The Journalism Department is the founding department and current home of Newspaper Research Journal, a refereed research journal of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

Our faculty and graduate students have presented their research at international, national and regional academic conferences in 2008-09. At the 2010 Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Annual Conference in Denver, five faculty members presented. Professor Carrie Brown and two colleagues presented the research paper, “Curated Creativity: Motivations and Agendas Influencing the Relationship between Twitter Use and Blog Productivity.” Professor Tom Hrach presented his paper, “An Incitement to Riot: Television’s Role in the Civil Disorders of the Summer of ’67.” Professor Jin Yang presented “Procedural Justice Matters More than Distributive Justice: How the Saddam Hussein Trial Became a Show Trial.” Professors Joe Hayden and Sandy Utt served as discussants for research paper panels.

Recently Associate Professor Joe Hayden published two books. The first concerns presidential-press relations— A Dubya in the Headlights: President George W. Bush and the Media (Lexington Books, 2009.) The other is a history examining the role of American journalists at the end of World War I—Negotiating in the Press: American Journalism and Diplomacy (LSU Press, 2010). Dubya has won a glowing review in Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly.

In May 2010 Professor David Arant was visiting professor at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, where he taught a three-week course, “New Media and Traditional Journalism Ethics: Issues for Reporting Online and in Social Media.”

In November 2009 Professor Rick Fischer was visiting scholar for the master’s program in public relations at Switzerland’s University of Lugano, a program he has worked with for more than a decade.