News 1998-1999 Academic Year
Russian Student Journalist Participates in Seminar
Yulya Burlakova, 20, a student in the journalism department at St. Petersburg State University, Russia, joined more than 50 college editors-in-chief from across the United States in a four-day management seminar at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication in August.
Ms. Burlakova is editor-in-chief of Gaudeamus, a bi-weekly newspaper for young people in the St. Petersburg area. She was the first international editor to attend the annual Management Seminar for College Newspaper Editors, now in its fourth year.
The seminar covered such topics as motivating college staff members, managing peers, conflict management, time management, business and personnel law, libel, copyright and other legal topics.
It also dealt with coverage of such issues as rape, suicide, murder, and other controversial topics and offered advice on how to build an effective working relationship with university administration and how to work with advisers and publication boards. Instructors for the seminar were leaders in the newspaper field and represented papers and groups including The Associated Press, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, and the Washington Post.
The management seminar was organized and sponsored by the James M. Cox Jr. Institute for Newspaper Management Studies, the domestic sister organization of the Cox Center. Ms. Burlakova's registration fee for the workshop was covered by the Cox Center. Prof. Conrad C. Fink directs the Cox Institute.
Prior to attending the workshop, Ms. Burlakova held a three-week internship position at Atlanta Press, a weekly newspaper which concentrates on politics and entertainment. Her hosts in Atlanta included journalists from the Fulton County Daily Report and The Atlanta Journal Constitution.
Dr. Melinda Hawley, associate director of the Cox Institute and director of Public Service and Outreach of the Grady College, organized the trip and internship for Ms. Burlakova, whom she met in April of 1999 in St. Petersburg. Dr. Hawley was in Russia to participate in the Cox Center evaluation of the Knight International Press Fellowship Program, which sent six trainers to Russia since 1994.
Pacific Workshop Planned at New Orleans Meeting
The annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication held August 4-7, 1999, in New Orleans, Louisiana, provided Cox Center Director Dr. Lee Becker the opportunity to meet with Pacific media specialist Dr. Jim Richstad to plan an October workshop in the Pacific. Wilson Lowrey, a doctoral student in the Cox Center, also attended the planning meeting. Lowrey, Dr.Richstad and Dr. Becker will travel to the Fiji Islands in early October to do a three-day workshop on graphic design. The workshop will be conducted in conjunction with the Pacific Island News Association conference, also to be held in Fiji.
Dr. Richstad, who lives in Seattle, has spent much of his career running training and research projects in the Pacific. He has represented the Cox Center in workshops conducted in the Pacific during the 1990s.
Dr. Becker also released the results of the 1998 Annual Surveys of Journalism & Mass Communication while at the AEJMC conference in New Orleans. The Annual Surveys are conducted in the Cox Center but are funded separately from other Center activities.
Center Conducts Evaluation Project
The Cox Center, in collaboration with the International Center for Journalists in Washington, D.C., conducted a year-long assessment of the impact of an international journalism training program operated by ICFJ.
During the course of the year, Center staff interviewed journalists and other media professionals in 11 countries where ICFJ trainers have worked since 1994.
Read full preliminary article.
Indonesian Journalist Meets Students and Faculty
Mr. Hardi Effendi, international editor and reporter for Waspada, a daily newspaper in Medan, Indonesia, used much of the time during his short visit at the Cox Center, the Grady College and the University of Georgia in June trying to find out what his hosts knew about his Home country.
"What do you know about my country?" he asked students in a graduate seminar on international communication in the Grady College. The students knew more than Mr. Effendi seemed to expect. He followed their responses with information about the social change in his country as it moves toward democracy.
Mr. Effendi's visit to the University of Georgia was organized by the Cox Center. He spent time meeting students, talking with faculty, visiting the facilities of the Grady College, and touring North Campus of the University of Georgia.
Mr. Effendi's journalistic credentials are quite varied. He has been assistant editor of music and film at the Waspada paper, managing editor of a women's magazine in Medan, and a photographer and a cartoonist.
The visit by the Indonesian journalist to the University of Georgia was part of a month-long tour of the U.S., sponsored by the United States Information Agency.
Research Team on Trade Meets in San Francisco
Researchers from Japan, the Netherlands and the U.S. met in San Francisco on May 30 to discuss the next phase of an ongoing project on media coverage of trade. Cox Center Director Dr. Lee B. Becker attended the meeting, which was organized to coincide with the annual conference of the International Communication Association.
Dr. Becker has been involved in the international trade project since 1993. Previous research has identified forces resulting in the localization of the coverage of such important international stories as trade disputes. Local reporters are often less prepared to cover such complicated stories than specialists working for national and international media organizations.
The research team outlined the design of the next phase of the project, which will involve interviews with journalists and economic specialists and focus groups with ordinary citizens. The work will be completed by early in 2000.
Latvian Newspaper Professionals Learn about Readership Research
Twenty-two journalists from newspapers around Latvia came together in a session in Jurmala in the middle of April to learn more about ways to talk with their audiences.
In a three-day workshop sponsored by the Latvian Media Professionals Training Centre, Riga,and the James M. Cox Jr. Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research at the University of Georgia, the participants discussed the techniques of conducting focus groups and surveys of their readers. They learned about everything from the art of asking questions to the special techniques of scientific sampling.
Cox Center Director Meets Students at New Swiss University
Four characteristics of the media system in the United States often aren't obvious to outside observers, but these characteristics have great influence on the practice of journalism in the country, Cox Center Director Lee B. Becker told students at Universita della Svizzera italiana in Lugana, Switzerland, in January.
Prof. Becker said the students should be aware of the large size of the U.S. media system, its decentralized nature, its commercial orientation and the change it is undergoing.
The students were enrolled in a course on journalism as practiced in western societies and are part of a new program in communication studies at the two-year-old Italian language university in the southern Swiss city.
Prof. Becker had responsibility for coverage of the journalism in the United States and other English speaking countries in the semester-long course. The students have heard or will hear from other experts about journalism as practiced in France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland.
Approximately 20 students participated in the two-week session led by Prof. Becker. The lectures focused on the legal basis of journalism in the United States and Australia, Canada and the UK, the coverage by the U.S. media of the Watergate and recent Clinton scandals, journalism education in the United States and other English language countries, and technological change and its likely impact on the practice of journalism.
Approximately 600 students are enrolled in the new Swiss university, which has specialties in only two areas, communication science and economics.
Scientists and Journalists Join Workshop in Quito
Scientists at a Cox Center workshop for journalists held in Quito, Ecuador, in December called for a partnership between journalists and scientists to help disseminate information about ecological issues to the general public.
Approximately 20 journalists, journalism students and scientists attended the one-day workshop, held in conjunction with the Third International Symposium on Sustainable Mountain Development December 9-14 in Quito. The workshop for journalism was on the first day of the symposium and was designed to set the stage for interaction for journalists and scientists during the entire symposium.
Cox Center Visiting Scholars Complete Stay
Two mass communication scholars from the Federal Republic of Germany completed their visits to the Cox Center in November and returned to Europe.
Student Paper Award Established
Wisconsin mass communication graduate students Dietram Scheufele and Patricia Moy received the first MAPOR Fellows Student Paper Award at the annual meeting of the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research (MAPOR) in Chicago in November. Cox Center Director Lee B. Becker, who, with Dr. Paul Lavrakas at Ohio State University, organized and ran the student paper competition leading up to the award, announced the selection of Moy and Scheufele at the Chicago conference. Becker was named MAPOR Fellow in 1996 in acknowledgment of his leadership role in MAPOR and public opinion research. Lavrakas was selected MAPOR Fellow in 1997.
Japanese Scholar Talks to Doctoral Students
Prof. Youichi Ito of Keio University in Japan told graduate students at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication that it is possible to develop research strategies to compare the degree of political development in countries around the world. Prof. Ito's visit to the Grady College was sponsored by the Cox Center and graduate students in the Grady College.
Fiji Workshop
Fijian Island Journalists participating in an indigenous language workshop learned about the importance of language on preserving culture and about how to use their media to inform their audience about important events in the community.
Producer Speaks on International Program
David Bryant, former producer for WUGA-FM, told the Grady College students that his perspective on globalization changed dramatically as he worked on his four-part radio series.
Romanian Faculty Member Visits Cox Center
Doru Pop, a faculty member in the Department of Journalism at Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, spent a week as a guest of the Cox Center in September.
