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Grad Studies Newsletter
NOVEMBER 2006
From the Desk of … Boot Camp Bounty
As regular readers know, most of By Jeremy Littau
the time this column is written by
Dean Thorson. However, she is occu-
pied with other events this month as Different classes here in the owners, riding along on garbage
is the Interim Director of Graduate School of Journalism will teach it trucks, or interviewing apartment
Studies Glenn Leshner. That means different ways, but the core principle managers as they went about their
you're stuck with me. remains the same even when the workday, the students got a chance
words change: good community jour- to see the community in an everyday
First, I want to thank each and nalism starts by going out into the sort of way. The goal was to portray
every one of you for your support of community. a day in the life of Columbia as it
this Newsletter. I am amazed each reassumes its identity as a college
month at just how much information A project done as part of the re- town.
flows in and all the good things you cent J-0900 boot camp helped illus-
folks are doing. trate the possibilities of this principle. The result was the Missourian
The class, intended as a primer for package, which had several short
As you'll read in the first article, new master's students, took nearly stories as well as accompanying
students in this August's basic news- 40 reporters and put them on a scav- photos in many cases. Every 0900
writing/reporting "boot camp" class enger hunt that to date has led to student had a credit line somewhere
have done an extraordinary job. This NewSunday cover stories. in the section, which shows the
year is not an exception. Boot camp scope of the work done by the class.
students pack a lot of information into The first was "Rhythm Of The While the editors helped hatch the
two weeks and come out with a great Season," a series of vignette articles original idea, the onus was on the
introduction to news reporting and that published on August 20. Another students in 0900 to help shape the
writing as well as learn a lot about was a recent NewSunday cover on idea and then execute it.
Columbia. the first wind farm coming to Mis-
souri. And it all started one Saturday "When we can do stuff that tells
We welcomed our first Missouri in August. someone like me, who has lived here
Distinguished Visiting Professor, Ha- for 30 years, something they didn't
zel Dicken-Garcia, in late October. Past 0900 classes have done know about their community, you're
November and December are shap- the scavenger hunt, which has re- doing it right," said Missourian editor
ing up to be busy months, as well. quired students to go out into the John Schneller, who along with Scott
The Missouri Medal winners will be community and learn about at least Swafford worked with the reporters.
here on November 1 with all the ac- one topic of interest. This time "The students learned about report-
companying fanfare. November 1 is around, students participated in a ing and their own community all at
(Continued on page 6) "day in the life" event that coordi- the same time."
nated the efforts of nearly 40 report-
ers and photographers all over town. The project didn't end with the
The project was timed to coincide first NewSunday publication. As a
Featured Inside with a weekend when Columbia be- result of boot camp work and discus-
gins to emerge from the slow pace of sions, Katie Barnes and Alex Lowe
Dr. Annie Lang visit 2 summer as students begin to return decided to pursue a story they'd
Teaching ESL 4 to town. found on new wind farm develop-
ments in northwestern Missouri. At
News Briefs 5 Students worked from sunrise to first the piece was developing as a
sunset all over town. From spending daily feature, but as the students
Hurley Symposium 6 time with businesses and business (Continued on page 2)
Master's Spotlight 9
November 2006 Page
Grad Studies Newsletter
Dr. Annie Lang visits Mizzou
Monday, October 9, was day of recog-
nition for both Dr. Annie Lang, Associate
Dean of Research for the College of Arts
and Sciences at Indiana University, as well
as the School of Journalism's PRIME lab
(Psychological Research on Information
and Media Effects). Lang gave a Brown
Bag lunch presentation to a packed room
on Motivated Cognition and Co-activation.
She explained MAM (Motivation Activation
Measure) as well as how positivity offset
and negativity bias relate to certain media
messages, specifically, anti-drug PSAs.
The day continued with a PRIME Lab
Research Panel discussion where Assis-
tant Professors Paul Bolls and Kevin Wise
and graduate students Sammy Miles and
Hyo Jung Kim presented the PRIME lab's
most recent studies. Recent experiments
include work on fear and disgust in relation
to anti-smoking PSAs, limited and exten-
sive choice of pictures and online news
stories and work done on adver-games. Back row from left to right: Brian Pellot, Sammy Miles, Paul Bolls, Kevin Wise,
Their summaries concluded with an open Glenn Leshner, Rachel Bailey. Front row left to right: Jeesun Kim, Rebecca Norris,
discussion among researchers, scientists, Annie Lang, Justin Myers, Hyo Jung Kim
faculty and students surrounding the re-
search posters that were displayed throughout Tucker because they learn of the latest research, but because it
Forum. Researchers relish days such as these not only can give inspiration to new research projects for students
Boot Camp
(Continued from page 1)
began to talk with editors about what they'd found, a friendly confines of Columbia to visit the wind farm site
NewSunday piece began to take shape. and talk with those who lived in the area. They then co-
wrote the piece together; all told, the process of doing the
Barnes said she did plenty of telephone interviewing story took four weeks.
as she began the process of delving deeper into the
story, a process necessary in the expanded NewSunday The story didn't have to be a NewSunday piece. It
format. She spoke with MU professors, the company was left up to the reporters to expand on the story and go
building the wind farms, and other people involved in the deeper than the material they'd already gathered.
process.
"The students deserve a lot of credit for this,"
"It was a great experience, and although it ended up Schneller said. "It was a situation where you have young,
being a story that transcended the traditional deadlines of hungry reporters and also that they got a story that both
"boot camp," it was well worth it," Barnes said. "As a stu- helps them succeed and also helps inform the commu-
dent in the photojournalism sequence, I gained some nity."
great reporting skills that I probably wouldn't have gotten
otherwise, and also made a great friend in the process." Several other stories that came out of the boot camp
experienced either have made it into the Missourian or
Lowe actually did something many boot campers remain a potential story for this term. And it all started by
don't get a chance to do, traveling well outside the getting out and talking to people.
November 2006 Page 2
Grad Studies Newsletter
Presentations Publications
Bob Britten presented as part of a panel at the Mid- Michael Grinfeld, "Psychiatric Meds and Kids: How
west Pop Culture Association conference in Indianapolis Many is Too Many?" Psychiatric Times, October, Vol.
on Oct. 27. XXIII, Issue 11.
Michael Fuhlhage, assistant professor, Missourian Len-Ríos, M. E., & Qiu, Q. (In press). Front page
news editor and master's student, gave a work-in- news: Does coverage of clinical trials research affect par-
progress presentation, titled "From the Margins to the ticipation rates in medical studies? Newspaper Research
Majority: Coverage of Latino Immigrants in a Kansas Journal. Winter 2007.
Meatpacking Town, 1980-2000" on Oct. 13 at the Ameri-
can Journalism Historians Association in Wichita. It's A manuscript that doctoral student Crystal Lump-
based on his thesis, which he plans to complete this se- kins co-authored with the CECCR (Center for Excellence
mester. in Cancer Communication) at the University of Wisconsin
- Madison titled “Effects of prayer and religious expres-
Maria Len-Rios moderated a panel on crisis commu- sion within computer support groups on women with
nications at the AMEC Missouri Rural Electric Coopera- breast cancer,” was accepted for publication in Psycho-
tive's Communications Conference on Oct. 17 at the Oncology. Authors include, Shaw, B., Han, J.Y., Kim, E.,
Lake of the Ozarks. The panel was organized by Jarrett Gustafson, D., Hawkins, R.P., Cleary, J., McTavish, F.,
Medlin, M.A. '05. Others on the panel were Mike Cleary, Pingree, S., Eliason, P., & Lumpkins, C. Y.
communications executive, Corporate Communications,
for Ameren Services, a subsidiary of St. Louis-based Keith Greenwood and Zoe Smith, "How the World
Ameren Corporation, Chad Moller, director of media rela- Looks to Us: International News in Award-Winning Photo-
tions for the University of Missouri-Columbia's athletic graphs from the Pictures of the Year, 1943-2003, Febru-
department, and Sue Holst, division information officer for ary 2007, Journalism Practice. After going through the
the Missouri Department of Natural Resources' Division peer review process, Editor Bob Franklin of Cardiff U in
of State Parks. The panel discussed the challenges and the UK asked Greenwood and Smith to be part of this
opportunities for organizations that find themselves in new journal.
crisis communication situations.
Chen, Qimei, and Shelly Rodgers, "Development of
Santosh Vijaykumar, MA '05, and Shelly Rodgers, an Instrument to Measure Web Site Personality," Journal
"Breast Cancer Information Quality on Commercial ver- of Interactive Advertising. (accepted for publication Fall
sus Nonprofit Websites," poster accepted for presenta- 2006)
tion at the MEDNET 2006 Conference, The Society for
Internet in Medicine, October 16-18, 2006, Toronto, On- Everett, Kevin D., Daniel R. Longo, Shelly Rodgers,
tario, Canada. Linda Bullock, Isabella Zaniletti, and John Hewett (2006),
"Community Support for Clean Indoor Air Policies in Mid-
Missouri," Missouri Medicine. (accepted for publication
December 2006)
Kudos Wise, K., Thorson, K., & Hamman, B. (In Press).
"Moderation, response rate, and message interactivity:
Dr. Shelly Rodgers was ranked as the #1 re- Features of online communities and their effects on intent
searcher in Internet Advertising and #4 researcher in to participate." To be published in Journal of Computer-
Internet Advertising, Marketing and Communication in an Mediated Communication.
article by Cho, Chang-Hoan, and HyoungKoo Khang
(2006), "The State of Internet-Related Research in Com-
munications, Marketing, and Advertising: 1994-2003,"
Journal of Advertising, 35 (3), 143-163.
Master's student Bea Wallace was recently informed
that her photographs were chosen for inclusion in the
upcoming "25 Under 25: Up-and-Coming American Pho-
tographers." There will be twenty-five photographers rep-
resented in the collection, to be published by Power-
House Books in spring 2008.
November 2006 Page 3
Grad Studies Newsletter
Teaching English to Speakers of
Other Languages
By Yuliya Melnyk
On October, 7 I attended the 27th annual convention (Kimberly Sorensen)? I had
of WATESOL - The Washington Area Teachers of Eng- been teaching EFL since 1992
lish to Speakers of Other Languages. It is a non-profit before my arrival at J-School,
professional association for ESL/EFL teachers and volun- but that was my first experi-
teers in Washington D.C., Delaware, Maryland, and Vir- ence. Really, mural art is
ginia. The conference was held at The Catholic University brought to America from so
of America. My visit was sponsored by IREX – Interna- many countries and can tell so
tional Research & Exchanges Board, a nonprofit organi- many stories.
zation committed to international education in academic
research, professional training and technical assistance. When I visited WATESOL con-
vention in 2000 there were
I would like to share my experience because many many presentations about using
journalists after visiting other countries one day start technology: web sites, e-mail
teaching English as a foreign language and, who knows, for English teaching, etc. It
perhaps, some of you also will one day. looks that teachers finally un-
derstood that technology is just a tool and it is not neces-
The conference was not concentrated only on teach- sary in every aspect of teaching. However, I listened to
ing grammar or vocabulary. I should say that it reflected an interesting presentation by Nina Liakos about using
much more the life of modern American society. I was weblogs in educational settings.
very impressed by the presentation about using literature
in multicultural education (Susan Olmstead-Wang). The Of course, the book exhibition was gorgeous! I finally
author told the audience how American students study saw some editions which were only in print when I heard
other cultures through the published life stories of immi- about them last year in Los Angeles (California TESOL
grants. A story about adopted children who are neither Conference). Some of them were presented by authors.
truly bilingual nor English native speakers touched every- The book always look differently when the author tells
body (Diane Robinette). Have you ever heard that mural about it.
art can be used in teaching language and culture
Hams on parade
The largest crowds of the season saw the Maple-
wood Barn Theatre's presentation of "Macbeth" in
September. Master's student Claire Hunt played Lady
Macduff and Prof. Lee Wilkins was The First Witch.
Professor Emeritus Byron Scott directed the produc-
tion, which marked the 400th anniversary of the pre-
miere of Shakespeare's classic tragedy.
Claire Hunt, Lee Wilkins and Byron Scott.
November 2006 Page 4
Grad Studies Newsletter
News Briefs
Journalism and Law Prime Baby
Two classes in the Journalism school, the Topics in M.A. student Nick D’Andrade, wife Kim, and new
Journalism class, taught by Professor Michael Grinfeld, daughter
as well as the Strategic Conflict Management class Taya, born
taught by Professor Glen T. Cameron and Augustine August 12
Pang (PhD’ 06), collaborated with Professor Richard in Spo-
Reuben’s Conflict Theory class at the Law School in a kane,
cross-disciplinary exercise examining the roles of public Washing-
relations, law and journalism in a conflict. Using the Vioxx ton. PRIME
case as the backdrop, the simulated exercise sought to Lab direc-
understand how public relations practitioners could work tors, Bolls,
with legal practitioners to design a message platform that Wise, and
was subjected to the scrutiny of journalists in a press Leshner
conference. The aim of this exercise was to bring to life say they
the intersecting roles that PR, legal issues and journalism expect to
play in a health-based conflict through this applied learn- see Taya at
ing process. It was a nice collaboration between the first PRIME
schools and between the Health Communication Re- Lab meet-
search Center and the Center for the Study of Conflict, ing in Fall,
Law and the Media. About 80 students and faculty partici- 2024!
pated in this exercise on Oct 25, 2006 at the Law School.
NNA Foundation Winner
Master's student Diana Choksey has been selected
as the new National Newspaper Association/Cruikshank Busy Missouri Publishers Group
Scholar. The Missouri Association of Publications and the
As part of its mission to enhance the role of commu- Kansas City Chapter of the American Society of Business
nity newspapers, the National Newspaper Foundation Publication Editors co-sponsored an editorial boot camp
funded an in Overland Park, KS, on Oct. 19. Don Ranly was one of
NNA/ the presenters. The following week, on Oct. 26, the Mis-
Cruikshank souri Association of Publications and the St. Louis Chap-
Scholar at ter of the International Association of Business Communi-
the Missouri cators presented an all-day Ranly On Writing seminar in
School of Clayton, MO.
Journalism
for the 2006-
2007 aca-
demic year.
These jour- Team J-School
nalism
Team J-School
graduate strikes again! Doctoral
students will
students Carrie Brown
work out of
and Elizabeth Hen-
Diana Choksey receives a certificate for being the National drickson (along with
named the National Newspaper Association Founda- Newspaper
tion Cruikshank Scholar for 2006. Congratulating her Association
journalism-free friend,
is Alan Cruikshank, publisher of the Fountain Hills Josh Amelunke) ran in
(AZ) Times.
offices on the relay division of the
The scholar program was named after Alan. the Univer-
Columbia half-
Photo by Stanley Schwartz sity of Mis- marathon on October
souri- 1st. Their team came in
Columbia campus.
sixth, with a time of
The NNA/Cruikshank Scholars program has been 1:45. Pictured in photo
created to honor Alan Cruikshank, a Fountain Hills, Ari-
is Brown, Amelunke,
zona publisher, for his commitment to his community and
Hendrickson and Baby
to the community newspaper profession. Thor (Hendrickson's
Cruikshank was a regional director for NNA for six
one-year-old).
years, representing Arizona, Nevada and California.
November 2006 Page 5
Grad Studies Newsletter
Hurley Chair sponsors symposium
By Jeremy Littau is that both parties benefit more by working together, com-
bining MU’s research engine with a group of practitioners
A collaborative effort between the MU School of Jour- who want to help journalism in practical ways.
nalism, the Reynolds Center for Journalism and Democracy,
and the Committee of Concerned Journalists recently looked “Esther Thorson has been talking about issues that are
into the future, and they aren’t finished yet. important to the practice,” Overholser said. “The CCJ-
Mizzou relationship is a perfect embodiment of this goal to
The three groups came together for the Curtis B. Hurley have links between research and the practice of journalism.”
Symposium on Oct. 17 to discuss ways in which the princi-
ples of journalism can be translated into the new digital plat- Overholser said that this collaboration helps her meet
forms that are changing the media landscape. one goal she has had for six years since taking the chair,
finding a way to bridge the gap between research and prac-
It also gave a glimpse of what could happen when the tice. She noted that practitioners have felt like much re-
first school of journalism and a group like CCJ can do when search in journalism has little practical implications. In addi-
they work together. tion, researchers for a lot of reasons (including diverse inter-
ests and professional pressures) end up doing some re-
“It’s different than anything else we’ve done,” said Ge- search that isn’t practical.
neva Overholser, who chairs the event. “It was a merging of
the efforts of CCJ and the School of Journalism. We were The symposium presented some of the work that the
able to show the Washington community what an exciting CCJ-Missouri alliance has done with the Milwaukee Journal-
alliance this can be.” Sentinel. Together they have collaborated to bring the idea
of journalism as a discipline of verification (one of the
In fact, the merging will be literal. The two groups will be “Elements of Journalism” from the book by Bill Kovach and
sharing an office in Washington, D.C. in an effort to help the Tom Rosenstiel) into emerging media products.
groups work together better.
Dean Mills and Kovach helped open the symposium,
CCJ conducts training in newsrooms all over the coun- and Reynolds Center dean of research Esther Thorson par-
try, and MU has a strong emphasis in research. The feeling ticipated in a group discussion.
Overholser's Manifesto
By Jeremy Littau
The goal is to invite comments from those who read it
A self-titled "manifesto" written by Geneva Overholser is and hopefully start a conversation about journalism's future.
challenging journalists to re-imagine the field as it goes For now, she is hoping that people will go to the site and
through turbulent change due to economic and readership read the manifesto (it's available in PDF format on the front
pressures. page), with more discussion possibilities coming down the
road.
Posted on the Annenberg Public Policy Center's web
site (http://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/), the re-
port is intended to be a discussion starter into how journal-
ism can weather the storm and emerge stronger. Overholser
is collaborating with Annenberg along with Dean Mills and
Esther Thorson on how to bring together ideas for change
during a troubled time in journalism.
From the desk of...
"I've had enough of all the bad news about journalism," (Continued from page 1)
she said. "There are all kinds of interesting possibilities out also the deadline for paper submissions to International
there, and I tried in this manifesto to assemble those possi- Communication Association (ICA). In mid-December, a
bilities. It's about saying, 'These are my action steps, what team of reviewers will be here to assess the doctoral pro-
would you recommend?'" gram. Oh, yes…. I mustn't forget about Thanksgiving
break, term papers and final exams!
The link to the piece is also posted on the Poynter web
site in an accompanying article Overholser wrote for the site
Happy Thanksgiving to all.
("Wake Up Newsies" on Oct. 12: http://poynter.org/content/
content_view.asp?id=112061), and there has been some
discussion of it on the Poynter blogs as well. The article of-
Amy Lenk, Editor
fers several practical ideas for how journalism can change
with the times rather than resist.
November 2006 Page 6
Grad Studies Newsletter
Message sampling in
experimental designs
By Glenn Leshner
Too often I am asked to read conference paper sub- rule. Further, all conclusions about such important single
missions and journal manuscripts that have significant messages must be constrained to that message. These
methodological flaws. One flaw in particular that I find special messages are not suitable if you need to make
problematic is the post-test only, single-message design. generalizations to other message, even if the messages
It is not an issue of sophistication. It is an issue of validity. are similar (e.g., other presidential debates, even one
with the same candidates).
A single-message design is an experiment in which a
single message is manipulated in such a way where each A dozen years ago Annie Lang edited a book titled,
manipulation represents a level of a treatment. For exam- “Measuring Psychological Responses to Media Mes-
ple, a news story is selected and then rewritten to create sages.” Every researcher who conducts some sort of psy-
at least two versions, so that each version represents one chological experiments who I know has this book on their
level an independent variable. Although the manipulation office shelves. The chapter that informs this discussion,
may be well done, this design still poses a problem. and which been a source of constant instruction and dis-
Granted, such a manipulation enhances internal validity cussion for our graduate students at Missouri, is Chapter
(as opposed to using two different messages). The prob- 9, written by Byron Reeves and Seth Geiger, “Designing
lem with this design is that any conclusion that can be Experiments that Assess Psychological Responses to
made about the effect of the manipulation must be con- Media Messages.”
strained to that particular message. You cannot conclude
that the type of message had an effect, but only that ex- Reeves & Geiger discuss how to make experimental
act message you used. design decisions, such as how to create treatment differ-
ences. The most common way to do that is to make mul-
One problem with single-message designs is that any tiple versions of a particular message of interest, where
effect you find might occur only in the particular message each treatment level is the operationalization of a con-
you used. This might occur if some other feature of the ceptual variable. This style of manipulation is easy to
message, of which you do not (and could not) know, think about but often difficult to do. The key is to manipu-
moderates the relationship between the manipulation and late only that message characteristic which you theorize
the dependent variable. It looks like you have a main ef- about, but no other. Many studies I read, whether student
fect for your independent variable, but that apparent rela- papers, conference papers, or manuscripts submitted to
tionship might be due to an interaction with another, un- journals, use this approach to create treatment variance.
known factor. It may be that the moderating relationship Another way, as Reeves & Geiger discuss, is to “sample”
between the IV and the unknown factor does not occur in across messages (i.e., that is “find”) in order to create
other messages (or occurs in different ways). This can treatment differences. The major advantage of this strat-
work the other way, too. It is possible that you find no egy is that messages don’t have to be altered, which can
effect of your manipulation on your DV. A real relation- be useful when a lot of material is available and when the
ship may exist between your IV and DV, but it could be message feature of interest cannot be manipulated.
attenuated by a third, unknown factor, that may be unique
to the particular message you selected. The problem is Message sampling has another advantage. The vari-
that it is nearly impossible to account for all the possible ance it creates strengthens claims about the message
confounds by using a single message. categories or features of interest. These claims about
effects of message features are what we theorize about. I
Another argument against single-message designs is believe you cannot make such claims unless your design
that we rarely theorize about single messages. Rather, incorporates multiple messages per level of treatment,
we theorize about message characteristics, both mes- whether or not treatment differences are created by mes-
sage content and formal features. We may be interested sage alteration or not. That is to say, that whether or not
in execution styles in magazine advertisements, for ex- you create treatments via message alteration or sam-
ample, but rarely are we interested solely in the Gap ad pling, using only one message per treatment level does
that appeared on page 84 of People Magazine in the not permit you to generalize to message features. It is the
June 15, 2006 edition. It is difficult to think of a media use of multiple messages per treatment level that makes
effects study in which using multiple messages would not such generalizability possible. That will introduce a re-
be a good idea. peated measures factor into your design, but it is gener-
ally good science to do so.
Occasionally, a single message comes along that
warrants study: a particular news story, presidential de-
bate, ad, etc. But those are more the exception than the
November 2006 Page 7
Grad Studies Newsletter
November 2006
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4
5 6 7 Preparing 8 9 10 11
Future Faculty, Columbia Weavers & Spinner's
Academic Portfo- Guild 17th Annual Holiday & Ex-
lios, Noon–1:30 hibition Sale, Boone County His-
p.m., S110 Memo- torical Society, 3801 Ponderosa St
rial Union
12 13 14 15 16 Prof. De- 17 18 Nov. 18, 19
velopment Semi- Booneslick Trail
nar: Energizing Quilter's Guild
Discussions with Quilt Show, Holi-
Student Response day Inn Expo Cen-
Systems, 12:00- ter 2200 I-70 Dr.
1:30 p.m. N201/202, Southwest
Memorial Union
19 20 21 22 23 24 25
Thanksgiving Break
26 27 28 29 30
December 2006
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 Minnesota 2
Ballet: The Nut-
cracker, 7:00 p.m.,
Jesse Hall Auditorium
3 Moscow Boys 4 5 How Colleges 6 7 Columbia Cho- 8 9 Relax Night,
Choir, 7:00 p.m., and Universities rale: Handel's Mes- 8:00 p.m. North Side,
Jesse Hall Audito- Work, Noon–1:30 siah, 7:00 p.m., Memorial Student
rium p.m., S016 Memorial Jesse Hall Auditorium Union, Free Shake-
Union speare's Pizza
10 11 Kenny Log- 12 13 14 Unviersity 15 Journalism 16
gins Christmas Concert Series: Graduation, 3:30
Show, 7:00 p.m., What a Wonderful p.m., Jesse Audito-
Jesse Hall Auditorium Christmas with rium; Graduate
Anne Murray, Jesse School Commence-
Auditorium ment, 8:00 p.m.,
Hearnes Center
November 2006 Page 8
Grad Studies Newsletter
Master's Student
Spotlight
Ben Poston
Now that you have a couple semesters under your in which I will investigate a wrongful
belt, what class here at MU would you say has been conviction murder case from 1992
the most worthwhile for you in terms of the learning near Cape Girardeau, Mo.
process?
Computer-assisted reporting with David Herzog and in- What do you expect to be researching for your MA
vestigative reporting with Brant Houston have both been project?
invaluable courses for developing professional skills. For the professional analysis section, I'm considering
conducting an analysis on the efficacy of Innocence
You're the head TA for 2100. What is the most chal- Commissions in the United States.
lenging aspect of coordinating a class with so many
sections? Any idea about what you are interested in doing after
Scheduling grammar and AP style exams through you graduate?
WebCT is the trickiest part. The key thing is planning I interned at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as a metro re-
ahead and keeping instructors informed of what's going porter this summer. I hope to either work there after
to happen next week and the week after. graduation or look for a position at another newspaper
that allows me to pursue investigative/database stories.
What kinds of research are you interested in for your
master's program study? How are you different and/or better as a journalist
I initially planned on doing a thesis on social networking because of your time here thus far?
Web sites and how they affect social capital among us- Before, my world was very small in terms of professional
ers, but I have recently switched to a professional project contacts and how to effectively gather information. Since
starting at MU last fall, I feel as if I have many more op-
tions professionally.
Esther Thorson, Associate Dean for Graduate Studies
Thorsone@missouri.edu
Glenn Leshner, Interim Director of Graduate Studies
Leshnerg@missouri.edu
J - School Martha Pickens, Academic Advisor & Fiscal Manager
Pickensm@missouri.edu
Amy Lenk, Senior Academic Advisor, Editor
Earl English Graduate Studies Center Lenka@missouri.edu
Missouri School of Journalism
Columbia, MO 65211 -1200 Ginny Cowell, Administrative Assistant
Phone: 573 -882 -4852 Cowellvj@missouri.edu
Fax: 573-884-5302
Jeremy Littau, Reporter/Writer
jjlcmd@mizzou.edu
THE MISSOURI SCHOOL
OF JOURNALISM
SUBMIT AN ARTICLE, ANNOUNCEMENT
On the Web: OR ITEM OF INTEREST
http://journalism.missouri.edu
Deadline for Submission for the December Newsletter
is November 15. Late submissions will be included on
a space-available basis or in the following month.
November 2006 Page 9
