News 1997-1998 Academic Year
Survey Data Released
At the annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) in August, Center Director Lee B. Becker released the results of the Annual Surveys of Journalism & Mass Communication, which track key labor force statistics in the field of journalism and mass communication.
Dr. Becker said the labor market for journalism and mass communication in the United States appears to be at full-employment, and salaries have increased in inflation-adjusted dollars in recent years.
The Annual Surveys of Journalism & Mass Communication are housed in the Cox Center though funded separately by a consortium of sponsors. Details of the findings of the surveys are available on the survey web site, www.grady.uga.edu/annualsurveys.
While at the AEJMC conference, held in Baltimore, Becker also participated in a session honoring long-time journalism educator Vernon Stone, who has monitored key labor statistics for the broadcast journalism field. Becker spoke of the importance of Prof. Stone's work to the field. Stone, professor emeritus at the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri, was given the Distinguished Broadcast Journalism Educator award by the Radio-TV Journalism Division of AEJMC.
Evaluation Techniques Examined
Center Director Lee B. Becker presented an overview of techniques used to evaluate university-level journalism instruction in the United States at the 21st Scientific Conference and General Assembly of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) in July in Glasgow, Scotland.
Dr. Becker said journalism educators around the world could learn from U.S. efforts at program evaluation, including the use of accreditation, but the U.S. procedures had serious limitations and that no procedures, regardless of how good they were, should be transferred from one cultural setting to another without critical assessment of them.
The review of academic program evaluation in the U.S. was presented to the Professional Education Section of IAMCR and had been written by Dr. Becker and Dr. Gerald M. Kosicki at Ohio State University.
Prior to attending the conference in Glasgow, Dr. Becker visited the Netherlands where he talked with journalism and mass communication trainers in Amsterdam and Maastrict. In Amsterdam he met with Ms. Sascha Noe, project manager at The Management & Media Academy. In Maastrict, he met with Jan Bierhoff, managing director of the European Journalism Centre, and with Mogens Schmidt, director of programmes, and Marius Lukosiunas, project manager, at the European center. The purpose of those meetings was to explore areas of common interest between the Cox and European training centers. Becker also held conversations with a number of European and Asian journalism educators about issues in journalism education and possible Cox Center collaborations at the Glasgow conference.
Conference held in Romania on copyright & intellectual property
Experts from the U.S. and Europe met in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, in June to discuss copyright law and conventions.
Center conducts newspaper design workshop in Lithuania
Twenty-nine journalists, representing 26 regional newspapers, participated in a three-day workshop on newspaper design conducted April 29-May 1 at the School of Journalism at the University of Vilnius in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Cox executives speak on investment in Polish newspaper
Dean Eisner, vice president of Corporate Development at Cox Enterprises, and Jay Smith, president of Cox Newspapers Inc., a subsidiary of Cox Enterprises, visited the Grady College as guests of the James M. Cox Jr. Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research in May.
Publishers invite Becker to summarize research
At the invitation of the Newsletter Publishers Foundation, Cox Center Director Dr. Lee B. Becker summarized his research on the journalism and mass communication labor market at the Newsletter Publishers Association meeting in Washington, D.C., on May 31. Becker also told representatives of the newsletter industry in attendance of the international training activities of the Cox Center.
Becker outlines Center goals to students, faculty
Cox Center Director Dr. Lee B. Becker told faculty and graduate students in the Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication on May 12 that one of his goals is to increase the involvement of University of Georgia students and faculty in Cox Center programs. Prof. Becker, in a presentation sponsored by the Graduate Caucus, a graduate student organization in the Grady College, reviewed Center initiatives and outlined Center goals. Becker said one goal of the Center is to "contribute to the internationalization of the experiences of Grady College graduate and undergraduate students." Becker called on graduate students to inform him of their interests and consider joining Center research and training initiatives as they develop.
Center hosts NIS visitors
The Cox Center hosted eight journalists from five newly independent states in a day-long program in Athens on May 8. The journalists visited a class, heard a lecture on journalism education in the United States, and toured facilities of the Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.
The journalists, from Azerbaijan, the Republic of Moldova, Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, were traveling in the United States under the auspices of the Georgia Council for International Visitors and the U.S. Information Agency. Cox Center Director Lee B. Becker, Prof. Conrad Fink, director of the James M. Cox Jr. Institute for Newspaper Management Studies, and Cox Center Program Facilitator Kristina White hosted the group at lunch, which was followed by the lecture on journalism education by Dr. Becker.
Tomaselli speaks on African cultural studies
In a lecture partially supported by the Cox Center, Dr. Keyan Tomaselli, director of the Centre for Cultural and Media Studies at the University of Natal in Durban, South Africa, spoke to graduate and undergraduate students in the Grady College on April 20, 1998. Prof. Tomaselli's lecture was on "African Cultural Studies." Prof. Tomaselli served as a visiting professor at the African Studies Center at Michigan State University in the Spring of 1998.
Newest Cox Visiting Scholar warms to U.S.
Argentinean journalist Jorge Alvarez and his family arrived in Athens, Georgia, in late December to begin a year of study and research.
German Scholar details research on newspapers during visit
German media scholar Dr. Klaus Schoenbach presented results of a study on successful newspapers during a recent visit to the University of Georgia.
Becker serves on Fulbright committee
For the second year, Center Director Lee Becker served as a member of the special review committee in April for the Fulbright Professional Journalism Award in Germany program. Becker teamed with journalists from the Kansas City Star and National Public Radio and a journalism educator from Montana State University to evaluate applicants for this new program for young journalists. The review committee recommended applicants to the Fulbright Commission in Bonn. The Council for the International Exchange of Scholars assists in administration of the Fulbright Program and can provide additional details on the German journalism exchange.
Cox Center visiting Scholar
Dr. Eva Carolin Ulmer, a native of the Federal Republic of Germany, is visiting the Cox Center as a visiting scholar. She has significant experience in various phases of professional communication and has just completed her doctorate at the University of Oxford/Trinity College on "Spain and the challenge of immigration." She is fluent in German, English, Spanish and French. She is collaborating with Prof. Allan MacLeod on a research and training project related to radio productions.
German and U.S. Media Evaluation
Professor Becker visited Chicago in November to attend the Midwest Association of Public Opinion Research (MAPOR) conference to present two papers. The first was "A Comparative Study of the Role of Media Evaluations: German and U.S. Differences and Similarities" (with Ohio State University Professor Gerald M. Kosicki). The second was "Media Prerequisites and Personnel: Television and Newspaper Differences in Hiring Strategies" (with University of Georgia Professor C. Ann Hollifield and Ohio State University Professor Gerald M. Kosicki).
Dr. R. Warwick Blood
Dr. Warwick Blood, Associate Professor of Communications at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst, Australia, visited the Cox International Center on Nov. 10-11. Dr. Blood's main research interests are risk communication and public opinion. He met with the Grady College Graduate Caucus and presented a lecture titled "Public Opinion at Risk: Race and the News Media in Australia."
Robert Bosch Foundation Alumni Association, Washington, DC
Prof. Lee Becker presented a lecture on "Journalism Education in the U.S. and the Federal Republic of Germany" at the Robert Bosch Foundation Alumni Association meeting in Washington, DC, in November.
Puerto Rico
Professors Lee Becker and Leara Rhodes traveled to Puerto Rico in November to meet with journalists and media specialists to discuss plans for a jointly-sponsored tri-lingual journalism training program.
Middle Eastern and North African Journalists
Eleven economic journalists from North Africa and the Middle East visited the Cox International Center on October 28. This group was organized under the auspices of the Institute of International Education and the United States Information Agency (USIA). The Georgia Council for International Visitors brought them to the Grady College to learn more about how economic journalism is practiced in the U.S. Professor Lee Becker lectured about journalism education in the U.S. Professors Conrad Fink and Ernie Hynds commented on the journalism program at the Grady College. Afterwards the group toured the journalism building and took a walking tour of North campus.
European Planning Trip
Prof. Lee Becker traveled to Europe in September to develop future workshops for the Cox Center. First, he represented the James M. Cox, Jr. Center at a conference in Amsterdam formally launching the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR), a new academic unit of the University of Amsterdam. Then he spent two days at the Institute for Journalism and Communication Research in the Academy for Music and Theater in Hannover, Germany, where he and longtime colleague and collaborator, Prof. Klaus Schoenbach, discussed future projects for the Center. Prof. Becker's next stop was in Bonn, Germany where he represented the Cox Center at a symposium on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Allensbach Institute for Demoskopie, the oldest and most famous Germany survey and social science research firm. Prof. Becker next traveled to Prague, where he visited Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty at the invitation of Jeff Trimble, former foreign editor of U.S. News and World Report and now associate director of broadcasting at RFERL. He also visited the Center for Independent Journalism, which is headquartered at the radios. At both organizations Prof. Becker explored possibilities of future training projects collaborations, for example, training journalists in the former Soviet states in central Asia. Finally, Prof. Becker met with Dr. Aralynn McMane, director of educational programs at the World Association of Newspapers in Paris. Among other things, they agreed to move forward with plans for a workshop in Lithuania later this academic year.
Japanese Visitors
Prof. Shunji Mikami of the faculty of Sociology at Tokyo University in Tokyo and fourteen Japanese students visited the Cox International Center and the Grady College of Journalism on September 2. Prof. Becker lectured on audience responses to new media developments in the U.S. The students met faculty members in the Grady College and toured the building and also took a campus tour before returning to Atlanta later that afternoon.
