TIM GLEASON presented an invited paper, "Saving Journalism from Itself (And From Us): The Hutchins Commission Was Right Then, So What About Now?" at a national conference on the 50th anniversary of the Hutchins Commission Report. The conference was held at the University of Illinois in October. The paper is scheduled for publication in the summer 1998 issue of Communication Law & Policy. Also, in October he served as a member of the ACEJMC Accreditation Team visiting the Manship School of Mass Communication, Louisiana State University. In September 1997, Gleason participated in a panel discussing journalism education at the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Association and Associated Press Editors Conference in Tacoma, Wash. He was appointed to the Board of the Northwest Scholastic Press Association.

Associate Dean Al Stavitsky washes down a meal of roast bear with a local beverage during a visit to Tallinn, Estonia, last fall. Stavitsky ferried across the Baltic Sea to Estonia following a trip to Finland where he conducted a workshop for Yleisradio, the Finnish National Broadcasting Co.

LAUREN KESSLER is on leave working on her ninth book, Full Throttle: The Life and Times of Pancho Barnes. She just completed a three-part series on the art of writing for Writer's Digest magazine. Kessler and writing partner/husband Tom Hager recently cowrote an entry for the Encarta Encyclopedia on the 20-year history of Title IX, the 1972 federal law mandating that any educational institution using federal funds must create equal opportunities for women and men in all their programs.

JIM LEMERT and his wife, Rosalie, have more or less settled in at their new digs in Waldport. Lemert is working on several research projects with Wayne Wanta and graduate student Tien Lee. The trio has contributed a chapter for a book about the 1996 presidential campaign. The chapter focuses on network news "verdicts" about winners and losers in the 1996 debates. They are working on an article about the effects of attack ads in the Ron Wyden-Gordon Smith U.S. Senate special mail election and the impact of Wyden's announcement to stop using such ads. The article will be submitted to a journal. The three also are preparing to analyze data about 1996 presidential-campaign attack ads collected in surveys at several locations across the country. And they are writing a content analysis of network-news support for the presidential debates as a political institution. Lemert also is working with master's graduate Chris Penttila on an article based on her study of newspaper ad and news staffers' relations.

DENISE MATTHEWS received a grant from the Center for the Study of Women in Society to begin research on a documentary about Gertrude Bass Warner, founder of the UO Museum of Art. She also was given a UO faculty grant to conduct research at the Federal Communications Commission this summer. Currently, Matthews is starting a survey of TV broadcasters regarding their views on implementing the changes called for in the Children's TV Act. She will attend the International Radio and Television Society's conference on the impact of TV on children in New York.

Denise Matthews

DEB MERSKIN is having an article titled "The Show for Those Who Owe: Lifetime Television's 'Debt' " published in the Journal of Communication Inquiry.

JOHN MITCHELL, adjunct assistant professor, recently returned from Orlando, Fla., where he picked up a first place award for Eugene Water & Electric Board's 1996 Annual Report in the American Public Power Association (APPA) annual report competition. In addition to winning the award of excellence in Class C (entrants with gross revenues of $100-$150 million), the APPA judges recognized EWEB's entry as "best of show." Mitchell, who teaches classes in the public relations sequence, is the external communications coordinator at EWEB.

STEVE PONDER has signed a contract with St. Martin's Press to publish his book, Managing the Press: Origins of the Media Presidency, 1897-1933. The book's copy deadline is May 1, and the tentative publication date is sometime late in the year. The book re-examines the beginnings of the 20th-century relationship between presidents and the press over seven administrations from William McKinley to Herbert Hoover. In October, Ponder presented a paper based on one of the chapters to the annual conference of the American Journalism Historians Association in Mobile, Ala. The presentation was entitled "The Press and Presidential Failure: Herbert Hoover and the Professionalization of Washington, D.C., Correspondents."

JOHN RUSSIAL participated in the American Copy Editors Society Conference, which was held in Chapel Hill, N.C., Oct. 23-26. He was a panelist in "Teams vs. Tradition," a session that examined efforts to reorganize copyediting in newspapers. His paper "Goodbye Copy Desks, Hello Trouble?" was distributed to conference attendees. He also attended the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Publishers annual meeting in Boise, Idaho, Nov. 14-16.

Jim Upshaw

ALAN STAVITSKY made two presentations (on radio history and public TV history) at the annual conference of the American Journalism Historians Association in Mobile, Ala., in October. Stavitsky traveled to Helsinki, Finland, in September to conduct a three-day workshop on public radio ethics and competitive strategies in the new multichannel environment for Yleisradio, the Finnish National Broadcasting Co. He spoke on U.S. public broadcasting at the University of Tampere. Stavitsky has been invited back to Tampere to teach a short course in audience studies during the summer of 1998. He was named to the National Scholars Panel for an upcoming public radio series on the history of Top-40 radio. Stavitsky also was interviewed by Oregon Public Broadcasting about campaign ads for the Measure 16 election, and by the Statesman-Journal in Salem, Ore., about the use of helicopters in TV journalism.

Besides coping with his first huge freshman mass-media course ("I sure needed coffee," he says), JIM UPSHAW during the fall term began media advising for a Lane County task force working to reduce drug (methamphetamine) production; ran news sessions at the Oregon Association of Broadcasters convention, and moderated an American Civil Liberties Union-sponsored panel on the right to privacy, news ethics and Princess Diana's death. Upshaw also launched a hunt for reporters' personal accounts of their work since the days of the Penny Press for a book he plans to write.

TOM WHEELER'S "new" book is out. Actually, it's a new edition of an early work, The Guitar Book, this time printed in Japanese. The publisher is Rittor Music of Tokyo. In February, Wheeler will fly to Dallas to share the results of his latest research with the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics. He's also been consulting with Suzanne St. Pierre, a producer for 60 Minutes, which is investigating photo manipulation in print media.