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Professor Gary Schwitzer hosted the following guests in his Jour 8191 class, Proseminar in Health Journalism: Former U.S. Senator David Durenberger; Fortune magazine editor Clifton Leaf; Merrill Goozner, author of the book The $800 Million Pill: The Truth behind the Cost of New Drugs and project director at the Center for Science and Public Integrity; Amy Johnson of the regional FDA office; Allison Sandve of Children’s Hospital; Jodi Ritacca of HealthEast; and Lillian McDonald of the St. Paul-Ramsey Public Health Department. The class also met at the offices of the Star Tribune, hosted by Dave Shaffer, Maura Lerner, Glenn Howatt and Brenda Rotherham.
In his Jour 3451 class, Electronic News Writing & Reporting, Schwitzer had guest appearances by WCCO anchor Don Shelby, KMSP photojournalist Matt Knisely, and producer Nate Witkins of KTTC-TV, Rochester. The class also met at WCCO with news director Jeff Kiernan and sat in on a newscast in the studio and control room.
Jennifer Blair, reporter for KFAI community radio, spoke to Professor Brian Southwell's Introduction to Mass Communication class, Jour 1001, about local opportunities to contribute to public radio programming.
The Institute for New Media Studies hosted a weeklong program for thirteen reporters from South Korea from Nov. 5-11. Attendees are all part of a professional seminar on online journalism at Kongkuk University in Seoul. As part of the conference, the reporters visited several studios and newsrooms and attended lectures presented by several University experts, including INMS director Nora Paul, Rhetoric professor John Logie, and SJMC professors Don Brazeal and Jisu Huh. They also joined the World Press Institute’s fellows for a morning session featuring talks by SJMC professors Kathleen Hansen and Jane Kirtley.
INMS hosted an Emerging Digerati session on December 6. The session featured Lee Anderson, Associate Professor of Architecture at the U of M, Tony Beyer, a senior in the department of geography at the U, and Daniel Kasperek, a senior at the U double-majoring in Studio Arts and Japanese Language.
INMS also hosted a GRAVEL Grant Program Presentation on November 16 featuring a lecture by Brenda Laurel, a long-time advocate for games with appeal to girls. Each GRAVEL grant recipient then presented their findings and ideas about how to take their research to the next level. The next round of GRAVEL grants will be given out in January for completion by Fall 2005. These seed grants are intended to help faculty and/or graduate students develop games research ideas into larger research grant projects or academic papers. More information on the grant program, co-funded by the Institute for New Media Studies and the Digital Technology Center, is at http://www.inms.umn.edu/gravel/grants.htm.
On Minnesota Public Radio’s "Midday" program on September 30, Gary Gilson of the Minnesota News Council mentioned Professor Gary Schwitzer’s research collaboration with KMSP-TV to improve coverage of health policy news as “a model” to be emulated. That same day, Schwitzer was interviewed on KMSP-TV and on WFTC-TV about impact on consumers of Merck’s withdrawal of Vioxx from the market. On November 8, Schwitzer was quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle, in an article on the role celebrities play in framing national conversations about health, illness and medical research. Schwitzer was also interviewed by Neal Justin of the Star Tribune in his December 2 article, "Tom Brokaw: Goodnight America.”
Professor Jane Kirtley was a guest on "Midmorning" on Minnesota Public Radio on November 4. The topic was "Media and the election." Kirtley was also quoted in the November 14 story, "Why was Peterson case such a big story in U.S.?" in the Harrisburg (PA) Patriot-News, and in the Chicago Tribune’s December 8 article on the attempt of the federal investigators looking into the naming of a CIA undercover agent to get information out of reporters.
Professor John Eighmey was quoted in the Minnesota Daily on November 15 in the story “Coke invests millions at U.”
Professor Jane Kirtley was a panelist on "Newsgathering, Right of Privacy and Related Torts," at the Practising [sic] Law Institute's Communications Law 2004 conference in New York City on Nov. 18. Kirtley also presented a paper, "Plus Ca Change, Plus C'est La Meme Chose: A Reflection on the Reporter's Privilege in the United States, 1995-2004" as part of the “International Developments” panel at the Canadian National Media Law Conference in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on Nov. 20.
Professor Gary Schwitzer’s article, “‘Doc, I saw this on the news last night…..’: A study on health care news reporting,” appeared in the October issue of Minnesota Physician. Schwitzer’s article, "Ten troublesome trends in TV health news," was published in the British Medical Journal on December 4. It is available online at: http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/329/7478/1352
Bastiaan Vanacker, SJMC Ph.D. candidate, had a paper proposal accepted for a May 2005 colloquium in applied media ethics at the University of Oregon. The colloquium centers on “ethics of care.” Vanacker is co-authoring the paper, tentatively entitled “Kantean approach to ethics of care in the coverage of victims,” with SJMC alum John Breslin.
INMS director Nora Paul gave the keynote speech for the Minnesota Association of Government Communicators conference on Nov. 5. Paul’s talk, entitled “Digital Governance: New Ways to Communicate with Your Constituents,” focused on the ways media changes are effecting citizen behavior and expectations about information access. Paul also hosted a “New Media Dons” gathering at the Online News Association’s annual conference, bringing together journalism educators interested in discussing the issues of online news education.
Save the date: On February 3, 2005, the Minnesota Journalism Center will host a full-day workshop on strategies for utilizing audience-generated content in mainstream publications. The workshop will be led by Jody Abramson, a documentary film producer, and Daniel Meadows, who directs Cardiff University’s Digital Storytelling project. Abramson and Meadows ran the "Capture Wales" digital storytelling project that generated community-created content which eventually ran on BBC Wales. A complete agenda and registration information are forthcoming.
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The next Murphy Monthly will be published in February, 2005. The deadline for submitting items for the February issue is Monday, February 7, 2005.
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December 14, 2004