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