; and last year, Ken Ward Jr., then of the Charleston Gazette-Mail and now of Mountain State Spotlight; his mentor, the late Paul J. Nyden of the Charleston Gazette; and Howard Berkes, recently retired from NPR.

Presentation of this year's award has been delayed by the pandemic and will be announced later.

Community Newspaper Holdings closes weeklies in northeastern Kentucky; will send subscribers daily once a week; university town 55 miles away has no newspaper

By Al Cross, director and professor
Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, University of Kentucky

One of the largest chains of community newspapers, Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., has undertaken an unusual consolidation of its northeastern Kentucky weeklies into a daily.

"Welcome to a change," read the April 29 headline in The Morehead News, over a message from Group Publisher Patty Bennett, informing readers that the paper "will merge with our sister newspaper, The Daily Independent in Ashland," because of lack of advertising during the pandemic. "The Daily Independent will undertake coverage of Morehead." In other words, Morehead, a university town of 7,000 in a county of 25,000, no longer has a local newspaper.

A similar message appeared in the Grayson Journal-Enquirer and the Olive Hill Times, essentially the same paper with slightly different content, in Carter County, between Morehead and Ashland. CHNI also killed off the Greenup County News-Times, a weekly in another county adjoining Ashland and Boyd County; it's in the metropolitan area of Ashland and Huntington, W.Va.; Carter County is not, though it is oriented to Ashland. Rowan County is neither; Morehead is 55 miles from Ashland, and 65 miles from downtown Lexington.

Many dailies have swallowed up sister weeklies, but it's unusual if not unprecedented for such a consolidation over such a distance. It dismayed people in Morehead, home to Morehead State University and some recent economic developments, including a huge complex of greenhouses intended to provide vegetables to the Eastern U.S.

"This county has been booming," said Keith Kappes, a former MSU spokesman who was publisher of the News for six years. He said a local economic developer told him, "I can't say to a prospect, we've got everything you want in a small town, except a newspaper."

"There's kind of a shock effect," Kappes told The Rural Blog. "How are we gonna follow our schools, our athletics? How are we gonna be informed about what's going on in the community, how are we gonna know the good things and the needs?... If you don't have a newspaper in your community, how backward are you?"

Kappes said that when he became the paper's publisher in 2010, it was making nearly $500,000 a year, a figure that gradually declined to $180,000 by the time he left three years ago. "Even at this low ebb, The Morehead News was still profitable," he said. "I know that from the people who work there." He said the other papers were not. Bennett said she couldn't comment, but said she would pass along the request to company headquarters in Montgomery, Ala. CNHI is owned by the Retirement Systems of Alabama.

Bennett told subscribers that they would receive each Wednesday's Independent "and a special offer to subscribe. They will also be able to sample local, regional and state news about the covid-19 pandemic and other news and sports on The Daily Independent’s website, dailyindependent.com. We hope this experience will result in your subscribing to the merged newspaper and its robust website." She said subscribers who wanted refunds could ask for them by email, and invited readers to ask her questions "about our restructuring plan."

Kappes said he is talking to people in Morehead who want the town to have its own newspaper. "Its a source of pride," he said. "I think we're gonna end up with a 24/7 online newspaper that may publish once a week" in order to qualify for public-notice advertising, he said. Under Kentucky law, the newspaper with the largest bona fide circulation in a county gets the "legal ads," but if a county does not have a paper, only those in adjoining counties qualify, so the Daily Independent does not. The Kentucky Press Association explains the details and reports on newspaper frequency changes.

Clay Carey's book noted in Nicholas Lemann's 'Can Journalism Be Saved?' piece in NYR

The Feb. 27 issue of the New York Review of Books has a feature article by Nicholas Lemann, "Can Journalism be Saved?", that cites 14 books, including The News Untold: Community Journalism and the Failure to Confront Poverty in Appalachia, by our esteemed colleague, Michael Clay Carey. Here's what the dean emeritus of the journalism faculty at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism had to say about Clay's work:

"Michael Clay Carey’s The News Untold, an ethnographic study of journalism in three small rural Appalachian communities, offers the hope that such papers could draw badly needed attention to poverty. His own careful research demonstrates how pathetically under-resourced these papers are. Carey interviews the owner of one of his small-town papers in the barbershop where he cuts hair three days a week, because the paper can’t support him full time; the paper’s editorial staff, consisting of one person who was hired through a temporary employment agency, is also part-time. Carey’s call for the papers to become less boosterish and more “inclusive” in their coverage is affecting, but with what resources would they undertake this? It would be possible to ask poor people to tell their own stories in such papers, but that wouldn’t be much different from starting a group conversation online. As [Michael] Schudson asks [in Why Journalism Still Matters], “What news items have the president or the Congress, governors or mayors, or corporate executives been forced by law or public opinion to respond to?” Outside of work produced by news organizations, “Little or none, I suspect.” In poor small towns, far more than in Washington, such reporting requires subsidy."

And there's no one to subsidize it. Not the audience, which is penurious, aging and migrating out. Not the advertisers, who have been savaged by big-box stores, Amazon and the internet, and are disappearing. Not the philanthropies, who have never really understood rural America and sure as heck don't understand rural journalism. If that sounds like a gripe from someone who has failed to raise much money from them, it is, but it's also an admission of failure to educate them. Now they and rural America will learn the hard way; in the last three years, I have seen the finances of rural weeklies begin to take the same sort of hits from ad losses that their metro cousins took a decade ago. More than ever, they must make themselves essential servants to their communities, and make sure those communities understand their value.

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

Interesting community media book

This is from a review in the new Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly:

Community-Based Media Pedagogies reports a comparative study of three community media projects across New York, Toronto, and Montreal, examining how community-based pedagogies are helping to explore the spaces that facilitate listening and storytelling in community spaces. This research-based examination tries to demystify and comprehend the ways and means of production of ideas and opinions in community spaces

Community-Based Media Pedagogies: Relational Practices of Listening in the Commons

Bronwen Low, Chloë Brushwood Rose & Paula M. Salvio, New York, New York: Routledge, 2017. 128 pp. $140.00 hbk. $38.36 pbk. $23.98 ebk.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1077699019867990

April 1 is deadline for nominations for Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, integrity and tenacity in rural journalism

Tom and Pat Gish

Nominations are due April 1 for the Tom and Pat Gish Award, which annually recognizes the courage, integrity and tenacity that is so often necessary to provide good journalism in rural areas. The award, named for the crusading couple who published The Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg, Ky., for more than 50 years, is given by the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, which publishes The Rural Blog.

Nominations should measure up, at least in major respects, to records of earlier winners, available at www.RuralJournalism.org. For example, the Gishes withstood advertiser boycotts, business competition, declining population, personal attacks, and even the burning of their office to give their readers the kind of journalism often lacking in rural areas, and were the first winners of the award named for them. The most recent winners, the Cullen family of Iowa's Storm Lake Times, overcame obstacles to persevere in covering and commenting on water-pollution issues in Iowa, often to the dislike of agribusiness interests that are sources of much of the pollution.

Other winners have been the Ezzell family of The Canadian (Tex.) Record, in 2007; James E. Prince III and the late Stanley Dearman, current and former publishers of The Neshoba Democrat of Philadelphia, Miss., in 2008; Samantha Swindler of The Oregonian in 2010 for her work as editor of the Corbin, Ky., Times-Tribune and managing editor of the Jacksonville (Tex.) Daily Progress; in 2011, Stanley Nelson and the Concordia Sentinel of Ferriday, La.; in 2012, Jonathan and Susan Austin of the Yancey County News in Burnsville, N.C.. in 2014, the late Landon Wills of Kentucky's McLean County News; in 2015, the Trapp family of the Rio Grande Sun in Española, N.M.; and in 2016, Ivan Foley of the Platte County Landmark in Missouri.

Nominators should send detailed letters to Institute Director Al Cross, explaining how their nominees show the kind of exemplary courage, tenacity and integrity that the Gishes demonstrated in their rigorous pursuit of rural journalism. Detailed documentation does not have to accompany the nomination, but is helpful in choosing finalists, and additional documentation may be requested or required. Questions may be directed to Cross at 859-257-3744 or al.cross@uky.edu.

'Athens journalism institution' wins University of Georgia's new award for distinguished community journalism, named for him

Rollin M. “Pete” McCommons, editor and publisher of Flagpole magazine in Athens, Ga., is the namesake and first recipient of an award for distinguished community journalism from the University of Georgia's Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. The school plans to present the award annually, thanks to an endowment funded by friends of McCommons.

The award will recognize "the best in community journalism, as represented by small- to medium-sized daily and weekly news organizations who provide exemplary service to their communities," the school said in announcing the award.

Charles Davis, dean of the college, said, “Pete McCommons is an Athens journalism institution, the man who gave the Athens Observer its verve [after co-founding it in 1974] and who created Flagpole as an important countercultural voice of progressivism in the city. His unflagging spirit, his devotion to Athens and to journalism make him the ideal namesake for this new award.”

McCommons has been publisher of Flagpole since 1994. He recently published his first book, Pub Notes, a collection of his Flagpole columns of the same name. In his latest, he thanked the college and those who endowed the award and said, "After almost 50 years making up community journalism as we go along, getting this award from the Grady College is like being certified. It is huge."

Iowa's Cullens receive Gish Award for courage, integrity and tenacity in rural journalism; nominations for 2018 award sought

Art Cullen, left, and brother John hold award, after receiving it from IRJCI's Al Cross.

The Cullen family of the Storm Lake Times received the 2017 Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, integrity and tenacity in rural journalism Friday at the Iowa Newspaper Association convention. The award, named for the crusading couple that published The Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg, Ky., for more than 50 years, recognizes the Cullen family's perseverance in covering and commenting on water-pollution issues in Iowa, often to the dislike of agribusiness interests that are sources of much of the pollution. For more on the Cullens, click here.

The Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, which gives the award and publishes The Rural Blog, is seeking nominations for the 2018 Gish Award, with a deadline of April 1. Nominations should measure up, at least in major respects, to the records of previous winners, which are detailed at www.RuralJournalism.org. For example, the Gishes withstood advertiser boycotts, business competition, declining population, personal attacks, and even the burning of their office to give their readers the kind of journalism often lacking in rural areas, and were the first winners of the award named for them.

Other winners have been the Ezzell family of The Canadian (Tex.) Record, in 2007; James E. Prince III and the late Stanley Dearman, current and former publishers of The Neshoba Democrat of Philadelphia, Miss., in 2008; Samantha Swindler of The Oregonian in 2010 for her work as editor of the Corbin, Ky., Times-Tribune and managing editor of the Jacksonville (Tex.) Daily Progress; in 2011, Stanley Nelson and the Concordia Sentinel of Ferriday, La.; in 2012, Jonathan and Susan Austin of the Yancey County News in Burnsville, N.C.. in 2014, the late Landon Wills of Kentucky's McLean County News; in 2015, the Trapp family of the Rio Grande Sun in Española, N.M.; and in 2016, Ivan Foley of the Platte County Landmark in Missouri.

Nominators should send detailed letters to Institute Director Al Cross, explaining how their nominees show the kind of exemplary courage, tenacity and integrity that the Gishes demonstrated in their rigorous pursuit of rural journalism. Detailed documentation does not have to accompany the nomination, but is helpful in choosing finalists, and additional documentation may be requested or required. Questions may be directed to Cross at 859-257-3744 or al.cross@uky.edu.

Alabama will continue community journalism program at Anniston

http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/news/20180105/ua-will-continue-journalism-program-at-anniston-star

Monday is deadline for nominations for major journalism ethics award; nominate a community journalist!

By Al Cross

Director, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues

Monday is the deadline to nominate journalists for the Anthony Shadid Award for Journalism Ethics, presented by The Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In the six years the award has been presented, none of the winners have been rural journalists. None may have been nominated, but I think there should be no shortage of qualified candidates because rural journalists frequently deal with ethical challenges. I teach my community journalism students that it is more difficult do do good journalism in rural areas, partly because of the constant conflict that rural journalists must deal with, between their professional responsibilities and their personal desires.

The Anthony Shadid Award recognizes ethical decisions in reporting stories in any journalistic medium, including print, broadcast and digital, by those working for established news organizations or publishing individually. It focuses on current journalism and does not include books, documentaries and other long-term projects. Entries must involve reporting for stories published or broadcast in 2017. Individuals or news organizations may nominate themselves or others.

Letters of nomination must include: Name and contact information of the nominators and their relationship to the story; names of the reporter or reporting team that produced the report; brief description of the story and a link to it online; description of conflicting values encountered in reporting the story; options considered to resolve the conflicts; and final decisions and rationales behind them. Nomination letters of three pages or less should be saved in pdf format and attached to an email sent to ethicsaward@journalism.wisc.edu. For more information, visit the website.

The award includes a $1,000 prize and travel expenses to accept the award and discuss the reporting at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., on April 5. It differs from most other journalism awards because it honors difficult decisions journalists make in pursuing high-impact stories while fulfilling their ethical obligations to their audience, their sources, and people caught up in news events. “The stories nominated are always phenomenal, but the committee makes the decision on the finalists and winners by considering how reporters and editors negotiated ethical dilemmas while reporting,” said Lucas Graves, chair of the judging committee.

The award is named for Anthony Shadid, a UW-Madison graduate who died in 2012 on a reporting assignment in Syria for The New York Times after winning two Pulitzer Prizes for foreign correspondence. He was a member of the ethics center’s advisory board and strongly supported its efforts to promote public interest journalism and to stimulate discussion about journalism ethics.

Cullen family of Iowa’s twice-weekly Storm Lake Times wins Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, tenacity and integrity in rural journalism

Times photo: John, Mary Tom, Dolores and Art Cullen.

A Northwest Iowa family that has demonstrated courage, tenacity and integrity in the face of competition and powerful, entrenched local interests is the winner of the 2017 Tom and Pat Gish Award from the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues.

The Cullen family publishes the Storm Lake Times, a twice-weekly newspaper that has focused attention on water-pollution issues in Iowa, often to the dislike of agribusiness interests that are sources of much of the pollution.

“We’ve lost some friends, we’ve lost subscriptions; for a while, lost some ads,” said Art Cullen, editor and co-owner of the paper started by his brother John more than 27 years ago. This year Art Cullen won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing, for a series of columns about pollution in the Raccoon River, which supplies water for Iowa’s capital and largest city, Des Moines. He and his son Tom also wrote many news stories about the issue.

Following their reporting, the Des Moines Water Works sued the drainage districts of Buena Vista, Calhoun and Sac counties for failing to stop the pollution. The Times forced the release of public records that showed major agribusiness interests were paying for the suit’s defense. Courts ruled the districts couldn’t be sued, but the suit and the Pulitzer Prize focused more attention on the issue. Art Cullen says “The terms of the debate are changing,” and the amount of farmland in cover crops that prevent pollution has doubled in the past year.

Cullen’s Pulitzer-winning columns had punch. He wrote in March 2016, "Anyone with eyes and a nose knows in his gut that Iowa has the dirtiest surface water in America. It is choking the waterworks and the Gulf of Mexico. It is causing oxygen deprivation in Northwest Iowa glacial lakes. It has caused us to spend millions upon millions trying to clean up Storm Lake, the victim of more than a century of explosive soil erosion."

The Pulitzer committee said the editorials were “fueled by tenacious reporting, impressive expertise and engaging writing that successfully challenged powerful corporate agricultural interests.” Much of that reporting was done by Tom Cullen. Art’s wife, Dolores, also reports and takes photographs for the paper, and John’s wife, Mary, writes a recipe column. The family dog, Mabel, is there, too.

The Times began reporting and editorializing about pollution from farms about a year after it was established in June 1990, first looking at concentrated hog-farming operations. It has brought to light other environmental concerns, such as the need to dredge Storm Lake, and issues surrounding the livestock-processing plants that have brought many immigrants to Buena Vista County, in the heart of socially and politically conservative northwest Iowa.

In one of his most recent Editorial Notebooks, Art Cullen wrote, “Many of my ignorant friends conflate people of color with their having lost control of their own destiny; they don’t realize they never had control of it. It’s harder to hate the Chicago Board of Trade than it is a Mexican who doesn’t like American football or can’t speak English. They voted for Barack Obama to take on the Board of Trade and Wall Street. He didn’t,” so they voted for Donald Trump.

“That column is a sterling example of a rural editor speaking hard truths to power and to the people he serves,” said Al Cross, director of the Institute, based at the University of Kentucky. “The Storm Lake Times has long been known to those of us who follow rural journalism as a great example to emulate, and Art Cullen’s Pulitzer Prize merely confirmed that. We hope this award to the Cullen family will show that they have had high ideals and standards for a very long time.”

Cross noted that the paper is a commercial success, with a circulation of 3,000, more than the 1,700 reported by the thrice-weekly Storm Lake Pilot-Tribune, owned by Rust Communications of Cape Girardeau, Mo. “Unlike most weeklies, the Times gets most of its revenue from circulation, with a relatively high $60 annual subscription price,” Cross said. “That is testimony of community support for quality journalism, providing another example to follow.”

The Tom and Pat Gish Award is named for the late couple who published The Mountain Eagle at Whitesburg, Ky., for more than 50 years and became nationally known for their battles with coal operators and politicians, and the firebombing of their office by a Whitesburg policeman. Their son, Eagle Editor-Publisher Ben Gish, is on the award selection committee.

“It is encouraging to know that small, family-owned-and-operated community newspapers like the Storm Lake Times and Editor Art Cullen are still here and doing their jobs in very difficult circumstances with the same courage and tenacity exhibited by my parents,” Ben Gish said.

Past winners of the award have been the Gishes; the Ezzell family of The Canadian (Texas) Record; publisher Jim Prince and former publisher Stan Dearman of The Neshoba Democrat in Philadelphia, Miss.; Samantha Swindler, columnist for The Oregonian, for her work in rural Kentucky and Texas; Stanley Nelson and the Concordia Sentinel of Ferriday, La.; Jonathan and Susan Austin for their newspaper work in Yancey County, N.C.; the late Landon Wills of the McLean County News in western Kentucky; the Trapp family of the Rio Grande Sun in Española, N.M.; and Ivan Foley of the Platte County Landmark in Platte City, Mo.

Cross will present the 2017 Gish Award to the Cullen family at the annual convention of the Iowa Newspaper Association in Des Moines on Feb. 2. Nominations for the 2018 Gish Award are being accepted at 122 Grehan Journalism Building, University of Kentucky, Lexington KY 40506-0042 or via email to al.cross@uky.edu.

Family-owned firm, started 3 years ago, is already 6th largest owner of U.S. papers

From The Rural Blog

Adams Publishing Group, a newspaper firm that is barely three years old, has bought more than 100 small dailies, weeklies and shoppers in at least 15 separate transactions," Poynter Institute media-business analyst Rick Edmonds writes for the Iowa Newspaper Association's INA Bulletin. That makes it the nation's sixth-largest owner of newspapers, according to a March 2017 report by Visiting Professor Carol Wolf for the University of North Carolina's Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media. About half its papers are in Minnesota, where it is based.

Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media map; click on it to enlarge

"In contrast to other big consolidators, they often leave existing management in place, do not impose cookie-cutter content templates, and do not start by stripping down newsrooms of editors and reporters," Edmonds reports.

One example is its purchase of Jones Media, a Greeneville, Tenn.-based chain that was in its fourth generation of family ownership until patriarch John Jones died in 2016 and his descendants forced a sale over the objection of CEO Gregg Jones. He "chose to stay and has nothing but good things to say about the company," Edmonds reports, quoting him: "I'm working harder and enjoying myself more than I ever have. . . . These are the kind of people we want buying newspapers."

CEO Mark Adams rarely speaks
publicly about the firm he runs.

Edmonds couldn't elicit comment from the company, and called it "secretive." The firm is part of a diversified portfolio owned by "billionaire investor Stephen Adams and his family," who "have flown largely under the radar, unknown to those outside the industry," the UNC report says. "The company looks to buy non-metro publications where the newspapers or groups have revenue of about $10 million, said Larry Grimes, of W.B. Grimes & Co., a Gaithersburg, Md.-based mergers-and-acquisitions advisory firm specializing in media properties. Adams Publishing looks for large niche markets and buys within a geographic region. So far, the company has focused primarily on purchasing papers in the Midwest, but it owns publications as far east as the Jersey shore."

Intern and weekly editor show how to deal with, and engage with, critics

Josh Qualls was having difficulty finding a source to help him explain how the House health-insurance bill might affect seniors on Medicaid in Lincoln County, Kentucky, where he just completed a summer internship with The Interior Journal in Stanford. So he went to the Boone Newspapers weekly's Facebook page.

"The very first response echoed some of the most disheartening, gut-wrenching rhetoric we’ve seen directed toward journalists in recent months. Its author offered a scathing indictment of the news media and accused us of being liberally biased," Qualls wrote in his intern report to the Kentucky Press Association, relying on memory because the poster had deleted the post. "She talked about how much 'Obamacare' didn’t help her health-hindered family, so I saw a way to connect with her."

Josh Qualls

Qualls wrote, “We appreciate your feedback … and we’re sorry to learn about your health problems and your family’s health-care situation. Our hearts go out to you.” He said no one at the newspaper "was happy with the Affordable Care Act allowing premiums to increase at an alarming rate," but said journalists must "seek the truth and report it," as the Society of Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics says.

“The truth, based on what we know about the American Health Care Act so far, is that these proposals may have long-term effects that are even more damaging than Obamacare,” Qualls posted. “The Congressional Budget Office reported last Wednesday that while premiums would likely decrease for younger Americans, older Americans would likely see a substantial increase and lose many of their benefits.”

Then he wrote this, which KPA highlighted in its report to members: “In this newsroom, we all have different political beliefs but respect each other. What we all have in common is that we’re biased against the things that harm the community we serve, and by community we mean people like you.” Those are lines to remember.

"The author quickly wrote back," Qualls reported to KPA. "She said that she never really thought about it that way and would consider what we wrote, that she appreciated our effort to connect with her and to explain what we were trying to accomplish." He and Editor Abigail Whitehouse, who had approved his message, "were ecstatic," yelling "We got through to someone!"

Though the reader soon deleted her post and the comments, Qualls said the episode showed the value of engaging with readers through social media: "People may think now that they have carte blanche to denigrate journalists, but Abigail taught me that we don’t have to cower in fear of what they might say or do — we must respectfully stand our ground. It simply comes down to this: People hate what they don’t understand, and some people unfortunately don’t understand journalists."

Qualls is a May graduate of the University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Media.