Books! And more books!

Assistant Professor Carol Ann Bassett’s first book is A Gathering of Stones: Journeys to the Edges of a Changing World, a collection of essays about nature, culture and change that earned Bassett a first-runner up designation for nonfiction in the 2003 Oregon Book Awards. Award Judge Paul West noted Bassett’s “gift for snapping up unconsidered trifles,” and “metaphysical cast of mind rare in the anecdotal journalist,” while comparing her literary technique to that of poets T.S. Eliot, Seferis and St. John Perse. Bassett, who teaches in the school’s literary nonfiction and magazine writing programs, traveled widely to live among traditional cultures, collecting their stories of survival in the face of change. In April, she joined the Oregon Book Awards tour in Burns and Bend. Her next book is Organ Pipe: Life on the Edge, due out in August from the University of Arizona Press.

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Mixed Media: Moral Distinctions in Journalism, Advertising, and Public Relations

By Tom Bivins
October 2003: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
ISBN: 0805842578

Researching and writing about ethics is not new for Tom Bivins, who says the publication of Mixed Media: Moral Distinctions in Journalism, Advertising, and Public Relations was a fitting complement to his recent appointment to the school’s John L. Hulteng Chair in Media Ethics. “I've been working on the idea for years. Now that my teaching focus is also ethics, it seemed like the right time to bring my thoughts together into a book.” Bivins is a Renaissance man when it comes to his books: the seven titles to his credit range from How to Produce Creative Publications (with Bill Ryan) to The Perfect Tree, a children’s book illustrated by his brother, Chris. He also wrote an ethics guide for Independence and Integrity II, The Updated Ethics Guide for Public Radio Journalism, authored by Associate Dean Al Stavitsky and NPR’s Jeffrey Dvorkin.

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Clever Girl: Elizabeth Bentley, the Spy Who Ushered in the McCarthy Era

By Lauren Kessler
August 2003: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0060185198

Lauren Kessler’s tenth book, Clever Girl, received this review from The Oregonian: “Kessler is an expert chronicler of complicated events, dedicated to unearthing the unvarnished truth, and Clever Girl is an important and compelling read." Library Journal called it, simply, “spellbinding.” Clever Girl chronicles the life of Elizabeth Bentley, the woman who was once head of the largest communist spy ring in the United States who later turned FBI informant. In addition to ongoing appearances in Oregon to promote the book (see Upcoming Events,
back page), Kessler toured the mid-Atlantic states last summer, appearing on CSPAN BookTV and The Diane Rehm Show. Kessler says she was “slow to love history,” in part because of the way history texts are usually written. “ Clever Girl is a history book—but it’s a dramatic character study set against the most controversial period of history,” she says. “It’s written to be a compelling narrative. The reader can place his/herself in there and not only learn some history, but learn about human nature.”

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Strategic Copyediting

By John Russial
November 2003: The Guilford Press
ISBN: 1-572309261

The name John Russial has become synonymous with
copyediting in the School of Journalism and Communication. Alumni report using the skills they learned from him at work every day. The AEJMC’s 2002-03 newspaper division professor of the year has poured his more than twenty years’ experience on the copy desk and in the classroom into Strategic Copyediting, his first book. According to Russial, copyediting is as much about working with people as it is working with words. “The word ‘strategic’ in the title tries to capture that idea, one that I learned on the job at The Philadelphia Inquirer,” he says. “Editing isn't just about fixing and otherwise improving copy; it's about choices, discussion and often negotiation.”

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Graphic Communications Today, 4th Edition

By Bill Ryan and Theodore Conover
2004: Thompson Delmar Learning
ISBN: 0766820750

When Theodore Conover, the original author of Graphic Communications Today, asked Bill Ryan to take over for the fourth edition, the result was an entirely new book. A coffee-table book as well as an essential reference for visual artists, teachers and lovers of design and photography, the 662-page book, billed by the publisher as “the definitive book on graphic communications,” includes all new artwork, compelling case studies, and, as Ryan puts it, “interviews with some of the most important people in graphic communication on the planet.” These include photographer Mary Ellen Mark, National Geographic editor-in-chief Bill Allen and Pete Docter, writer and director of Toy Story and Monsters, Inc., and many more. Ryan, who uses Flux covers and layouts as well as many other student and alumni examples in the book—says that reconnecting with the dozens of former students whose work is included was “really kind of an epiphany.” “I learned a lot of things about myself, about design, about the process of building and completing an enormous book and about many of my graphic heroes.”

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Controversies in Contemporary Advertising

By Kim Sheehan
2004: Sage Publications
ISBN: 1572309261

Assistant Professor Kim Sheehan is a prolific
researcher who has recently published on topics such as direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising and e-marketing. In Controversies in Contemporary Advertising, her research converges with her years of experience at major advertising agencies in Boston, Chicago, and St. Louis to explore the role of advertising in society. As her students already know, Sheehan is adept at making sense of a number of complex issues. In writing the book, she says she learned “[t]hat advertising is a business of choices—part of my job as an educator is to help students learn how to make good choices for themselves, their clients, their agencies, and for society.”

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Public Relations: The Profession and the Practice

By Dan Lattimore, Otis Baskin, Suzette Heiman, Elizabeth Toth, and Jim Van Leuven
October 2003: McGraw-Hill
ISBN: 0072935316

Working on his textbook, Public Relations: The Profession and the Practice, provided Professor Van Leuven, who holds the school’s endowed chair in public relations, with an opportunity to re-immerse himself in the basics of PR after years as an administrator. It also gave him an opportunity to collaborate with working professionals and his coauthors, leading communications faculty from four other universities. Van Leuven contributed four chapters— “The Nature of Public Relations,” “The History of Public Relations,” “Media Relations” and “Emerging Trends in Public Relations”—to the textbook, which includes a CD-ROM for students and a companion DVD for teachers. Van Leuven says his favorite part of the project was “learning what really great PR programs have taken place in the Northwest.”

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The Stratocaster Chronicles: Celebrating 50 Years of the Fender Strat

By Tom Wheeler
March 2004: Hal Leonard
ISBN: 634056786

Those who have taken Tom Wheeler’s magazine classes might already know of his love for music (or at least seen him playing his own Stratocaster in the Deb Cleveland Band). As the guitar celebrates its fiftieth birthday, it will be marked by a collectible, The Stratocaster Chronicles: Celebrating 50 Years of the Fender Strat. Wheeler’s first book, The Guitar Book, is already a favorite of guitarists; this one will be a favorite of musicians and cultural scholars alike. It’s not uncommon for students to procrastinate by figuring out the minor chords. Wheeler himself became a writer this way: “It was certainly never my lifelong dream to be a writer” he says. “I was in law school, eking out a meager income by giving guitar lessons.” Handouts written for guitar students evolved into his first book, which ultimately led to a writing gig for Guitar Player, where he was editor for over a decade. And the rest is history.

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How Hollywood Works

By Janet Wasko
December 2003: Sage Publications
ISBN: (hardcover) 076196813X; (paperback) 0761968148

Professor Janet Wasko’s classes on Disney and The Simpsons are legendary in the School of Journalism and Communication, as is her expertise in political economy. In her fourth single-authored title (she has edited or co-edited fourteen others), Wasko, the school’s Knight Chair in Communication Research, explores the policies and practices of Hollywood’s film industry —from the purchasing of a script to the marketing of related merchandise. Sage Publications calls it a “timely and essential analysis of how Hollywood works for all students of film and media.” Wasko says, “Lots of books talk about various aspects of the film industry, but few look critically at the industry as whole and how it works.”

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