During the 1998 campaign season, TIM GLEASON was the coordinator for the Oregon Alliance for Better Campaigns, part of a national effort to improve political campaigning and media coverage of politics funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts. In October, he visited the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas as a member of an ACEJMC Accreditation Visiting Team. Earlier he was a media observer and panelist at a Committee of Concerned Journalists in Seattle on "Quality Journalism in the 21st Century." He also attended the annual meetings of AEJMC, the Oregon Association of Broadcasters, the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association and the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Association.

LAUREN KESSLER is back on campus after taking time off to work on her newest book, a biography of Pancho Barnes, for Random House. She expects to meet deadline for the book in January. Meanwhile, she continues her work as a regular contributor to Writer's Digest magazine with her sixth article, "Art is in the Detail."

She is also squeezing in working on a revision of her and Duncan McDonald's textbook, When Words Collide. This will be the fifth edition of this widely used guide to writing well. Kessler recently reviewed manuscripts for the Oregon Historical Quarterly and Oregon State University Press. She continues as a member of the OHQ advisory board.

ANN MAXWELL brought Gary Hirsch on campus recently for an improvisational workshop called "Get on Your Feet" for advertising students. The publication of Debra Merskin's "Sending Up Signals: A Survey of Native American Media Use and Representation in the Mass Media" appeared in the most recent issue of the Howard Journal of Communication.

WARREN PEASE has been busy working for the ABC-TV network on field audio and announcement booth pre-production for UO home football games. Through the Chambers Electronic Media Center, he arranged for student crews for two of the games.

In between classes and travel to the American Journalism Historians Association at the University of Louisville, Kentucky where he is a member of the research committee, STEPHEN PONDER has been doing the final editing of a book, Managing the Press: Origins of the Media Presidency, 1897-1933, which will be published in January by St. Martin's Press. After that, he will get to work on co-authoring one volume in a six-volume History of Journalism series being published by Greenwood Press.

JOHN RUSSIAL organized and directed the School's Summer Workshop for Minority High School Students which brought 19 minority high school journalists to the University of Oregon campus in June. He found time in the summer to work at the Klamath Falls Herald and News as a writing and editing coach, and consult with the State of Washington's Department of Information Services on writing issues. The fall found Russial in Portland organizing and moderating a panel titled "Team vs. Traditions" at the American Copy Editors Society's annual convention.

BILL RYAN spent a week visiting designers, art directors and creative directors at a number of magazines including Time, Elle and Mirabella; agencies including The One Club; and design shops including Walter Bernard and Milton Glaser in New York. Ryan also lectured on photography at the 13th Annual Press Day at OSU. Recently, The One Club selected the work of Ryan's J-442 (Advertising Design) class to appear in the magazine, One. Cori Polleto and Karl Schroeder created the three-piece outdoor and print campaign for the UO's recycling program.

ALAN STAVITSKY visited the University of Tampere, Finland in July to teach a doctoral workshop on audience research and discuss US public broadcasting. He served as journalistic consultant to "The World," a public radio global-news program produced by Public Radio International, the British Broadcasting Corporation and WGBH, Boston. In addition, his article, "Counting the House in Public Television: A History of Ratings Use, 1953-1980," was published in the Fall, 1998 issue of the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, and Stavitsky was named chair of Oregon Public Broadcasting's Public Affairs Advisory Panel.

JIM UPSHAW'S recent activities have included designing and running all radio-TV-journalism-related programs at the national convention of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, held in Baltimore in August. He served on several panels including a roundtable with community and media leaders in the wake of the Thurston High School shooting, held in Eugene last May and a two-part discussion of crime coverage at the Oregon Association of Broadcasters convention in Bend in October. Upshaw is the 1998-99 head of the Radio-Television Journalism Division of AEJMC and is helping launch a journal to bring educators and news broadcasters together to study issues including audience needs.

WAYNE WANTA was elected head of Communication Theory & Methodology Division at the AEJMC annual convention in August. He also presented a paper at the convention dealing with Latinos' use of Spanish Cable News and moderated and organized a session on doctoral education. In October, Wanta took over as chair of AEJMC's Teaching Standards Committee. Also that month Wanta was on a panel titled "Graduate Education: What's in it for me?" at the national convention of the Society of Professional Journalists. November found Wanta in New York City at the National Communication Association convention where he presented a paper examining new media coverage and postings in Internet discussion lists.

JANET WASKO'S recent appointments include Executive Committee of the Center for the Study of Women and Society, Vice-Chair of the Graduate Council and Editorial Board of a new journal titled Journalism Studies. She attended the International Association for Mass Communication Research conference in Glasgow, Scotland in July, and presented the keynote speech at the "Convergence: Culture and Policy in the Digital Age" conference in November in Brisbane, Australia.