Monday, April 6, 2009

Editor Positions

In a biography of George W. Bush, Ronald Kessler writes that one of Bush’s leadership strengths was “surrounding himself with smart, capable people.”

While I am no fan of the former president and question much of the advice given by those smart people, I too feel that good leaders put their ego second and aren’t afraid to be surrounded by people who are more intelligent and accomplished than themselves.

Such is the case with this editorial board. You are an outstanding group of editorial board members, almost all of whom have better credentials than I. I am honored to be working with you.

Such is especially the case with the new section editors for Journalism Innovation, who were chosen after consultation with some other members of the editorial board. Any one of these editors could head up not only his or her section, but the entire journal, and it’s been a humbling experience turning down section editor candidates with more teaching, scholarship and industry experience.

Please join me in congratulating the new section editors:

Research: Dr. David Domingo
David teaches at the Universitat Rovira I Virgili and is the co-editor (with JI editorial board member Chris Paterson) of last year’s excellent ethnographic research collection Making Online News. He has authored/co-authored numerous articles and book chapters in English, Spanish and Catalan and has been a webmaster and has written for numerous magazines as a staff writer and freelance journalist. He has taught at four universities, including the University of Iowa last year.

Education: Dr. Tim Brown
Tim brings a wealth of experience in broadcast to the position, having worked as a reporter, editor and anchor for several radio and TV stations in South Carolina and Georgia for over a decade. He’s won numerous awards not only for his broadcast work, but also for his scholarly work while at the University of South Carolina and his present institution, the University of Central Florida. In addition to his media-related research, Tim has authored several teaching-related articles and presentations and authored a chapter in two Communication Technology Update textbook editions.

Industry: Steve Fox (editor) and Dr. Carol Dykers (assistant editor)
The editor of this section needed to be someone with an extensive background in the online news industry, and Steve Fox, with his 10 years at Washingtonpost.com, was a perfect candidate. While at the Post, he held several positions, including Senior Producer, National/Political Editor and Senior News Editor (deciding the content of a homepage that received nearly 10 million hits per day). Steve, who worked for several newspapers and the UPI before his time at the WaPo, is now a teacher and the Multimedia Journalism Coordinator at the University of Amherst.
Carol has 20 years of journalism experience, including more than a dozen years as an editor at four different newspapers in the South. For nearly 15 years she has been at Salem College, where she has taught many courses, including visual communication, online journalism, documentary studies and multimedia/web content creation. She’ll soon be launching a blog focusing on technological innovation in journalism.

Technology: Dr. Michael Sheerin
An award-winning teacher and photographer, Michael brings a wide variety of technological skills to the position. He has worked for 20 years in multimedia in such roles as art director, creative director, visual effects producer and new media consultant, working with clients such as ABC Sports, MTV, ESPN and Disney. He teaches at Florida International University, where he served a three-year stint as Assistant Dean of Technology. He has also authored chapters for Augie Grant’s Communication Technology Update.

Scholarship Wiki: Dr. John Cokley
Like many of his editorial counterparts, John spent 20 years in journalism before making the switch to academia. He worked as a reporter and editor for several publications in Australia, including the Australian Associated Press and in multimedia and online content for News Corp. John, who has won numerous research awards and grants, teaches at the University of Queensland. He has authored/co-authored more than 30 refereed publications in the last decade.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Section Editor Applications

Journalism Innovation
A Journal of Scholarly and Professional Debate


Call for Editors
Journalism Innovation: A Journal of Scholarly and Professional Debate is seeking editors for all sections of the journal. The online journal, which focuses on the impact of internet technologies on industry practices and journalism education, will launch in May 2009 and needs the assistance of section editors to work with contributors to each area of the journal.

Journal Sections
1. Research
Refereed research articles, composed in hypertext format and containing such elements as data sets, video, audio and interactive graphics, will be the heart of the journal. The editor in charge of this section will play a very important role in working with the editorial board members to ensure that articles are reviewed in a timely manner and that feedback is provided to submitters. The Research Editor will receive each contributor’s link to the research hypertext, select three reviewers with experience in that research area, and inform the journal editor if the article is recommended for acceptance, revision/resubmission or rejection.

2. Education
The Education Editor will be responsible for submissions that focus on journalism education, in both professional training and university settings. These submissions may include some original research articles, but most often will be pieces that provide teaching tips, instructional strategies or suggestions for curriculum development. The editor will work with a handful of journalism educators to review the submissions. Other tasks could include arranging audio/video interviews with educators and administrators and creating a “Top Journalism Innovation Educator” award.

3. Industry Examples/Practices
This editor will be a surfaholic, an online news junkie who will be providing the most frequent and timely updates to the journal website. Ideally, this editor will be or will have been in the online news industry. He or she will solicit links to outstanding examples of multimedia and interactive journalism from journal readers and will post those links on the journal website daily or weekly. As time passes, this editor will be responsible for archiving and organizing these links for easy reference. This editor may also conduct audio or video interviews with industry professionals about their packages or processes.

4. Technology
A journal that concentrates on the effect of technology needs to have a section that keeps readers informed about new technologies in journalism and about how old technologies are being used in new ways. The Technology Editor will be expected to produce some content about the latest software and hardware developments, in addition to soliciting and editing material from contributors. This section might include subsections, such as backpack reporting technology, mini-tutorials on some software (utilizing motion screen capture programs like Captivate), purchasing recommendations for those on a tight budget, etc.

5. Reviews/Scholarship Wiki
The Reviews Editor will be responsible for keeping readers up to date on what other academic journals and trade publications/websites are publishing. This editor should have ready access to the academic journals in the field, in addition to more industry-centered publications like CJR, OJR, AJR, Quill, etc. While the journal will encourage readers to submit reviews of books, research pieces and online articles, the Reviews editor will also be working with colleagues and other members of the editorial board to produce short evaluations of the latest scholarship and information in the field. Another job duty will be supervising a scholarship wiki, once it is established. The wiki will make great contributions to the field by providing reader-supplied annotated bibliographies of books and articles on convergent/online journalism published in the last 15 years.

Applications
Section editor applicants need not be current members of the journal’s editorial board. All applicants should email their vita and a letter indicating what section they are interested in supervising and how their experiences and skills qualify them to be an editor for that section. Applicants are welcome to indicate any second or third choices, with a brief explanation of why they are interested/qualified in those areas.

Send a letter and vita via email to Dr. Robert Bergland, bergland@missouriwestern.edu

Priority deadline: March 15. Editorial selections will be announced in late March.

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Welcome Back

Hello all,
I hope you all are doing well and are having good semesters. Now that your winter (and summer, for those of you Down Under) breaks are over and you’re back into the groove, it’s time to get back started with the journal. Here are some updates:

1. Name: The consensus on the name, while certainly not unanimous, was Journalism Innovation. A significant majority of the editorial board members were also in favor of going with a subtitle, and the subtitle far and away the favorite was “A Journal of Professional and Scholarly Debate.”
Thus, we are
Journalism Innovation: A Journal of Professional and Scholarly Debate
Thank you all for a spirited, but very courteous debate about the name. I’ll likely be including an overview of the name debate in a column when the journal launches in May.
2. The www.journalisminnovation.com domain name has been taken already (let me know if one of you reserved it), so we’ll likely go with www.journalisminnovationjournal.com or www.journalisminnovation.org or .net, all of which are still open.
Unfortunately, the Missouri Western server has some limitations that could present some problems, so we may end up hosting our site at another university or with the Online News Association or with an independent hosting company. I’m open to offers and suggestions (please email me privately, so as not to clog up everyone’s email box)
3. A couple funding opportunities fell through, so we’re still looking for any organization, grant, etc. to provide any sort of partnership or support. My university will continue to provide me with release time and a graduate editorial assistant, but any other support would be helpful.
4. Based on your feedback, we’ll be starting out with the following categories/sections for the journal:
Original Research
Education
Industry examples/practices
Technology
Reviews & Wiki
We’ll be looking for section editors for each one of these categories. In a separate email, I’ll be sending you an application that describes the content of these sections in greater detail and the job duties of the section editors.
6. General Timeline:
• March 1: Selection of section editors
• March 10: promotional materials sent to AEJMC departments and scholars who have given convergence-oriented presentations at journalism-related conferences, announcing the upcoming journal launch and a call for papers
• April/May: Reviews of first round of submissions. Comments to the blog and to me individually indicated that while a three-week turnaround might be doable, a one-month maximum expectation time might be more manageable (reviewers who have commitments that would prevent them from meeting that expectation for an article are welcome to politely decline that time around).
• May 20: Projected journal launch. We hope to have at least a couple original research pieces by that date—several of you have already indicated an interest in submitting—in addition to some reviews, teaching tips, technology overviews, etc. Naturally, we’ll be adding more pieces/packages immediately after they are accepted/revised.
7. Sample articles: By March 10 I hope to have at least one sample hypertext/multimedia article posted to the website, to serve as a model for what could be done. If any of you have unpublished pieces or pieces that have been published that you could get permission to refashion into a new format for our journal, please let me know ASAP.
8. Logo/interface: I know we have some very talented graphic designers and webmasters among us. By all means, if you’re interested in trying your hand with some sample logos or main interfaces for our webpage, let me know and shoot me some drafts.
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I’m posting this note to our blog:
http://www.journalismconvergence.blogspot.com/
If you want to comment/discuss anything in here with the group, please make your comments on the blog instead of via mass email, since we received a few complaints about clogged up email inboxes. By all means, feel free to email me individually with comments, questions, concerns, etc.
Again, thank you all for your contributions. I look forward to working with you to get the journal into cyberspace this semester.

Best,

Bob