Minutes, SPJ J-Ed Committee, Aug. 19, 2010

Minutes of telephone meeting of the SPJ Journalism Education Committee, Thursday, Aug. 19, 2010

The meeting began at 4 p.m. EDT. The following people were present for all or part of the meeting:

Committee members:

David Burns
Mark Butzow
Kym Fox
Lee Anne Peck
Elissa Sonnenberg
Jeff South
Bonnie Stewart
Becky Tallent
Virginia Whitehouse
Nerissa Young

Ex-officio members:

George Daniels
Neil Ralston

Agenda

1. SPJ’s affiliate membership with AEJMC. George gave a report. He noted that SPJ’s executive board voted in July to reup as an affiliate member of AEJMC. Among other things, this will allow SPJ to have input into programming for AEJMC conventions. As SPJ’s executive director, Joe Skeel will be SPJ’s point person on the AEJMC Council of Affiliates. George said Joe probably will seek advice and ideas from the SPJ Journalism Education Committee.

2. Report from the AEJMC convention in Denver. With help from Neil and others, SPJ circulated a flier promoting a breakfast at the AEJMC convention. George and others attended the breakfast. Neil said one issue that SPJ would like to address with AEJMC is the recruitment and development of advisers for SPJ campus chapters. In that regard, SPJ is developing a set of online resources for SPJ campus chapters. George and Neil discussed this “Programming in a Box” idea. J-Ed Committee members also suggested that we develop a list of experienced campus chapter advisers who could mentor and help newbies.

3. Discussion of the J-Ed Committee at the SPJ national convention in Las Vegas. The committee is scheduled to meet in Las Vegas at 3:30 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 4. We discussed which J-Ed Committee members plan to attend the convention and the meeting.

4. Discussion of the chapter leadership session that will be held on Sunday, Oct. 3, at the SPJ convention. One question was: Should we have separate meetings for the campus advisers and the students? The J-Ed Committee’s consensus was to keep the advisers and students together.

5. Consideration of a resolution for presentation to the SPJ delegates at the national convention. George prepared a resolution that “… members of the Society go on record supporting continued involvement with preparing tomorrow’s journalists by maintaining its membership in on the Accrediting Council for Education and Journalism and Mass Communication …” The J-Ed Committee unanimously approved the resolution with some editing changes. [Note: On Sept. 2, the resolution was e-mailed to Mac McKerral, chairman of the SPJ Resolutions Committee.] 

6. Committee membership for the coming year. If you’re interested in serving on the J-Ed Committee next year, let Jeff know (jcsouth@vcu.edu). And/or contact SPJ’s president-elect, Hagit Limor (hlimor@wcpo.com).

 7. Ideas for future Toolbox columns or Quill stories. We kicked around several ideas, including:

• How students have changed over the years
• Ways to grow your chapter
• Teaching social media

8. Discussion of past issues, including possible changes in the SPJ Campus Chapter ratings system (Neil said some proposals are in the works).

The meeting adjourned at 5:10 p.m.

The meeting began at 4 p.m. EST. The following people were present for all or part of the meeting:

Committee members:
David Burns
Mark Butzow
Butler Cain
Kym Fox
Gene Murray
Patti Gallagher Newberry
Lee Anne Peck
Jeff South
Karon Speckman
Bonnie Stewart
Becky Tallent
Virginia Whitehouse
Nerissa Young

Ex-officio members:
George Daniels
Sue Kopen Katcef
Neil Ralston

SPJ headquarters:
Scott Leadingham, editor, Quill magazine
Lauren Rochester, Awards Coordinator
Kevin Smith, SPJ president

Agenda

1. Upcoming Toolbox columns for Quill.

By consensus, the committee agreed on the following lineup for Toolbox columns for the near future:

 Think of ideas for columns for the June, August and October deadlines.

2. The J-education issue of Quill.

As we kicked off the discussion of possible themes for the traditional “journalism education issue,” George and others suggested we rethink the mission: Do we even need an education issue now that Quill publishes only six times a year and is seeking to bolster its Web-site content?

Part of the discussion was triggered by Scott suggestion that we move the education issue from July/Aug (deadline: June 18) to May/June (deadline: April 20). This proposal would allow Quill to devote the July/Aug issue to awards. Lee Anne and other committee members said the April 20 deadline would be hard to meet because of end-of-semester grading and the preparation of research papers for AEJMC.

Ginny noted that the annual education issue started about 10 years ago, timed so that educators could prepare their contributions over the summer. She likes the idea of having education-related stories in Quill throughout the year – instead of packing them into one issue.

Patti asked Scott whether he needs copy (such as the education issue) to fill the Quill news hole. Scott said he receives a lot of story pitches and often must turn them away. He said he agrees with George that maybe it’s time to rethink whether to have a designated “journalism education issue.”

By consensus, the Journalism Education Committee agreed to eliminate the journalism-education theme issue of Quill. Instead, the committee will seek to generate periodic feature-story contributions to Quill throughout the year. These stories would be above and beyond our Toolbox columns. Scott said features generally range from 1,200 to 3,500 words.

If you have ideas for feature stories, bounce them off Scott and/or send them to our committee’s listserv.

3. An “SPJ student news service” of sorts for Quill content (in print and online). From Scott: “We’re in the process of a Web site redesign, and will eventually move Quill to a dedicated stand-alone site with daily content (more like CJR and AJR). One thing I’d like to do is encourage more student contributions from chapters and really make SPJ a resource for them … giving them the ability to build clips (and, as I’d adamantly argue, get paid for their work). So, I’m curious what the members of the committee think about this admittedly very rudimentary idea.”

According to our discussion, this idea still is evolving:

It could take the shape of students producing industry-related news for SPJ members. (For example, the Quill Web site carried a package by two students from Virginia Commonwealth University about changes in state laws requiring local governments to publish legal notices in local newspapers.)

And/or it could involve general-interest news for a broad audience, such as a wire service for college journalists. This would be harder to pull off.

Scott will continue refining the proposal. In the meantime, if students have ideas for stories for the Quill Web site, he is happy to consider them. (Likewise, students could contribute items to appropriate SPJ blogs.)

4. Possible changes in the SPJ Campus Chapter ratings system.

Sue is heading up a committee to explore such changes. She is in the preliminary information-gathering stage. Sue said she doesn’t want to eliminate standards, but she wants to make sure that the goals are reasonable for campus chapters to meet. (The standards require campus chapters to hold a certain number of meetings per year, etc.) Many students involved in SPJ are overwhelmed and overworked, we don’t want to burn them out.

Karon noted that the standards (such as bringing in guest speakers) can hard especially on small and isolated campus chapters.

Neil said another problem is that the ratings system requires campus chapters to have representatives at regional and national meetings. This can be too expensive, and sometimes students can’t miss class.

Sue said one way to address the problem might be through additional training for campus advisers and student chapter officers (something parallel to the Scripps leadership conference). The training could be virtual (a Webinar) or in-person.

Karon moved that the SPJ Journalism Education Committee go on record as supporting efforts to finance and encourage the training (virtual or in-person) of campus advisers and student chapter officers. David seconded the motion, and it passed unanimously.

Kevin said he will take this issue to the next Executive Committee meeting. He said he might come back to the Journalism Education Committee with a request to form a subcommittee to further investigate the idea.

5. The online entry submission system for the SPJ Mark of Excellence Awards.

Lauren asked for the committee’s help to spread the word about the online submission system, which she said is going well.

The committee could play a role in getting the word out to community colleges. Lauren will forward to our committee’s listserv a note that she has sent to community colleges about the MOE contest. Mark said he would pass that note along to the College Media Advisers organization. Jeff said he would distribute it via the Virginia Community College System. And perhaps other committee members could forward the note to interested parties.

6. The possibility of creating a high school student SPJ membership category.

Neil has been circulating this proposal informally. He said there is nothing official on the table but the idea would involve having a type of reduced-price membership for high school journalists as we do for college journalists. The downside might be that high school students would flood the SPJ membership rolls, but committee members said that possibility is very remote.

On a motion made by Becky and seconded by Mark, the committee voted unanimously to endorse the idea that SPJ explore creating a membership category for high school journalists.

7. An update on the collaboration between SPJ and the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Kevin said the SPJ International Committee met with the executive director of CPJ and worked out a cooperative agreement. Part of the agreement would involve SPJ working on behalf of journalists imprisoned around world. This is where the Journalism Education Committee could help. Kevin said CPJ will provide the names of six imprisoned journalists and that perhaps campus chapters could adopt the journalist and undertake letter-writing campaigns or provide other support.

The Journalism Education Committee will work with Kevin, the International Committee, CPJ and the campus advisers to distribute the information about the imprisoned journalists to campus chapters and to encourage efforts to support those journalists.

8. SPJ convention ideas

Mark noted that the deadline to submit proposals for the 2010 Las Vegas convention is Jan. 3: “SPJ only wants sessions with one or two presenters, not panel discussions. The person who submits the proposal does not have to be one of the presenters, but would be the liaison for the session (if chosen) whether a participant or not.”

The Journalism Education Committee discussed a list of possible proposals that was developed at our meeting in August. We whittled the list (one idea was obsolete; another was for the 2011 convention). Here are the ideas on the table. We encouraged committee members to volunteer to “adopt” an idea and handle the submission process. Mark has adopted “Web writing for broadcast news outlets.”

• Multimedia teaching challenges when your units are separated on campus – perhaps a best practices roundup session. (“making it work even though you’re in different departments”)
• 10 things to know when you pick up a video camera.
• Where you can get outside grants to help pay for equipment.
• Web writing for broadcast news outlet

The meeting adjourned at 5:45 p.m.

The College News Network isn’t much: a bare-bones Web site, expenses totaling $17, and a single advertisement that covered every penny.
 
But the Ohio University undergraduates who founded the college-journalism content-sharing cooperative hope the new wire-service-style Web site can help fill a hole in the student press.

The Web site is Dave Hendricks and Ryan Dunn’s answer to the demise of UWIRE, a popular service that had aggregated articles from student newspapers across the country before it went mysteriously silent this fall.

Here’s the entire Chronicle article.

According to a story in The New York Times, the prosecutors want to know whether the students, part of the Medill Innocence Project, were offered grades or other incentives to turn up evidence in favor of the man’s innocence.

The Cook County (Illinois) Circuit Court is scheduled to hold a hearing this month on the issue.

On Tuesday, the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications said it “strongly urges the judge responsible for this case to quash the subpoena and direct prosecutors to investigate the evidence uncovered by the journalism students in a timely and unbiased way.”

AEJMC said the prosectors’ request for subpoenas was is inappropriate for three reasons:

1) The Medill journalism students should be protected under the Illinois state shield law;

2) If the court grants the prosecutors’ request, journalism students involved with similar projects would think twice about criticizing governmental actions if personal information, such as grades and e-mails, could become public; and

3) Journalists should not be treated as instruments of the State.

Eight things that journalism students should demand from their journalism schools

Those things were:

Role models
A mentor
Employment contacts
A place to hack
Work experience
Deep knowledge of a field other than journalism
Getting your name out there
Passion, not excuses

Committee members dialing in:

Burns, David
Butzow, Mark
Daniels, George
Fox, Kym
Murray, Gene
Newberry, Patti
Nicholson, June
Peck, Lee Anne
Sonnenberg, Elissa
South, Jeff
Stewart, Bonnie
Tallent, Becky
Young, Nerissa

Others dialing in:

Leadingham, Scott (Quill editor)
Smith, Kevin (SPJ president)

Agenda items

Tools column for Quill

Scott outlined the deadlines – generally six weeks before the issue date. Oct. 24 is the deadline for the November/December issue; Dec. 18 is the deadline for the January/February issue.

For Oct. 24, Elissa will write a column about embedding journalism students with community partners (and possibly service learning and other programs).

For Dec. 18, Lee Anne will write about Fulbright Scholars.

The committee will discuss by e-mail the topics for Tools columns beyond that.

Using the SPJ Web site and the committee’s blog as a publishing platform

This sounds like a good idea. We will ask Scott for his thoughts (he had to leave by this point). Jeff will find out how all committee members can have blog-posting rights.

Quill Annual Journalism Education Issue

Usually, the committee doesn’t decide on a theme until January, so we have time to mull over ideas.

George suggested a theme involving curriculum revision (team teaching, multimedia skills, etc.) and learning outcome assessments. George also suggested looking at people who’ve moved from the newsroom to the classroom –following up on an SPJ session in Indianpolis that included Bonnie Stewart on the panel. David suggested student portfolios and e-portfolios (which could make a good Tools column as well). Patti and others suggested looking at how the economy is affecting j-schools.

CPJ-SPJ collaboration

By this time, Kevin joined us. He liked the draft of the letter that grew out of discussions involving the Education Committee, International Committee and CPJ. Kevin will talk to the SPJ staff on how to move forward with such a letter. Committee members discussed ways SPJ might work with SPJ.

Kevin discussed the need for SPJ committees to explore grant funding for initiatives. He explained what SPJ did last year in pursuing grants from foundations. Bonnie has had success obtaining foundation funding for programs at West Virginia. She may be able to share with the Journalism Committee some of her school’s successful proposals.

SPJ-RTNDA partnership

We may want to work with RTNDA (soon to be renamed RTDNA) on programming ideas for the 2010 Convention in Las Vegas. This would be a prelude to the joint SPJ-RTNDA convention in 2011.

George will be meeting soon with some RTNDA leaders and will scope out forming a relationship. We also might touch base with BEA and certain broadcast journalism educators for input on what kinds of convention programs would do well.

Six ideas emerged at the committee’s meeting in August:

1) Mental health coverage – Ch.5 health reporter and Inquirer health reporter (San Fran?).

2) Multimedia teaching challenges when your units are separated on campus – perhaps a best practices roundup session. (“making it work even though you’re in different departments”)

3) Garnering Rob Curley of Greenspun papers group (if he’s still in Vegas by then!!) “expand beyond corporate units” 

4) Thinking in terms of a broadcast audience … 10 things to know when you pick up a video camera.

5) Where you can get outside grants to help pay for equipment.

6) Another idea thinking in terms of a broadcast audience …. Web writing for broadcast news outlet  reporters and producers.

We agreed to kick around convention ideas by e-mail and discuss them at our next tele-meeting.

Next meeting

Jeff will poll the committee via Doodle about holding its next meeting in December (perhaps on Dec. 9).

The meeting adjourned at 5:10 p.m.

MEETING SUMMARY

Meeting was called to order by George Daniels at approximately 10:50 a.m.  
Members Present
Bonnie Stewart
Mark Butzow
June Nicholson
George Daniels
Neil Ralston (ex-officio)

Others Attending
Ronnie Lawler (San Francisco State and Incoming Int’l Cmte. Chair)
Elissa Sonenberg, University of Cincinnati

Everyone introduced themselves and we welcomed our two guests who were in attendance.  Several members present talked about challenges they were facing teaching in programs where some form of convergence had been tried or needed to be tried between university units (i.e. department of broadcasting and department of English). Daniels indicated this might be a topic on which we could follow for the 2010 Convention in Las Vegas.

CPJ/SPJ Partnership

June Nicholson reported on the discussions with Committee to Protect Journalism (CPJ) and the proposed partnership involving not only SPJ’s Journalism Education Committee, but also the International Journalism Committee.    June suggested that the Adopt-a-Journalist program might be our most practical step for our student SPJ chapters.    Among the ideas being discussed, adding a section of the SPJ Web  site that would showcase some of the things CPJ is doing for journalists working overseas.   Bonnie Stewart raised a concern about having students doing fundraising for journalists (via Adopt-a-Journalist) might be a problem.    It was decided that we would draft a letter that incoming SPJ President Kevin Smith could sign and send to his counterpart at CPJ (SEE ATTACHED LETTER AGREED TO BY INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE).

Another suggestion for the CPJ-SPJ Partnership—Could CPJ provide a speakers’ list for SPJ chapters and that could be used for programming at SPJ Regional and National Conventions.  

Neil Ralston indicated that he and fellow SPJ Board Member Liz Hansen met with Terry Anderson on the partnership.   (They are both in Kentucky where Anderson teachers at University of Kentucky).   Ralston’s concern was that the partnership be a true TWO-WAY partnership in that CPJ provides for SPJ just as much as SPJ provides for CPJ. 

Debrief on Quill Annual Journalism Education Issue

Mark Butzow thanked all of those who helped out with is article.  Daniels thanked all who came through with great pieces.   He noted how much of an increase we had in number of articles from this year over a year ago. 

Upcoming Tools Columns for Quill

Daniels reported that LeAnn Peck had e-mailed him her interest in pursuing the column about Fulbright Scholars for the next deadline (October 24, 2009).  This column was originally held over from the previous year because the early deadline for application would not give readers enough time to apply. Those in attendance agreed that LeAnn’s article would work best for this next deadline (Dec/Jan issue).

Another suggestion was doing an article on how journalism students (and professionals) can do service learning projects that involve journalism.  Elissa Sonenberg (University of Cincinnati) volunteered to look closer into this for the Feb. 2010 issue (deadline  December 18, 2009).

Neil Ralston suggested it might be worthwhile to do a Toolkit column on engagement (not of the marrying kind) … with sort of a “we don’t promote” moral to the story.  Idea so far unassigned.

SPJ/RTNDA Partnership

RTNDA and SPJ will hold a joint convention in 2011 in either New Orleans or Orlando.  

Daniels reported briefly on a conversation held with Stacey Woelfel, the current president of the Radio-Television News Directors Association, who is on faculty at the University of Missouri.   Woelfel addressed the SPJ Board of Directors on the day prior to this committee meeting.   But he was unable to stay for the committee meeting.    He indicated an interest in working with SPJ on some programming ideas for the 2010 Convention in Las Vegas.

The Journalism Educators could benefit from the multimedia training. With that suggestion, several panel/workshop ideas were offered and briefly discussed:

1) Mental health coverage – Ch.5 health reporter and Inquirer health reporter (San Fran?).

2) Multimedia teaching challenges when your units are separated on campus – perhaps a best practices roundup session. (“making it work even though you’re in different departments”)

3) Garnering Rob Curley of Greenspun papers group (if he’s still in Vegas by then!!) “expand beyond corporate units” 

4) Thinking in terms of a broadcast audience … 10 things to know when you pick up a video camera.

5) Where you can get outside grants to help pay for equipment.

6) Another idea thinking in terms of a broadcast audience …. Web writing for broadcast news outlet  reporters and producers.

None of these were “assigned” to anyone in particular to shepherd through the process. 

Proposals for next year’s convention are due in December. Little time to waste!

Morgan State Censure

Ralston: Need to investigate further before blasting administration action as inappropriate, as CMA already did. 

Daniels: Create an education moment from this — Help the students understand what might happen if they’re going to cover something that may raise hackles …   

New SPJ President

Kevin Smith joined the committee at the end of its meeting. 

Daniels shared our consensus that, if SPJ were to decide to do a meeting with Morgan State, that J-Educ members can be consulted for ideas on how to educate students … and administrators.

(Minutes compiled by George Daniels and Mark Butzow)

As our SPJ President Clint Brewer explained in his letter to Senator John Cornyn, it is best to “remain fluid” when defining a journalist.   It’s a matter of function rather than title (i.e. newspaper, television, radio, online reporters).

For journalism educators, this is a wake-up call for us as we define our classes, curricula and language in introducing the profession to our stuents.

Are our students still thinking when they sign up for Introduction to Journalism that they will get an introduction to newspapers, magazines and other PRINTED media?

To what extent are we conveying to our students this “fluidity” of which Brewer is speaking in his interactions with lawmakers?

With the passage of the Free Flow of Information Act (and we know it will pass eventually), we have some codifying of this concept called journalism.

I wonder how many journalism teachers are even making their students aware of the current definitional debates as they relate to the shield law?

As we prepare our syllabi for the upcoming fall semester (I’m working on mine as we speak), I think we ought to engage students in the same debates that the lawmakers are engaged.   Leave room for an exercise that exposes the “messiness” of defining of our profession even as it’s changing before our eyes.

Introducing journalism to a whole new generation in 2008 is not like introducing journalism in 1998.  I know it’s a cliche– but it truly is a whole new world.

And, we journalism educators are charged with taking our students by the hand and ushering them in it.

Columbia will receive $5-million, and CUNY $3-million. Under the terms of the grants, Columbia must garner an additional $10-million in donations within 18 months, and CUNY must raise enough to double its grant. Leonard Tow, a co-founder of the foundation, said the grants were a response to his “serious concerns about what is happening in the world of journalism.”

“I thought it was time for us to think about addressing these new-media opportunities so what we as citizens receive from them is more an accurate reflection of what is going on in the world than some opinion,” said Mr. Tow.

Columbia will use its grant to establish the Tow Center, which will build on the journalism school’s existing new-media curriculum and prepare students for careers in digital and online journalism. The school will hire two full-time faculty members to lead the center. The school’s dean, Nicholas Lemann, said the grant had already made an impact: Bill Grueskin of The Wall Street Journal, who two weeks ago was hired as the school’s academic dean, wanted to be involved in the new-media center, Mr. Lemann said.

“Big changes are afoot in journalism, which makes the role of journalism schools vital in a way that it hasn’t been before,” Mr. Lemann said. He added that the center would better position the school to influence the future of journalism.

CUNY’s grant will create the Tow Center for Journalistic Innovation, which will serve a purpose similar to Columbia’s Tow Center. CUNY’s journalism school was established in the fall of 2006 with a heavy emphasis on new media, and at the Tow Center students will develop and put into play journalistic enterprises and business models.

“The old model is under great pressures, some would say crumbling in mainstream media, and there is not enough innovation,” said its dean, Stephen B. Shepard. “This is meant to be a spur in innovation.” —Allie Grasgreen