Carol Ann Bassett’s book, A Gathering of Stones, was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award in the creative nonfiction category. This summer she did readings at the Eugene Public Library and at Paulina Springs Book Company in Sisters, Ore. Bassett’s new book, The Emerald Desert: Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, is due out in fall 2004 as part of the series, Desert Places, published by the University of Arizona Press. Bassett taught the third annual Nature Writing Workshop this summer on Mount Pisgah. In October, she spoke at the IRE Better Watchdog Workshop on “Better Storytelling through Narrative Journalism.”

Tom Bivins’s latest book, Mixed Media: Moral Distinctions in Advertising, Public Relations, and Journalism, was released by Lawrence Erlbaum. He has just finished a revision for the fifth edition of Public Relations Writing: Format and Style for McGraw-Hill, which should come out in spring 2004. He is working on a book with Anantha Babilli of Middle Tennessee State University exploring how and what we can learn from Eastern religion and philosophy that can be applied to Western media ethics practices. Bivins and Julianne Newton presented their paper, “The Real, the Virtual, and the Moral: Ethics at the Intersection of Consciousness,” at the Virtual Reality and Communication Ethics International Conference at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign in November 2002. The paper was also presented at the AEJMC conference in Kansas City, Mo., this summer. The paper will be published in the Journal of Mass Media Ethics. A commentary on the movie The Matrix will appear in the same issue. Bivins also worked with Associate Dean Al Stavitsky and NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin on developing a new code of ethics for public radio.

Carl Bybee’s Oregon Media Literacy Project sponsored the first media literacy workshop in the Spanish language for the Latino community in Eugene. The workshop was conducted by Gabriela Martinez and Estella Porras and included about 30 participants at Kelly Middle School. The discussion included the role of television in the family life, the images of violence and the stereotypes of the Latino culture. Parents and children exchanged ideas about how to talk back to their televisions.

André Chinn presented his paper, “Nuts, Bolts and Quality Media: Building Environments for Innovative Digital and Audio and Video Teaching and Production,” at the Broadcast Education Association Conference in Las Vegas.

Charlie Frazer chaired the session on Integrated Marketing Communications at the American Academy of Advertising Asia-Pacific Conference in Tokyo in June 2003. An international advertising case study he co-authored with Charles Patti of Queensland University of Technology, “Consiglio Della Carmella,” was published in Australia in July.

Tim Gleason was named a First Amendment Fellow by the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., and will have his oped columns distributed to the more than 400 newspapers on the Knight Ridder Tribune newswire.

Lauren Kessler’s latest book, Clever Girl, made the Washington Post bestseller list this fall. Kessler appeared on the Diane Rehm show, CSPAN’s BookTV and West Coast Live during a national tour in August. Her essay about her attempts to stalk and shoot a wild turkey appears in the winter issue of Oregon Quarterly. Kessler appeared at Seattle’s Northwest Bookfest in October to talk about women in history who “are not what they appear to be”—like the subject of her newest book. She spoke at the Mid-Willamette Valley Writers series in November on the often hazy line between fact and fiction.

Scott Maier was cited as one of four Promising Professors by AEJMC’s Mass Communication division. Over the summer, he conducted workshops on newsroom numeracy for Minnesota Public Radio and the National Association of Capitol Reporters and Editors. Maier’s research on newspaper accuracy was aired nationally on NPR’s On the Media for the second time this year. In May, Maier presented a workshop on computer-assisted reporting to education reporters serving as fellows at the Institute for Educational Inquiry, a think tank affiliated with the University of Washington School of Education.

Deb Merskin’s article, “Fashioning Foreplay: Fashion Advertising and the Pornographic Imagination,” was published in Feminist Media Studies. She is the cochair for research for the Center on Diversity and Community (CODAC) and participated in the CODAC Summit on October 4 on “After Grutter: Affirmative Action and Our Compelling Interests in Diversity.” Merskin participated on the panel, “Why is Diversity a ‘Compelling Interest’?” discussing media’s need for diversity. She presented her paper, “Terrorist Images: The Construction of Arabs as Enemies,” at the ICA annual convention in San Diego in May. She also presented “The Hypersexualization of Preadolescent Girls in Fashion Advertising” and “What Is Sexy? Victoria’s Secret and Prime Time Porn.” Merskin is incoming chair of ICA’s Popular Communication Division. She also made two presentations at the AEJMC conference. The first is on the use of unusual sources/resources for conducting scholarly research in mass communication, and the second explores whether there is a place for criticalcultural approaches to the study of advertising in advertising departments. Merskin had two contributions published in The Encyclopedia of Advertising produced by the Museum of Broadcast Communication (2003, Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers): “Studebaker Advertising” and “Radio Advertising in the 1920s.”

Dan Miller is producing a documentary on The Spruce Goose, Howard Hughes’s Flying Boat, and directed a live shoot on board the Flying Boat with Walter Cronkite at the Evergreen Air Museum in McMinnville, Ore. Miller also organized the panel, “The Integration of Next Generation Technologies into Broadcast Audio and Video Production Programs,” for the BEA Conference in Las Vegas, which included SOJC faculty and alums Helena Vanhala, Dennis Dunleavy and Andre Chinn.

Julianne Newton was invited to speak on a panel, “Journalism and Ethics at a Time of Conflict,” at the Salem Public Library. The discussion opened the exhibit “This Is Woman’s Hour: The Life of Mary Baker Eddy.” Newton and Rick Williams were invited to discuss their work using personal impact assessment to study images related to 911 at the Media Ecology Association meeting at Hofstra University. Williams’s presentation is on “Profiles of Meaning” and Newton’s is on “Visual Ecology.” Newton has finished the first year as editor of Visual Communication Quarterly. She also presented a paper at the National Communication Association in November 2002, entitled “Observer-Observed Interaction: The Documentary Process as Human Visual Behavior.” Her photograph, “Beatrix Ximenez,” from the Folk Art of Texas Project was published in Texas Highways. Newton was invited to present a lecture at Evergreen State College, Olympia, Wash., on the “Role of Photojournalism in Mediating Reality.” Her two chapters, “Visual Ethics as a Dynamic of Process and Meaning” and “A Visual Method for Visual Research: Exploring Ethical Issues in Pictures by Applying a Typology of Visual Behavior,” will be included in Visual Theory, edited by Sandra Moriarty, et al. (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2003). “Picturing Class: Visual Reportage as a Mediator of Social Status,” an article by Newton, Dennis Dunleavy, Chad Okrusch and Gabriela Martinez will be published in Class as News, edited by Don Heider (Rowman & Littlefield).

John Russial’s textbook, Strategic Copy Editing, was published by Guilford in November. He was named Distinguished Educator of the Year by the AEJMC Newspaper Division during the August convention. He co-authored a paper, “Profs, Professionals Agree About Students’ Editing Skills,” which appeared in the Newspaper Research Journal’s Summer issue. Russial organized and moderated a panel discussion on editing protocols at the American Copy Editors Society conference in Chicago in March and attended a conference on New Research for New Media at the University of Minnesota’s Institute for New Media Studies in September. He presented a session on editor-reporter interaction at the IRE/SPJ Better Watchdogs Workshop, held at the University in October. In summer, he conducted copyediting and headlinewriting workshops for The TriCity Herald, The Spokesman-Review, The Statesman-Journal and for eastern and western Washington Associated Press member papers.

Kim Sheehan’s book, Controversies in Contemporary Advertising, was published by Sage in September. She also completed a chapter for a new book, Contemporary Research in E-Marketing, called “How Public Opinion Polls Frame Online Privacy: Implications for EMarketers, Consumers and Public Policy.” Sheehan’s study, “Balancing Acts: An Analysis of FDA Complaint Letters to DTC Advertisers,” appeared in the fall issue of the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing.

Leslie Steeves has two book chapters in press: “Information and Communication Technologies for Rural Development,” with Srinivas R. Melkote in Development and Communication in Africa, edited by in Charles Okigbo and Festus Eribo and published by Rowman and Littlefield, Inc., and “Trends in Feminist Scholarship in Journalism and Communication: Finding Common Ground Between Scholars and Activists Globally” in Seeking Equity for Women in Journalism and Mass Communication Education: A 30-Year Update edited by Ramona Rush, Carol Oukrop and Pam Creedon and published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. An article by Steeves, literary nonfiction graduate Elizabeth James and doctoral student Estella Porras, “Advertising Ecotourism on the Internet: Commodifying Environment and Culture,” has been accepted for New Media and Society.

Associate Dean Al Stavitsky visited Moscow's Red Square in fall 2002. Stavitsky was in Russia to speak at an international coference on new media technology and to discuss partnerships with Moscow State University. Photo: Ariel Stavitsky

Al Stavitsky spoke about “Journalism After 9/11” at the Oregon Humanities Council’s Summer Teacher’s Institute for Oregon secondaryschool teachers at Reed College in June. He also spoke about his public radio ethics project at the Public Radio Conference in New Orleans in May, and did the same at the Public Radio News Directors conference in Montreal in July. Al worked this summer on his book, Stale Air: What’s Wrong with American Radio, for Temple University Press. Stavitsky also testified before the FCC field hearing in Seattle in March on the subject of media consolidation. He led a workshop on ethics in public radio at the Poynter Institute in March and also presented a paper on digital radio at the BEA in Las Vegas in April and chaired a panel on training minority students in telecommunication.

Jim Upshaw and Dave Koranda, assisted by Guennadi Tchernov, are launching a study this year of the insinuation of commercialism into local television newscasts across the United States. The research will sample various markets and apply content analysis to newscasts, with results expected in 2004.

Janet Wasko’s chapter, “Hollywood and Television in the 1950s: The Roots of Diversification,” was published in Peter Lev’s History of the American Cinema. Volume 7: Transforming the Screen, 1950-1959 (Charles Scribner’s). Her article, “Dissin’ the Distribs: Hollywood’s Questionable Distribution Policies,” was published in Film International. She also co-organized a Euricom colloquium on the theme, “What’s Left in Communication Research,” in Piran, Slovenia, and launched a website for the Political Economy section of the IAMCR (International Association for Mass Communication Research). The address is: jcomm.uoregon.edu/~IAMCRPolEcon. Wasko is working on two edited collections. One is the Blackwell Companion for Television, featuring more than 30 veteran academics discussing various approaches to the study of television. The second is Media in the Age of Marketization, edited with Graham Murdock (Loughborough University, UK) for Hampton Press. She presented a plenary speech, “Disney and the World,” at a conference called “Beyond Empires: Communication, Globalisation and Identity,” in Auckland, New Zealand, in February. Wasko also participated in a workshop on film economics at Washington University in St. Louis, including a presentation entitled “Show Me the Money: Challenging Hollywood Economics.” Wasko contributed a chapter, “The Future of Film Distribution and Exhibition,” in The New Media Book, edited by Dan Harries (British Film Institute Publishing, 2003).

Rick Williams was awarded the National Communication Association Visual Communication Research Award for 2002/2003 for his contributions to the theory and practice of visual communication. His recent publications include “Transforming Intuitive Illiteracy: Understanding the Effects of the Unconscious Mind On Image Meaning, Image Consumption, and Behavior” in Explorations in Media Ecology (Media Ecology Association, 2003), “Visual Knowing and Cognitive Theory” in Visual Theory, edited by Sandra Moriarty, et al. (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2003), and “The Artist’s Eye” in Visual Persuasion, edited by Sue Barnes (Hampton Press, 2003), and “Texans at Work” in Texas Highways magazine in August, 2003. Williams presented “Profiles of Visual Meaning: Visual Rhetoric and Unconscious Motivations” at the National Communications Association in November 2002, “Visual Learning, Cognition, and Social Behavior” on a Plenary Round Table at the RIT Visual Communication and Social Change: Rhetorics and Technologies Conference in April 2003, “Visual Persuasion and Unconscious Motivations in Images of 9/11” at the Media Ecology Conference in June 2003, “Visual Meaning in Mediated Images” at the Annual Visual Communication Conference in June 2003, and “Insight Out: Understanding the Unconscious Effects of Visual Communication on the Individual and Culture” at NCA in November 2003. Williams and Julianne Newton collaborated on a chapter, “The Avocado and the Asparagus: Searching for Masculine and Feminine Archetypes within the Stereotyping Theater of Sexualized Mediatypes,” in Images That Injure: Pictorial Stereotypes in the Media, edited by Paul Lester and Susan Dente Ross (Greenwood Press).

Bobbie Willis was awarded an Oregon Literary Arts fellowship in literary nonfiction. The fellowship includes retreat time in central Oregon and money to support a collection of essays/memoir she is working on. She also received first place for general feature in the 2002 Greater Oregon Chapter Non-Daily Newspaper Contest sponsored by the Society of Professional Journalists. The story “Outer Limits” was a feature about Highway 99 as a part of Eugene culture. Bobbie also received an honorable mention for writing in the 2003 Associate Member Contest sponsored by Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association. Her essay “Blood Relation” was included in Best Essays Northwest, an anthology edited by Kathleen Holt and Guy Maynard, and published by the UO Press.

Kyu Ho Youm’s article, “Suing American Media in Foreign Courts: Doing an EndRun Around U.S. Libel Law,” in Hastings Communications and Entertainment Law Journal has been cited by the High Court of Australia, the Australian equivalent of the U.S. Supreme Court, in the “landmark” cyber defamation case, Dow Jones & Co. v. Gutnick. Youm also has published “‘Burning’ News Sources and Media Liability: Cohen v. Cowles Media Co. Ten Years Later,” in Communications and the Law, and has contributed two articles, “Concept of Freedom of the Press” and “Status of the Media in Korea (North and South),” to the Encyclopedia of International Media and Communications. Youm has also reviewed a book, The Law of Defamation and the Internet, for Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly. He has been appointed to the Media & Arts Law Review board of contributing editors. He also was interviewed and quoted by Doreen Weisenhause on sedition laws for her oped column, “Journalists Fear Lessons from History,” South China Morning Post, Sept. 25, 2002.