Tony Overman, president of the NPPA, stood in a conference room at the Marriott Hotel holding his notebook, camera card and pen.

“These are my tools…to do my job as a journalist,” he said.

Leaders from various journalism organizations were present, saying the ruling disregarded a journalist’s ability to guard confidential sources and unpublished material.

Overman, pointing to his “tools,” said his job as a journalist was being compromised to become an aid for the government.

“They want the journalist to do the job for them,” he said. “This has a chilling effect on First Amendment rights.”

“This is an attempt by the federal government to make journalists an arm of law enforcement,” said David E. Carlson, president of the Society of Professional Journalists. He said this would not help the federal government in the long run, because journalists will naturally lose the public’s trust all together.

The ruling took place as journalism and mass communication educators met at the AEJMC Convention, which the speakers found to be ironic.

“As we have been convening here at this convention, the courts have been moving forward,” said Frank Fee, Jr., a member of the Professional Freedom and Responsibility Standing Committee of the AEJMC.

“The timing proved to be interesting,” Overman agreed.

The speakers, who also mentioned the cases of San Francisco Chronicle reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada who reported on grand jury findings in the BALCO investigation and of former New York Times Reporter Judith Miller, stressed the importance of a free press in the country.

“The key to a free society is a free flow of information,” said Julianne Newton, editor of Visual Communication Quarterly and associate professor in visual communication at the University of Oregon.

Newton said confidential sources are sometimes the only way to provide information to the public, and the legal system should not dare to violate a journalist’s right to use these sources.

“Don’t mess with the press,” she said with a determined look on her face.

There is presently no shield law protecting journalists at the federal level. Overman said the Joshua Wolf case should not have gone to the federal government in the first place.

“Such crimes would be a violation of state law,” Overman said.

One message was obvious during the press conference: Each speaker demanded Wolf be released from prison immediately.

The NPPA donated $500 to the Wolf case, and SPJ contributed $1000 with more on its way, according to Carlson.

“I suspect that we’ll be making a considerably larger donation to the Joshua Wolf case,” Carlson said.

Fee noted, however, that journalists have been put in similar positions in the past.

“While we have seen a number of these cases pop up … it is not something that is new,” Fee said. “This is a fight that has been going on for a long, long time.”

He said that journalists act as the watchdog and worried about the consequences that could arise when this role becomes blurred.

“We have at times forgotten that we have a watchdog role to play,” Fee said. “If we are an arm of the government, where is the watchdog role going to go?”

It was sponsored by the International Communication Division and Civic and Citizen Journalism Interest Group.

A wiki is a site where “anybody who signs up or registers [with the website] can contribute and change not only what’s up [on the site] but anyone else’s work as well as their own,” explained Mike Yamamoto, executive editor of CNET News.com.

The most popular wiki site is Wikipeida, an online encyclopedia with articles that anyone can edit.

Joining Yamamoto on the panel were Clyde Bentley, associate professor at the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri-Columbia, and Barbara Iverson, professor of journalism at the School of Media Arts at Columbia College in Chicago.

Janet Kolodzy, associate professor in the journalism department at Emerson College, moderated the discussion.

When it comes to quality and accuracy, Yamamoto says it requires passion on the part of those who monitor the wiki. He believes that Wikipedia is in good hands.

“A successful wiki or a type of project like that depends on self policing by the people who participate,” Yamomoto said. “Wikipedia is fantastic for that.”

As such sites continue to become more mainstream, the stability and future of journalism comes into question. Some say the future of news could be reported primarily by the public but Kolodzy disagrees.

During the discussion she pointed to a comment by a frequent contributor to the site, WikiNews, which is affiliated with Wikipedia but primary offers current events articles.

“I’m discovering that this journalism thing is really hard,” Kolodzy said quoting the contributor. She explained that the contributor stopped posting on the site because it was consuming too much of his life.

Kolodzy believes that citizen journalism will therefore be “complementary and supplementary” to traditional journalism, not replace it.

Part of the task to find citizen journalism’s place is up to those in journalism education. At his university, Bentley has taken one of the first steps.

The school has created a site of community journalism where stories online are contributed by people in the area.

On Saturdays, some of the best content is put in their community journalism newspaper. The paper has a unique approach to bylines for those who submit stories.

“Every byline on [the paper] says ‘Shared by’ and that’s the key,” said Bentley. “Six days a week we publish a newspaper, one day a week [the community] publishes a paper.”

As the session continued, the issue of breaking news came up. The panelists compared whether a traditional media or citizen journalism source would be the better place for incoming details on a developing story.

“WikiNews, I think, is going to prove to be better for the kind of context,” an online user would want on a story, Iverson said. It would not be ideal for the latest information on “ a breaking story.”

Bentley clarified what he thinks is the public’s place in reporting news.

“Citizen Journalism, by and large, is going to do a poorer job on the actual international [story],” he said. “Than they are on local [news].”

Panelists also added that the blogsphere and sites with citizen journalism are dependent in part on established news organizations for their own coverage.

What bloggers and citizen journalists write about generally comes from traditional news media sources, they said.

When addressing the credibility of citizen journalism sites, even those on the panel who were advocates, cautioned against relying on one source for news and information.

“Would you trust one person to tell you everything you ever needed to know about San Francisco?” Kolodzy asked. “No, of course not”

“It’s another tool but it’s a tool that needs to be used responsibly,” Yamamoto said.

Dana Rosengard, professor at the University of Oklahoma, moderated a panel of speakers featuring Dwight Brooks, associate professor at the University of Georgia, Donna Rouner, professor at Colorado State University, Sharon Bramlett-Solomon, associate professor at Arizona State University, and Laura Castaneda, assistant professor at the University of Southern California.

Rouner, who teaches a course on LGBT issues, has been working on approaches to better engage students in classes.

“When there’s a grade percentage for participation, students begin to tell stories about themselves,” said Rouner. “The problem arises when a student of a social group wants to be invisible. The university classroom is not always the most ideal place to reveal personal information.”

Rouner explained how she has dealt with this issue by redefining class participation. By allowing students to talk with her during office hours or turn in a list of questions and comments anonymously, she offers alternatives that allow students to earn credit.

Rouner sets ground rules for class discussion that establishes whether or not students should challenge each other, how long students should be able to hold the floor, and appropriate language use.

Castaneda, who also teaches a course on LGBT issues and the media, takes a different approach to class discussion.

“I tell my students not to worry about learning the language. We all have to assume we don’t mean to offend anyone,” she said. “If [students] have a question, they just have to throw it out there.”

Her teaching style mirrors this approach.

“It can be unsettling for instructors to bring these issues up. If you feel nervous about covering a subject, you just have to jump on in. There are lots of ways to do it,” Castaneda assured as she held up the headline “I’m gay” typed across Lance Bass’ chest on the cover of People Magazine.

Bramlett-Solomon admits she has never been entirely comfortable teaching her class entitled Race, Gender and Media. However, she still emphasizes the importance of class discussion and class synergy.

According to Bramlett-Solomon, her class teaches students skills that will last them their whole lives.

“They are all media consumers and need to know how to deconstruct it. I’m encouraging them to see past the social constructions they have established, so we can have a more democratic society,” she said.

Dwight incorporates a similar agenda in his curriculum for his class, also on race, gender and the media.

“By the end of the course, I hope the students leave more empowered to process media messages,” said Dwight. “The key challenge is getting them to see media constructions intersecting their own lives.”

Rosengard believes universities should offer classes with rotating professors to circulate a diversity of ideas.

Looking across at the panel of professors, he remarked, “I wish we were all from the same school so we could kick butt.”

The business laptop belonged to Richard Burke, business manager for the AEJMC Central Office, who has spent 21 years with AEJMC/ASJMC.

AEJMC convention information, including registration information for walk-in attendees, was on the laptop.

In addition, Burke reported that the laptop held AEJMC “ledgers and financial statements,” but financial information for AEJMC convention attendees was kept separately. The stolen laptop only listed names, addresses, and telephone numbers for the attendees.

Burke reports that he left the registration office locked at around 5:30 p.m. last night, and that Fred Williams, convention manager, opened the office about three hours later, saw the laptop was missing, and thought Burke had taken it with him.

Burke returned to the office at around 7:45 a.m. and found that the laptop was taken, but the printer, mouse and everything else in the office remained intact.

Burke reported the missing laptop to the Marriott claims office.

Burke also reported the burglary to the San Francisco Police Station on Bryant Street, who sent a police officer to get the make, serial number, and approximate value of the laptop.

Burke estimated the laptop’s value at around $3500. The police plan to use the serial number to track down the laptop if the burglars try to sell it at a pawnshop.

All convention information is backed up on both a hard drive at the AEJMC Central Office in Columbia, South Carolina as well as on disks here in San Francisco.

“The hard part is we had just finished inputting convention information from walk-ins and changes made at the beginning of the conference,” said Burke.

However, walk-in information is recorded on the paper registration forms, and will only need to be reentered.

If you have any information regarding the burglary, please contact the AEJMC central office at (803) 798-0271 and the police.

At the session, “Women Reporters in Danger: Have We Made Progress?,” Kim Landon, associate professor of journalism at Utica College in New York, led the discussion on women in these types of situations.
Landon said she began her reporting career in 1976—a time when women were sheltered from reporting in dangerous areas.

“That’s changed,” Landon said.

And her panel agreed.

“The pool of reporters…changed (during Sept. 11),” said Suzanne Huffman, professor of journalism at Texas Christian University “The women were down there—right there on it. There was no big policy discussion.”

As a result, Huffman said she co-authored a book with panel colleague Judith Sylvester, associate professor at Louisiana State University titled, “Women Journalists at Ground Zero: Covering Crisis,” to record the stories and experiences of women reporting from New York’s Ground Zero after Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.

“Women were not being stopped or told ‘no,’” Huffman said. “They went on the job and stayed on the job,” she said.

In addition, Sylvester said for the book she interviewed a number of embedded female journalists working in Iraq..

“(They were) being allowed to go to the front with the men,” Sylvester said, “even when female military personnel couldn’t.”

Dana Hull, staff writer for “The San Jose Mercury News,” said she went to Baghdad as an unembedded reporter and experienced similar advantages.

Hull said she teamed up with a female Iraqi translator and visited the homes of local women, to find out if reconstruction was actually taking place.

The Iraqi women were more comfortable talking to women, Hull said. They told her: “The worst thing about the occupation is that our husbands are unemployed…and they are home driving us crazy.”

Nevertheless, Huffman said women experience conflict and stress related to their job and family duties.

You don’t have to be at Ground Zero to be in danger,” said Gretchen Dworznik, broadcasting instructor at Ashland University in Ohio.

Dworznik said reporters can psychologically suffer from the impact of other stories, such as fires, murders and car accident scenes.

Professionals who have constant contact with victims can suffer from something called, “compassion fatigue,” Dworznik said. And reporters are often reluctant to face it, she added—women especially.

Dworznik said women don’t express their feelings on the matter, because they are afraid they will look incompetent. But, Dworznik said that even health professionals and firefighters at Ground Zero had to get counseling for compassion fatigue.

In addition to compassion fatigue, Hull said that war reporting can take a toll on relationships. A lot of foreign correspondents are either single or divorced, she said.

“Their relationship with war (is) their relationship,” Hull said.

Hull said a 23-year-old Lebanese freelance photographer recently died on the scene in Beirut.

But, overall, Hull said she’s impressed with women reporters in the United States and Middle East alike.

“We’ve come a long way,” she said.

Convention-goers found themselves in company with winning journalists who narrated stories about their careers, the countries they visited, their remarkable stories that gained them the attention of the Pulitzer, and their opinions about receiving the prize.

Among the panelist on Saturday were Michael Parks, who won the 1987 Pulitzer for his Los as part of the Newsday reporting team, received the award in 1974 for a 32-part collaborative investigation of the international flow of heroin from Turkey to New York.

The panelists said that the Pulitzer pushes journalists to work harder for quality stories. They said that it’s what keeps journalism vibrant, inspires students. Going out there, working hard, getting to the root of the story experiencing the same events that people abroad are experiencing, and writing a story with depth to tell readers what is happening in the world.

The panelists also discussed the issues of preparing for the stories, the personal and physical constraints that fell upon them during the strenuous process of covering such dangerous stories and the dilemmas they’ve encountered after achieving such an acclaim.

“You don’t wake up in the morning thinking that you’re gonna win a Pulitzer,” Parks said with a slight twang in his speech. “You wake up and think that you’re gonna do Pulitzer-level work.”

Parks said that one of the things that changed history was apartheid, and that the 21st century is very different from the 20th because of this event that changed not only people’s lives but also future course of a nation.

“If you view the struggle of apartheid as ping-pong, like ‘the government does this, the people do that’, it’s gonna be a one-sided story. But the story is not a ping-pong match. You get close and be a part of it and experience the same challenges,” Parks said.

Parks discussed the idea behind the Pulitzer, and what the award was recognizing. He also offered his ideas about what it took for journalists to win the award.

“It recognizes the ability and success of telling a story about a country and its people, with depth,” Parks said. “The story is not ping-pong match it’s the story of people struggling. I was where the struggle was, and that’s where the people were.”

With an engaging disposition, Parks rhetorically asks, “Does the Pulitzer really change your life?” Taking a moment to absorb the curious looks of the audience, he answers, “Yes, it does. You are expected to work at that level for the rest of your career.”

When describing the characteristic of a Pulitzer-winning piece, Parks said that a journalist doesn’t only have to work hard, but he or she also has to have a story. It’s the dream of any journalist to win an award with such honor, acclaim and hype.

“One’s duty is to the story and the people who need to know about it,” he said.

Parks said that the pep rally before the game is a good motivation for everyone in the newsroom. “He was able to use the Pulitzer leverage to improve the quality of the paper.”

On another note, Payne described the Pulitzer as “a blessing and a curse. If you win a Pulitzer young, it can throw you off. The Pulitzer can ruin your life if you’re not careful.”

He also said that more than just news, the story was a project—in reference to the series that he and his colleagues worked on.

“The idea was to do Pulitzer level work. It’s not the prize, but the quality of work,” he said. “You can’t control the prize but you can control the work.”

When he encounters young reporters at the beginning of their careers winning the Pulitzer, Payne said that he tells them, “Remember this is only the beginning. Get back to work. We need you.”

This group of 18 students was hardcore, funny and (most of them) could spell. What a package. We owe them our heartfelt thanks for all the hard work, long hours and nary a complaint. When long days turned into all-nighters because of production issues, they kept going and kept covering stories.

Next year, another group of advisers will be looking for another set of dedicated students to do the job. They’ll be hard-pressed to find a group as good as ours, but we hope they try. We’ll be there to watch.

Erna Smith, San Francisco State University
Bill Celis, University of Southern California
Kym Fox, Texas State University
Carol Wilcox, Virginia State University

Dottie Katkeff, Advertising Manager, San Francisco State University Journalism Department
Arun Unnikrishnan, Computer Network Manager, San Francisco State University Journalism Department
Carlos Armenta, Fricke-Parks Press
Gayle Whittaker, Dean, College of Extended Learning, San Francisco State University
Dan Geddes, SFSU Downtown Center
Shelly Blockhus, SFSU Downtown Center
Leigh Yarworth, SFSU Downtown Center
Dylan Romero, SFSU Downtown Center
Fred Williams, Communication and Convention Manager, AEJMC
Richard Burke, Business Manager, AEJMC
Jennifer McGill, Executive Director, AEJMC
The Alameda Newspaper Group
Deborah Gump, Ohio University
Venise Wagner, San Francisco State University
Colleen Callahan, University of Wisconsin-River Falls
Linda Bowen, California State University-Northridge
Rachele Kanigel, San Francisco State University
Eric Meyer, University of Illinois
Laurie Lattimore-Volkmann
Wilson Lowrey, Newspaper Division Head, AEJMC
Lorraine Branham, University of Texas
Maggie Rivas Rodriquez, University of Texas

He also spent time as a freelance photographer in Poland, which helped inspire him for this project. "Screen Culture" will be on exhibit in Portland, Oregon in January and Dayton, Ohio in March 2007.

This multimedia presentation exhibits Dennis’s photos with his own commentary.

To learn more about Dennis Chamberlin’s extensive experience visit: www.dennischamberlin.com

Sleeping in cars, churches and a newspaper building in Mississippi and later in New Orleans, Davidson said she didn’t shower for 10 days and was at one time transmitting around 100 pictures a day – images that would be printed in newspapers all over the nation and receive hundreds of hits online.

Davidson is one of five 2006 Pulitzer Prize winners who shared behind-the-scenes details about the stories they investigated, lived through and continue to care about during a Friday afternoon AEJMC session.

Davidson showed a selection of compelling pictures depicting New Orleans just days after Hurricane Katrina hit, causing both members of the audience and fellow panelists to tear up.

“My lasting impression of this disaster is how a whole American city just imploded,” said Davidson, who specializes in overseas conflicts and has covered stories in Northern Ireland, Nigeria, Iraq and the Middle East. “That’s not supposed to happen here,” she said.

Brian Thevenot, a staff writer of eight years for The Times-Picayune of New Orleans, received two Pulitzers along with the rest of the newspaper’s staff in the categories of Public Service and Breaking News Reporting for coverage of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.

“Often a writer’s impulse is to get their arms around the whole [story],” said Thevenot, gesturing with his arms. “But you have a greater impact telling the story of one or two people.”

With seven or eight fellow journalists, one computer, a few notebooks and a couple of jugs of water, Thevenot and his crew slogged into the flooded streets to report the story. Their dispatches painted immediate and compelling portraits of the individuals affected by Hurricane Katrina.

Thevenot calls this “the narrow but deep approach to journalism.”

This method also brought Susan Schmidt, a reporter for The Washington Post since 1983, success in her revealing coverage of political lobbyist Jack Abramoff, winning her a Pulitzer for Investigative Reporting.

After an initial tip from a prominent Republican politician in 2003, Schmidt and her colleagues turned up mountains of information about Abramoff’s questionable practices.

“We had so much [material] that we had to pick a couple of issues and go deep on those,” Schmidt said.

Although it took four or five months to build the first article, once it was in print, the story exploded and people who formerly thought Abramoff was invincible called to give Schmidt information.

“The impact was stunning,” Schmidt said.

Jerry Kammer, a reporter with the Copley News Service since 2002, received a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting together with the staff of The San Diego Union-Tribune for similar exposés of Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, Rep. Jerry Lewis and lobbyist Bill Lowery.

Copley News and The Tribune uncovered that Cunningham took more than $2.4 million in bribes to help defense contractors land lucrative government contracts.

After reporter Marcus Stern of The Tribune looked at Cunningham’s real estate purchases out of curiosity, Stern and Kammer started unraveling Cunningham’s paper trail.

“We started looking at all the paper we could,” Kammer said. “You sort of develop a reporter’s mania, needing to look at everything.”

Doug Bates, associate editor of The Oregonian, received a Pulitzer Prize with Rick Attig for what the Pulitzer Committee called “their persuasive, richly reported editorials” on the deplorable state of an Oregon mental hospital.

Bates and Attig started a 10-month campaign to draw the attention of the legislature to the decrepit state of the Oregon State Mental Hospital, the setting for the film “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

Bates and Attig visited the hospital themselves. Bates said they saw five or six patients shoved into rooms made for one or two and inspected a former crematorium, where they found thousands of canisters of ashes of forgotten people who had died at the hospital.

“I couldn’t sleep the night after I visited that place,” Bates said. “It was a 19th Century fright house.”

Because of the journalists’ careful reporting and continuous attention to the hospital, the Oregon Legislature passed a resolution authorizing the construction of a new mental hospital and began cleaning up what Bates calls a “stain on the state of Oregon.”

Over 2,300 people were expected to attend the convention in San Francisco. For more on what happened at the gala, click on our online soundslides presentation filled with photos and interviews.

“Latest Industry Research” featured presentations by Cristal Williams, project director of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, which showcased research compiled by other organizations. Michael P. Smith, executive director of the Media Management Center at Northwestern University, also presented at the session that was sponsored by the AEJMC Council of Affiliates and the Radio-Television Journalism Division.

The presentations covered a variety of topics including observational studies on media use, online readership, newspaper ethics and consumer experiences with varied mediums. It was the research that had not fully been released, however, that some would call astounding.

The Future of News was a project funded by the Ford Foundation and the Radio-Television News Directors’ Foundation. It looked into the definition of news, what users of news care about and how they want to receive their news.

Although the results of the project have not been released, Papper presented some of the findings earlier this year after the Radio-Television News Directors’ Association requested a report. Papper complied and then mentioned the same previously discussed figures at the session. He pointed out that there would not be a dramatic difference from the final numbers.

The 1,016 people surveyed were asked to define news on a one-to-five scale. A five would represent what they considered, without a doubt, “news,” and one would be what they considered definitely “not news.” Using this rating system, researchers provided a clear distinction that many worry does not accurately reflect society today.

Local and network TV news programs were given a 4.4 rating. “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” was given at 2.1 rating.

Younger respondents did not give Stewart a higher rating than older respondents, Papper said. They just happened to be more familiar with who he is.

Another question asked by the researchers was whether people consider “news” and “information” to be the same. Over two-thirds of those surveyed said the two are different.

When it came to what people chose as their source for news, local TV news came in first, followed by newspapers, then network TV and the Internet in fourth place.

Additionally, when people were asked if they could get their news the same way whenever they wanted, almost 61 percent said they would want to receive news through TV.

After providing the findings, Papper offered this thought to the audience. The switch to the Internet as the dominant source for news is going to be slow – perhaps not even as fast as everyone is suggesting, he said.

The complete findings of the Future of News will be released next month.

The results of the 2005 Annual Survey of Journalism and Mass Communication Graduates were presented along with findings from three related surveys by University of Georgia Professor Lee B. Becker and his colleague, Tudor Vlad, at a research panel Friday afternoon.

Becker said the surveys are conducted on an annual basis to help students, professionals and educators monitor trends in journalism, public relations and other communication fields. Becker is the director of the University of Georgia’s James M. Cox Jr. Center for International Mass Communication Training & Research.

For example, Becker said one of the studies, the “Survey of Doctoral Programs in Communication,” is used to “help the field create a more diverse faculty representing students.”

“Right now,” Becker said, “it’s disproportionately white and disproportionately male.”

Becker began his research presentation with a report on the 2005 Annual Survey of Journalism & Mass Communication Graduates. He said students – undergraduate and graduate alike – use the information to determine employment and salary prospects after graduating.

Becker said the job market overall is strong for graduates, and he said it is experiencing recovery after the economy took a dip five years ago.

This is the second year job interviews and job offers have improved for students, Becker said, although he noted that employers were not spending as much money on mass communication and journalism professionals.

Salaries for recent graduates increased over the previous year, but inflation erased those gains for graduates of bachelor’s programs. Master’s degree recipients were able to stay slightly ahead of inflation.

Bachelor’s degree recipients in 2005 reported a median annual salary of $29,000, up from $27,800 in 2004, according to the study. Master’s degree recipients earned a median salary of $37,000, up from $33,000 the previous year.

Becker said he noticed a small drop in employers’ willingness to hire graduate-level professionals, due to the cost.

In addition, University of Georgia researchers found that students were apprehensive about choosing journalism and mass communication careers because of the turmoil in those fields, said Vlad, the assistant director for the Cox Center.

As a result, Vlad said they asked graduates to make a prediction about the future of the industry in one of their surveys.

“What was surprising to me,” Vlad said, “was how optimistic students seem to be. They think jobs will grow. … They think they will always find jobs 20 years from now.”

Other interesting findings from the surveys included job growth for women and increasing jobs in the television industry.

“It’s always interesting to see what the trends are with student enrollment and the job market,” said Karen M. Markin, director of research development at the University of Rhode Island.

Markin said she analyzes research to promote collaborative communication between different academic disciplines.

The Annual Survey of Journalism & Mass Communication Graduates and the Survey of Editors and News Directors can be accessed online at grady.uga.edu/annualsurveys/.

In a room full of high-ranking men and women in business attire, Pamela Creedon, outgoing president of ASJMC, and a professor at the University of Iowa, said, “We should change our name to ‘jello’ except that it will only be spelled with one ‘l,’ for Journalism Education Leadership Organization. It’s easy to remember and we like it, right?”

A name change could help avoid confusion with similar sounding acronyms such as AEJMC and ACEJMC.

Members also discussed revising the bylaws and supporting an AEJMC ad hoc committee on gender and race equity.

ASJMC’s new president, Loren Ghiglione, was introduced at the meeting and handed a gavel. He is a professor and former dean at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.

Members were asked to suggest new acronyms for the organization. Tom Kunkel, dean of the University of Maryland School of Journalism and ASJMC president-elect, said a new name would give others a better sense of what the organization represents. Kunkel said a new name shouldn’t begin with the letter “A” to avoid confusion with other organizations. He asked the members to think of something that is easy to remember and will distinguish them from ASJ and CEJ. Members also wanted to seriously consider “JELO,” which Creedon initially meant as a joke.

The organization agreed it will issue a call for name ideas and then create a ballot to send to all of its members.

Members also considered revisiting their strategic plan to become more active in boosting AEJMC’s campaign to help schools meet gender and race hiring goals. In 1989, the AEJMC approved a resolution with a 50 percent rule. Women and minorities were supposed to represent at least 50 percent of the membership and affiliated groups by the year 2000. Six years ago, however, only 42 programs – or 21 percent – of 201 programs met the criteria.

ASJMC members approved the same resolution supported earlier Friday during the AEJMC business meeting. They asked incoming AEJMC president Wayne Wanta of the University of Missouri to appoint a gender, race, ethnicity and diversity assessment committee in 2006-2007 and to raise money to support continuing research into issues of gender and race at schools of journalism and mass communication.

Other important topics on the agenda included a proposal to create a position for a telecommunications / public relations person who would serve as a liaison between ASJMC and other organizations, such as AEJMC and ACEJMC.

Susan Keith, an assistant professor at Rutgers University, had her students find coverage of a major event in sports history and compare the old stories with the coverage of current sports events.

“It was an enlightening experience for the students,” Keith said. “It helped them see how journalism as a whole has changed over time and made them more critical consumers of the sports media they are consuming.”

Keith was one panelist who discussed the issue as part of a session called “It’s About More than Scores: Teaching Courses About Sports, Communication and Society.” The panel was sponsored by the Mass Communication and Society and Radio-Television Journalism divisions.

John Curley, former chief executive officer of the Gannett Company and professional-in-residence at Penn State University, moderated the panel.

Other panelists were Bill Knowles, professor emeritus at the University of Montana; Marie Hardin, assistant professor at Penn State; and Brad Schultz, assistant professor at the University of Mississippi.

Panelists described their respective courses, teaching techniques, class assignments and teaching aids.

Keith’s course is designed to illustrate the dichotomy between sports as journalism and sports as entertainment. She achieves this by talking with her students about sports books. Students learn to distinguish between serious texts containing useful information and literature written for commercial purposes, she said.

Knowles’ upper-division course for undergraduates brings to life the historical union between sports and media by showing real media footage and inviting the school’s head coaches to answer questions before the class.

“[The students] stumble on some remarkable history in the process sometimes,” Knowles said. “Coaches do have a historical perspective.”

Knowles replaces his midterm with 75- and 125-word blogs on reading, class material and guest speakers. After Knowles reads the blogs, he posts them for the class to read.

Hardin described how she runs her upper division communication course called Sports, Media and Society. It is designed to help students critically view the role of sports media in American culture – specifically issues of race, gender, sexuality, violence and civil life.

Hardin hopes students will develop oral and written communication skills through weekly exercises.

Students also complete a series of three learning activities. They can choose from assignments such as interviewing a coach, watching the Super Bowl in a new light and comparing mediated presentations of male and female sporting events.

Similar to Hardin’s course, Schultz’s Sports Journalism and American Culture class examines the relationship between sports and media using a sociological approach.

Topics include how sports media treat important cultural issues such as race, crime and ethics.

“We look at sports journalism as it was practiced,” Schultz said. “By reading sports literature and sports media sources, students get a better understanding of the times during which they were written.”

He focuses on how sports media are important in a larger cultural context by evaluating defining periods in 20th Century America.

“In any culture, sports and society are like this,” Schultz said, as he linked his fingers together. “It’s very hand and glove. You’ve got to know something about culture and students are often woefully unprepared when they walk into the classroom.”