CAROL ANN BASSETT received a New Faculty Award to begin research this summer on the lives and works of Pacific Northwest nature writers. She also received a Faculty Fellowship from the Pacific Northwest Institute of Journalism & Natural Resources to attend an expedition-style program in August for reporters, editors and producers. Bassett will lead a panel on how to become a better storyteller when covering complex issues such as forestry, energy and coastal ecology. In October, she’ll head a panel for the UDC Conference, “Communication, Culture and Environments” at the University of Oregon.

TOM BIVINS is finishing up a book in mass media ethics this summer. He is under contract to NTC College Books Division to produce a text and a workbook by September, so his summer will be a busy one. He’s already completed three chapters. Bivins is collecting examples of ethical dilemmas in the media (hypothetical or real) for his workbook. If anyone wants to submit, he would be happy to give them credit.

After three years as faculty advisor to Flux magazine, BRETT CAMPBELL will be turning over the job to Carol Ann Bassett and returning to work this summer on his biography of American composer Lou Harrison. Campbell will continue to write for the Eugene Weekly, Oregon Quarterly and various magazines. Flux ’98 has picked up several awards, including the Pacemaker as one of the very best student magazines in the country. Flux ’99, featuring the work of some of the School’s magazine and creative nonfiction students, is available in the dean’s office and the UO Bookstore.

PAM CYTRYNBAUM'S article, “The Royko Chronicles: The Scoop on what it was like to work for ‘Mr. Big,’” was the cover story in The Chicago Tribune Magazine’s Sunday, April 25 issue. She is a former Chicago Tribune reporter who spent nearly three years working for the late Tribune columnist Mike Royko. Cytrynbaum discussed her article on a Chicago radio program on WGN Radio. As the internship coordinator for the SOJC, Cytrynbaum reports students are serving internships of all kinds in all sequences ranging from an afternoon a week with a Eugene public relations firm or a hospital, two days a week at a local television station to summer internships at The San Jose Mercury News, The Chicago Tribune, Sierra magazine, The Oregonian and The Baltimore Sun, just to name a few. Cytrynbaum coordinated the selection of 10 students as Snowden Interns, twice the number from last year. In the fall, Cytrynbaum led a reporting workshop at Gervais High School for the student newspaper. In March, she led a writing and reporting workshop at The Gazette-Times in Corvallis.

LAUREN KESSLER'S work for Writer’s Digest continues with the piece, “Art is in the Detail,” appearing in the May issue, and her essay, “Writing with Children,” scheduled for publication early fall. Her biography for Random House, Full Throttle: The Life and Times of Pancho Barnes, is in production and should be in bookstores by early next year. Kessler and Duncan McDonald have just completed the fifth edition of their best-selling textbook, When Words Collide (due out in the fall), as well as a reissue of another of their joint efforts, Mastering the Message. Kessler is currently at work on a new work of literary nonfiction.

DAVID KORANDA will spend the summer working on a text book for “media representation.”

JIM LEMERT, together with co-authors Wayne Wanta and Tien Lee, has just sent off to a journal a content analysis of how the networks have treated the presidential debates as a political institution from 1976 to 1996. The same three authors are expecting their article on attack ads in the Smith-Wyden race to appear in the spring 1999 Journal of Communication. This summer, Lemert plans to be working with master’s graduate Tom Blazier on an article based on his content study of the public journalism newspaper in Seattle, as well as on revising his chapter on “Effective Public Opinion” for a second edition of David Kennamer’s Public Opinion, the Press and Public Policy. In addition, a chapter Lemert wrote for a Hampton Press book, Vox Populi, being edited by Slavko Splichal should see the light of day this summer or fall. The chapter is entitled, “Herbert Blumer, Public Opinion, and the Election and Influence Frameworks.”

This summer, DENISE MATTHEWS and Mike Majdic intend to finish editing their Woody Guthrie documentary. Matthews will complete a documentary about Gertrude Bass Warner, founder of the University of Oregon Museum of Art. In addition, she is participating in the University Film and Video Association Conference in Boston as a panelist in a discussion of the Oregon Documentary Project. Matthews will also be a respondent for the Film and Video Formal Screening Session at UFVA. At the annual Association of Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Matthews will be presenting research on broadcasters’ perspectives concerning the requirement that every commercial station air three hours of educational children’s programming a week.

DEBRA MERSKIN'S article, “Adolescence, advertising and the ideology of menstruation,” is to be published in the journal, Sex Roles. Merskin wrote a chapter in the book Advertising Business, edited by John Philip Jones, called “The Media Buyer in the Advertising Agency.” She also received tenure and a promotion to associate professor spring term. She has taken a one-year visiting position with University of Idaho and expects to return to the School in the fall of 2000.

JOHN MITCHELL has been in demand on the Y2K public speaking circuit, presenting on “Communicating About Y2K: Flash in the Pan, or The End of the World as We Know It?” Mitchell, who also serves as the professional advisor for the UO chapter of the Public Relations Student Society of America, is the External Communications Coordinator at Eugene Water & Electric Board.

STEVE PONDER'S book, Managing the Press: Origins of the Media Presidency, 1897-1933, was named one of the “top ten” books on newspaper history in the spring, 1999 issue of Clio Among the Media, the newsletter of the History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. It also was featured in a report on five recent books in the May/June, 1999 issue of the Columbia Journalism Review. Ponder has been a committee member in the Process for Change, a University internal reform project, which has tried to place greater emphasis on in-class writing and on internships for undergraduates in programs besides journalism. Partly as a result of the group’s efforts, the University is expected to appoint its first coordinator to promote internships campus-wide.

JOHN RUSSIAL was awarded the Jonathan Marshall Award for Innovative Teaching in Journalism and Communication. He appeared on a panel that discussed the teaching of copyediting and was a discussant for a Newspaper Division research paper session at the AEJMC meeting in New Orleans. He directed the Summer Journalism Workshop for high school minority students June 16-22. With help from journalism professionals, students produced a 16-page newspaper.

KIM SHEEHAN'S study of online consumer behavior will be published in the Journal of Advertising. Another study on using the Internet for survey data collection, co-authored with Sally J. McMillan, Ph.D. ’97 will appear in the Journal of Advertising Research.

AL STAVITSKY is teaching in August and September in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Tampere in Finland. He will instruct an undergraduate course on “Issues in Broadcasting” and a doctoral seminar on “Changing Conceptions of Audience.” While in Scandinavia, Stavitsky will put on workshops for radio programmers at Yleisradio (the Finnish Broadcasting Co.) in Helsinki, and for managers of Sveriges Radio’s (Swedish Radio) new digital channel in Stockholm. Stavitsky hosted a delegation of visiting Russian broadcasters in Eugene in July, and he spoke to a group of high-achieving high school juniors about “Journalism and Multimedia” during the UO’s Honors Day in May.

JIM UPSHAW spent the spring term running panels on interviewing at the Society of Professional Journalists Region 10 Convention in March, and on ethnic diversity in news at the SPJ state awards event in May. Upshaw taught a summer workshop on broadcast performance that included visits from professionals to give critiques to future broadcast journalists.

WAYNE WANTA was re-elected to the Teaching Standards Committee with the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. Wanta currently chairs the committee. He was the moderator for the plenary session at the AEJMC national convention. The session dealt with Media Credibility and Accountability. Wanta also was invited to speak on a panel titled “Impact of Source Selection on the News.” Wanta has taken a position at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Florida has 2,000 students and 250 graduate students, making it one of the largest programs in the country. Wanta will be teaching in the news/ed department with half of his courses in the graduate program.

While a guest at the Society for Cinema Studies conference in West Palm Beach, Fla., in March, JANET WASKO delivered the Plenary address titled, “A Call for a Political Economy of Film.” In May, Wasko served as a panel respondent for a discussion on “America-Europe: Globalization, Cultural Identity and Media.”at The International Communication Association
Conference.