An excerpt from CAROL ANN BASSETT'S story on the Bio-Bio River will be included in American Nature Writing 2000.

She'll be in good company; other writers whose work will be featured in this acclaimed annual anthology to be published by Oregon State University Press in January 2000 include Barry Lopez, Edward Abbey, Terry Tempest Williams, William Kittredge and Annie Dillard. Additionally, the editor of the anthology, John Murray, has invited Bassett to contribute new writing to an anthology by The Nature Conservancy scheduled for publication next year.

Charlie Frazer

CHARLIE FRAZER will spend three weeks in Australia during spring term. He has been invited to lecture on advertising and consult with faculty and administrators on curriculum at Queensland Institute of Technology in Brisbane.

ARNOLD ISMACH received one of the "Hometown Human Rights Hero" awards from the Eugene Human Rights Commission. He will moderate a discussion of the need for a news council at the Northwest regional conference of the Society of Professional Journalists in late March. A former dean of the School, he is currently president of the Planned Parenthood affiliate in Southwestern Oregon, and is heading a campaign to create a $1-million education endowment fund for the organization.

LAUREN KESSLER just completed the manuscript for her latest book, Full Throttle: The Life and Times of Pancho Barnes. The book is due out from Random House next spring. Her piece, "Art Is In The Detail," will appear in the April issue of Writers' Digest, where she is a regular contributor. Kessler was tapped to serve on the inaugural advisory board for the Knight Library Press. In March, she and creative nonfiction graduate student Sarah Allen led a writing workshop as part of the University of Oregon's "Success in the Middle" conference for and about middle school girls.

Denise Matthews

DENISE MATTHEWS has been working on the Woody Documentary with Mike Majdic, an associate professor from Media Services and a frequent SOJC adjunct. The project, which will be rolling into the editing stages soon, includes interviews with Studs Terkel and Pete Seger. Matthews will be presenting her research on broadcasters and the Children's Television Act at the International Communications Association conference in San Francisco in May. She looks forward to showing Oregon student documentary work at the Broadcast Education Association student showcase in Las Vegas in April. Her students' work is currently being broadcast on Oregon Public Broadcasting during the breaks between shows. Featured on the network are four new short documentaries, one by Matt Partney and Jason Thomas on Luis Simpson, the founder of North Bend. A film about the Pendleton Cowgirls by Gillian Bentley and Cristin Norton, as well as one about the Modoc War by Brad Sloane, Matt Harmon and Jerry Howard, and a film about Spencers Butte's old-growth forest by Scott Hillier, John Grove and Mary Chang, are also featured.

As the keynote speaker at the Eugene Professional Women's luncheon, DEB MERSKIN discussed prime-time television and occupational portrayals for girls. She and Tim Gleason spoke to the Learning in Retirement students on the topic of television violence and children. She won first place in the open competition for this year's Broadcast Educator's Association annual conference in Las Vegas in April for her paper, "Boys will be boys: A content analysis of advertising on the Turner Cartoon Network."

Steve Ponder

STEVE PONDER'S book, Managing the Press: Origins of the Media Presidency, 1897-1933, was published in January by St. Martin's Press. An op-ed article based, in part, on the book, "The Decline of the White House Press Corps," was published in the Oregonian in late December. He is currently at work on one of the books in a seven-volume History of Journalism series being published by Greenwood Press. The first three volumes, covering the colonial period to the Civil War, have been published. The most recent, The Popular Press, 1833-1865, appeared in March. A volume on the press of the late 19th century is scheduled to appear later this year. Additionally, he was the subject of a faculty profile that was broadcast on regional cable channels in February. The profile was part of UO Today, a television program sponsored and produced by the University of Oregon Humanities Center.

JOHN RUSSIAL participated in the Freedom Forum Technology Seminar for Journalism Educators, which was held February 28 through March 3 at the Freedom Forum West Coast Center in San Francisco. He has also been working with the American Copy Editors Society to craft guidelines for scholarships aimed at students interested in copyediting.

BILL RYAN conducted a seminar -- "Effective Visual Communication" -- on newspaper and magazine design at the SPJ eastern regional conference held in Cleveland in March. The session focused on creative strategies for using typography, designing features, opening page sections, covers and table of contents pages. Recently, Theodore Conover asked Bill Ryan to take over his book, Graphic Communications Today. Ryan will design and serve as co-author of the book for the fourth edition, and be sole author for its fifth printing at Delmar Publications. Ryan is serving as a regular reviewer for Independent Publisher; he reviews new books in photography, design and art. He also juries the best art and photography titles for national awards.

Kim Sheehan

KIM SHEEHAN presented a paper entitled "Navigating the Obstacle Course: Hiring of Advertising and PR Faculty," at the annual conference of the American Academy of Advertising in Albuquerque, NM She was also appointed to the Academy's Membership committee.

LESLIE STEEVES is chairing the University's newly formed African Studies Committee, which seeks to encourage teaching and scholarship on Africa, with an emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa. She also serves on the UO's Faculty Personnel Committee. In May, she will give a presentation on an invited panel of the International Communication conference in San Francisco. The panel is titled, "Reshaping the Discourse of Development Communication: W(h)ither the Field?"

ALAN STAVITSKY presented "Public Telecommunication and the First Amendment: Implications for the Public Sphere" at the annual conference of the Western States Communication Association, Vancouver, British Columbia in February. In April, he will present "Public Telecommunication and New Media: If PBS Doesn't Do Virtual Reality... Who Will?" at the annual conference of Broadcast Education Association in Las Vegas, where he will also serve as respondent to a BEA panel on Scandinavian broadcasting. Stavitsky was the President's Day speaker for the Eugene Kiwanis Club in February on the topic "Of Presidents and the Press," and he delivered the speech, "Bill, Monica and the Media: What Went Wrong" to the Eugene Rotary Club in March. Additionally, Stavitsky spoke to a luncheon of UO Dean's Scholarship winners in January on the topic "Learning with High-Achieving Students: A Faculty Perspective," and served as consultant to Public Radio International's "Marketplace" program for a series on underwriting in public broadcasting.

Jim Upshaw

JIM UPSHAW has been busy assisting his students on the student-produced history pieces on OPB Television, and will display their work as an invited speaker at the Broadcast Education Association national convention in April. He will join a panel on "The Ethics of Covering the Big Story" at the Oregon AP Broadcasters Association conference. He will also contribute a chapter to a major journalism history this year, and he continues to be involved with campus committees improving freshman education and the post-tenure faculty review process.

WAYNE WANTA will present four papers at the International Communication Association convention in San Francisco in May. Three of the papers were co-authored with UO graduate students. One paper, written with Chris Demaske, looked at how news media coverage influenced survey respondents' attitudes toward the Oregon Citizens Alliance. Another paper, written with Kuang-Kuo Chang, examined how people linked certain personal attributes to President Clinton based on media coverage of the president during the early days of reports dealing with Monica Lewinsky. A third paper, written with Chang, Tien-Tsung Lee and UO Associate Professor Bill Ryan compared the photographic coverage of presidential election campaigns in the United States and Taiwan. The fourth paper was written with Thomas Johnson of Southern Illinois University. Wanta will also serve as a discussant at the ICA Convention. Wanta, Lee and UO Professor Emeritus Jim Lemert also had an article published in the Journal of Communication. The study examined voter attitudes toward candidates and negative political advertising during the Gordon Smith-Ron Wyden Senate race.

Janet Wasko

JANET WASKO is anticipating the publication of her book, Consuming Audiences? Production and Reception in Media Research, from Hampton Press in July. Excerpts from her book, Hollywood in the Information Age, appear in The Media Studies Reader (London: Arnold), as well as in Media in Global Context: A Reader (London: Arnold). Her article, "The Political Economy of Film" will appear in A Companion to Film Theory. Additionally, she delivered a keynote speech, "Disney and Convergence," at the Convergence: Culture and Policy in the Digital Age Conference in Brisbane, Australia. She currently serves on the editorial boards of Journalism Studies, Critical Media Studies Book Series at Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, and the Media Education Foundation.