Missouri Journalism Pride Points: 2009-10

• Prominent industry professionals and leading scholars shared their expertise, recruited for internships and jobs and interacted with students and faculty during campus visits and through online technology. Students and faculty also met with some of these professionals when engaged in on-site visits of their media outlets, agencies and other companies.
  
  
  • Mazhar Abbas, defender of press freedom, Pakistan
  • Joe Aguilar, assistant sports editor, Daily Herald, Arlington Heights, Ill.
  • Tim Armstrong, chairman and CEO, AOL
  • Brandt Ayers, publisher, Anniston (Ala.) Star, and his wife.
  • Josephine Ayers, founder and editor, Longleaf Magazine, the Anniston, Ala., community magazine.
  • Drew Babb, BJ '68, MA '70, owner of the creative consultancy Drew Babb & Associates, Lincoln, Va.
  • David Bell, operating advisor, Pegasus Capital Advisors
  • Melissa Black, BJ '94, outreach coordinator, Missouri Department of Transportation
  • Nissa W. Booker, ABC News, Talent Recruitment and Development, New York
  • Paul Brown, anchor, News 8 Austin, Texas
  • Chris Clark, news editor, Associated Press
  • Tom Contiliano, news and finance expert, Bloomberg
  • Rance Crain, president of Crain Communications Inc.; editor-in-chief of Advertising Age, Crain's Chicago Business and Crain's New York Business
  • Judy Crawford, integrated media sales manager, KSHB-TV/KMCI-TV, Kansas City
  • Doug Crews, BJ '73, executive director, Missouri Press Association
  • Lewis W. Diuguid, BJ '77, vice president for Community Resources, Kansas City Star.
  • Linda Eatherton, BJ '72, executive vice president/director/partner, Ketchum, Chicago
  • Bill Eppridge, BJ '60, photojournalist
  • Lois Fairchild, senior human resource specialist, Missouri Department of Transportation
  • Rod Gelatt, professor emeritus, Missouri School of Journalism
  • Sara Hall, BJ '01, senior account executive, Schupp Company, St. Louis.
  • Cheryl Hampton, director of journalism and recruiting, NPR
  • Gareth Harding, a Brussels, Belgium-based freelance journalist and director of the School's Brussels Program.
  • Deborah Howell, editor and ombudsman
  • Danielle Hurtt, BJ '03, managing supervisor, Fleishman-Hillard, St. Louis
  • Dru Jacobs, BJ '99, associate creative director, Schupp Company, St. Louis.
  • Ann Kittlaus, senior vice president, intern program coordinator, Fleishman-Hillard, St. Louis
  • Daniel K. Knight, Boone County prosecuting attorney, Columbia, Mo.
  • Tim Love, CEO, Omnicom Group (Asia Pacific, India, Middle East, Africa)
  • Jessica Luck, managing editor, The Observer Group
  • Rasheedah Madyun, human resource manager, KOMV-TV, St. Louis
  • Sean McLaughlin, executive news manager, KOMV-TV, St. Louis
  • Candice McLemore, manager, recruiting programs, CNN
  • Joe McNally, Joe McNally Photography
  • Bryce Moore, Internet site manager, KOMV-TV, St. Louis
  • Millie Munshi, BJ '06, reporter, Bloomberg
  • Dika Myers, human resources generalist, News 8 Austin, Texas
  • Sally Oxenhandler, BJ '82, community relations manager, Missouri Department of Transportation
  • John Patrick, campus recruiter, CNN
  • David Plotz, editor, Slate, a daily online magazine
  • William C. Price, BJ '63, chairman/CEO, Empower MediaMarketing, Cincinnati, Ohio
  • Ebony Reed, BJ '00, MA '04, deputy metro editor, The Detroit (Mich.) News
  • Donna Ricketts, regional human resources manager, Crain Communications
  • Bill Smith, director of Internet development, KSHB-TV/KMCI-TV, Kansas City
  • Evan Smith, chief executive office and editor, Texas Tribune
  • Jim Smith, vice president for research and development, Morris Publishing Group
  • Wallace S. Snyder, president emeritus, American Advertising Federation
  • Tracy Wakeman, human resources manager, KSHB-TV/KMCI-TV, Kansas City
  • Lisa Walsh, executive editor, The Observer Group
  • Virginia Young, state capital bureau chief, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
  • Alan Scher Zagier, correspondent, Associated Press

Throughout the year, the Missouri School of Journalism received and presented a host of awards. In addition, new partnerships with foundations and professional organizations created unprecedented opportunities to help Missouri Journalism students learn and succeed.

• The Missouri School of Journalism hosted its annual career fair, where representatives from top media outlets including Bloomberg, the Associated Press, CNN, and ABC News were present to interview and meet students. [More]
  
  
• Each semester, the Missouri School of Journalism sends students to Washington D.C. to complete internships and projects. This fall, students' work has appeared in major daily newspapers, online, and on television. [More]
  
  
• KOMU 8 won seven Emmy awards and was nominated for eight at the 2009 Mid-America Emmys. Sarah Hill, Scott Schaefer, and Jim Matheny won both individual and collaborative honors for their work in video and reporting. [More]
  
  
• Jann Carl, BJ '82, received a 2009 Mizzou Alumni Association Faculty-Alumni Award in recognition of her professional accomplishments and service to her community and alma mater. Nationally respected for her interviews, Carl recently completed her 14th season at "Entertainment Tonight," the ratings leader in entertainment news. [More]
  
  
• The Columbia Missourian was recognized at the 2009 Annual Meeting of The Missouri Bar with an Excellence in Legal Journalism Award. The award recognizes the Missourian's commitment to coverage of public defenders and other legal issues. [More]
  
  
• The Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism has been awarded a five-year $15 million gift from the Las Vegas-based Donald W. Reynolds Foundation. This is the third largest gift ever awarded to the University of Missouri. [More]
  
  
• A University of Missouri team led by Mike McKean, associate professor and director of the Reynolds Journalism Institute's Futures Lab, won first place nationally in the 2009 Campus Technology Innovators Awards in the Information Technology Funding category. The group's new interdisciplinary fund fosters innovation and entrepreneurship. [More]
  
  
• The Society of Professional Journalists has selected the Missouri School of Journalism's student chapter as one of the best in the nation for outstanding service to the Society, our campus and the journalism profession. [More]
  
  
• Award-winning journalist Randy Smith is the first Donald W. Reynolds Endowed Chair in Business Journalism at the Missouri School of Journalism. Smith's appointment allows for the expansion of business journalism courses for undergraduate and master's students, including the School's online master’s program, which serves working professionals around the world. Smith will work closely with Missouri's Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute, a world-class center for researching and testing new models of journalism. [More]
  
  
• An all-expense-paid blogging trip to Europe in 2010 is the grand prize awaiting some talented J-School student as part of a unique workshop and reporting contest on biotechnology being held Sept. 25-26 on the University of Missouri campus. The day-and-a-half workshop, called Biotech University, is designed to introduce Missouri School of Journalism students to the emerging science of biotechnology. Experts on biotechnology will explain what it is, give hands on demonstrations of how it is done, and focus on the scientific, business and political issues surrounding biotechnology. [More]
  
  
• Six prominent media leaders and a pioneering online publication will receive one of the profession's highest honors, the Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism, from the Missouri School of Journalism. The 2009 medalists, who will be honored on Oct. 20, are: Mazhar Abbas, defender of press freedom, Pakistan; Rance Crain, president of Crain Communications Inc.; editor-in-chief of Advertising Age, Crain's Chicago Business and Crain's New York Business; Doug Crews, executive director, Missouri Press Association; Bill Eppridge, photojournalist; Rod Gelatt, professor emeritus, Missouri School of Journalism; Deborah Howell, editor and ombudsman; and Slate, a daily online magazine. [More]
  
  
• A group of 16 high school students from six states attended the Missouri Urban Journalism Workshop on July 11-20 at the Missouri School of Journalism. Journalism faculty and other professionals from around the country -- including Russ Mitchell, BJ '82, CBS News anchor -- helped the students prepare stories for the Columbia Missourian and KOMU-TV Web sites. Read the Urban Pioneer, the online publication created by the 2009 Missouri Journalism Urban Workshop students.
  
  
• More than 60 high school students and journalism teachers participated in the 2009 Summer Media Workshop on July 7-9 at the Missouri School of Journalism. Classes were offered in numerous areas, including editor-in-chief training, new media convergence, sports reporting, design and photography. Teacher training and a graduate credit option were available.

Missouri Journalism faculty members and students presented and published their latest scholarly works at conferences and in journals throughout the year.

• A new research study published in Public Relations Review has found that highlighting racial disparities in news releases increases coverage of health stories in black newspapers, which can improve health outcomes in populations at-risk for disparities. [More]
  
  
• In a study led by journalism professor Kevin Wise, researchers found that readers were better able to understand, remember and emotionally respond to material found through "searching" compared to content found while "surfing." [More]
  
  
• "Academia Ponders the Future of Print Media," an article by Esther Thorson, associate dean for graduate studies, was published in the Sept. 7, 2009, issue of Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education magazine.
  
  
• A research team led by Kevin Wise, assistant professor of strategic communication, found that news about local health threats increased attention and memory in readers more than news about distant, or non-local, health threats. This study, conducted at the School's PRIME (Psychological Research on Information and Media Effects) Lab, is one of only a few that used physiological response to examine how people respond to reading text. [More]
  
  
• Missouri School of Journalism faculty and students presented an impressive number of refereed scholarly papers -- a total of 50 -- at the 2009 Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication convention Aug. 5-8 in Boston. Five papers were selected for top honors. For the first time an online master's student had a paper accepted at the conference. Faculty and students also participated in an additional 21 sessions as moderators, discussants and panelists. The conference is one of the leading journalism research conferences in the world. [More]
  
  

New academic appointments and the publication or revision of books were among the year's highlights for Missouri Journalism faculty members.

• Dean Mills participated in the Deans Forum on "Journalism and Communication Education in the Media Age" and in other celebration activities on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the founding of China's first school of journalism, the Fudan University School of Journalism in Shanghai. [More]
  
  
• Esther Thorson, graduate dean, and Margaret Duffy, chair of the strategic communication faculty, received the President's Award from Missouri Press Association president Vicki S. Russell at the group's annual convention in Kansas City. [More]
  
  
• Missouri School of Journalism Professor Betty Houchin Winfield received the the American Journalism Historians Association's Sidney Kobre Award for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism History. The award, the highest honor given out by the organization, recognizes Winfield's career as an accomplished mass media historian. [More]
  
  
• Missouri School of Journalism Professor Earnest Perry began his one-year term as president of the American Journalism Historians Association (AJHA) in October. [More]
  
  
• María Len-Ríos and Amanda Hinnant, assistant professors in the Missouri School of Journalism, and other MU researchers found that health journalists determine what information is newsworthy by examining the work of their peers and the issues raised by their colleagues and audiences. The study, "Health News Agenda Building: Journalists' Perceptions of the Role of Public Relations," was published in the summer 2009 issue of Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly. [More]
  
  
• Shelly Rodgers, associate professor of strategic communication at the Missouri School of Journalism, has been elected president of the American Academy of Advertising. Her term as president will begin Jan. 1 and end on Dec. 31, 2010. [More]
  
  
• Stuart Loory, the Lee Hills Chair in Free Press Studies and a former Los Angeles Times White House reporter, was one of two journalists invited by C-Span to discuss the Watergate break-in and the resignation of Richard Nixon from the Presidency 35 years ago on the Aug. 9 Washington Journal program.
  
  
• Professor Emeritus John Merrill was recognized by the International Communication Division to honor his lifelong contributions to teaching, research and service during the 2009 Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication convention in Boston. [More]
  
  
• Sarah Hill, BJ '93, and Scott Schaefer, BJ '04, have won a national Edward R. Morrow Award in the feature reporting category for "The Magic Tree," part of the "Sarah's Stories" series. The Radio-Television News Directors Association, the industry's leading trade organization, sponsors the competition. Both Hill and Schaefer serve as adjunct professors at the Missouri School of Journalism and work at KOMU-TV, the only university-owned commercial television station in the United States that uses its newsroom as a working lab for students. [More]
  
  
• Jacqui Banaszynski, the Knight Chair in Editing, Clyde Bentley, associate professor of print and digital news, and Stephanie Padgett, an adjunct professor, are named Reynolds Journalism Institute Fellows for the 2009-2010 academic year. [More]
  
  
• Kevin Wise, an assistant professor at the Missouri School of Journalism, is a new associate editor of the Journal of Interactive Advertising. [More]
  
  
• MU Curators' Professor Betty Houchin Winfield was in Ukraine in June to give the keynote and five other presentations at the American Studies Summer Institute. She presented archivist and historian Pavel Plushnik Borisovich her FDR and the News Media book in the Roosevelt Room for the Livadia Palace Library.
  
  
• Brian Brooks, associate dean for undergraduate studies, is one of five who will be inducted into the Missouri Newspaper Hall of Fame in October. He will receive a Pinnacle Award during the Missouri Press Association's 143rd annual convention. In addition, a plaque with his likeness will be hung in the association's Columbia headquarters and in the student lounge of Lee Hills Hall at the School. [More]

Missouri Journalism graduate students earned numerous awards for their professional, scholarly and creative achievements.

• Rachel Young, a first-year doctoral student at the Missouri School of Journalism, is the 2009 Paul Synor Fellow. The fellowships, funded with a $2.5 million gift from the estate of Paul Synor, BJ '42, enhance strategic communication studies at the School. [More]
  
  
• Boris Korby, a second-year master's student, has been named the 2008 David Kaplan Memorial Fellow. Korby will work as a paid intern at the ABC News Washington Bureau this spring, where he will complete his professional project. [More]
  
  
• St. James: The People of Missouri's "Forest City of the Ozarks," a collaborative book project of Missouri School of Journalism students and professional photojournalists, was published in early September 2009. The 176-page book, available in both hard and soft covers, features photographs taken during the 60th Missouri Photo Workshop and a similar experience for photojournalism students enrolled in their capstone course. Joshua Bickel, MA '09, fulfilled his master's project through his work on the book. [More]
  
  

• An iPhone application for Newsy.com, co-developed by Missouri School of Journalism student Tony Brown, became the fifth highest-rated news application on the iTunes store in the week following its launch. [More]
  
  
• Student work published in the Columbia Missourian received 28 awards - including seven first-place winners - in the 2009 Missouri Press Association's Better Newspaper Contest. The winners were announced during the 143rd MPA convention in Kansas City. [More]
  
  
• Mojo Ad students presented the 2009 "State of the YAYA" to Woodruff Sweitzer executives in Columbia on Oct. 16. Mojo Ad is a full service, student-staffed advertising agency that specializes in targeting to the Youth and Young Adult (YAYA©) market.
  
  
• Eight Missouri School of Journalism strategic communication students worked alongside nine students from Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, to develop an integrated strategic communication campaign for the global giant nutrition and health company Nestlé. The group's project focused on introducing a popular powdered cocoa mix, Granko, to an older demographic. The summer trip to Prague, a part of the School's extensive study abroad program, is a four-week, six-credit seminar course. [More]
  
  
• Journalism students have teamed with those in the MU German and Russian departments to launch a unique blog, "EuroKulture," as part of the "Blogging the World: Web Journalism in Cultural Context" course. The site content focuses on popular European culture, and students increase their skills in an ever more technological media atmosphere.
  
  
• Missouri School of Journalism students enrolled in the "Field Reporting on the Food System and Environment" course participated in the Sonja Hillgren/Farm Journal Ag Journalism Field Reporting Institute. The 11 students traveled through southwest Missouri, visiting a variety of environmental sites and meeting with local experts. [More]
  
  
• The Missouri School of Journalism welcomed 58 Walter Williams Scholars during a special ceremony on Sept. 3. The Walter Williams Scholars program, named after the School's founding dean, recognizes the highest-achieving incoming journalism students. Scholars' mentors presented them with a certificate and a copy of the book "A Creed for My Profession: Walter Williams, Journalist to the World." [More]
  
  
• More than 300 freshmen explored the wide variety of journalism clubs, professional organizations and activities at the seventh annual Fall Welcome on Sept. 3. "Students are more likely to succeed in college if they get involved with student organizations and connect with faculty," noted Brian Brooks, the School's undergraduate dean.
  
  
• The Livestock Publications Council awarded Whitney Wallace, a senior agricultural journalism student, the 2009 Forrest Bassford Student Award during the Agricultural Media Summit held in Fort Worth, Texas. The $2,000 scholarship is sponsored by Intervet/Schering Plough Animal Health.
  
  
• Journalism student Rachel Duff received a $750 travel stipend from the Livestock Publications Council to attend the Agricultural Media Summit in Fort Worth, Texas.
  
  
• Nine Missouri School of Journalism students sharpened their reporting skills and networked with professionals at the annual conventions of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the National Association of Black Journalists and the Asian American Journalists Association this summer. [More]
  
  
• Kyle Stokes, a junior at the Missouri School of Journalism, received a 2008 Mark of Excellence award for his radio feature, "Lincoln School Memories." Kyle was officially recognized during the 2009 SPJ Convention and National Journalism Conference on Aug. 27-30 in Indianapolis, Ind. [More]
  
  

Amanda Bell interviews Lara Spencer at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Calif.

• Twelve Missouri School of Journalism students will have the opportunity to help develop stories about the best tennis athletes in the world at the 2009 China Open. The students' work will be published in the Beijing Youth Daily, CCTV Channel 5 and the China Open Web site. [More]
  
  
• Vox magazine as well as several Missouri School of Journalism magazine journalism students won awards by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication in the 2009 student magazine contest. Vox earned recognition in the following categories: first place in online magazine; third place in design; and honorable mention in both investigation and analysis as well as service and information. [More]
  
  
• Pre-journalism student Amanda Bell interviewed Lara Spencer, the co-host of the syndicated television newsmagazine The Insider, for a KOMU-TV report she filed from the funeral of Michael Jackson.