Category Archives: Faculty News

Prof. Weatherston saves students money through alternate textbook project

Students in Assistant Professor Kristine Weatherston’s “Genres of Media Production: Documentary” class will be spending $60 less a semester thanks to her use of innovative teaching tools.

WeatherstonWeb Instead of using a traditional textbook, Weatherston will teach from the Internet, new media, hands-on training and open-source educational materials.

She was awarded $1,000 for her plan from Temple University Libraries as part of the Alternate Textbook Project. According to its web site, the program was started in 2011 in an effort to encourage faculty to find “better and less costly ways to deliver learning materials to their students.”

Twenty students are enrolled in the class this fall.

“I teach this course every semester, so this will impact students for years to come,” she said.

Including this round of awards, nearly 40 faculty members from throughout Temple have participated in the project.

For more information, visit sites.temple.edu/alttextbook.

SMC remembers PR professor Jean Brodey

In the 28 years Jean Brodey, EDU ’75, ’79, taught public relations at Temple University, the tough but fair grader renowned for editing with a fierce red pen built strong connections with students who shared her passion for storytelling.

Brodey died April 30 at the age of 85.

Dr. Jean Brodey

The mentoring relationships Brodey built didn’t end when her students graduated. Long after they left the classroom, a small group, who dubbed themselves “The Brodey Bunch,” would meet her for lunch several times a year at the Whitemarsh Valley Inn in Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania, to seek advice and inspiration about their professional goals and their personal lives.

“Although our gatherings began with Jean, surrounded by fresh, new professionals seeking career advice and even leads to our first jobs, throughout the years the group evolved to discussions of not just our professional lives but close bonds of personal friendship,” said Cathy Engel Menendez, JOUR ’93, the senior manager of communications at PECO.

Job finder
As director of the internship program, it was part of Brodey’s job to place students with companies to allow them to gain practical experience in the field before graduating. But, by all accounts, it was more than a job for Brodey. It was her mission.

“She was the go-to person in the community when a company was looking for a PR professional,” said Danielle Cohn, JOUR ’95, vice president of marketing and communications at the Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Brodey was a member of the Philadelphia Public Relations Association for nearly 40 years and was inducted into its hall of fame in 1998. For PPRA, she published and mailed out a printed job listing called the “PRSA Placement Service,” which Cohn said helped her get her first three jobs.

And when the job offers came, Cohn said her mentees would go to Brodey for advice on negotiating the best salary.

“She gave a lot of us the courage to ask for a little bit more,” Cohn said. “She would always challenge us to stretch what we thought we could do.”

Lisa Bien, JOUR ’91, who runs her own marketing firm and is an adjunct professor of strategic communication, said Brodey inspired her to step up her game and improve her B-level grades.

Because of the demands she made of her students, Bien believes the public relations profession reaped the benefits.

“She kept our field at a higher lever. You knew when you walked into her class that she had higher expectations for us,” she said.

Bien’s first five jobs were the result of a lead from Brodey. And when she landed in a position in which she wasn’t happy, she called Brodey for advice.

“It’s because you didn’t call me and ask my advice,” Bien’s mentor said, showcasing her wry sense of humor.

Respected by the faculty
Her peers voiced respect for her as much as her students.

Ed Trayes, a professor of journalism since 1967, got to know Brodey well since their third-floor offices were close to one another.

“I last saw her when my wife and I picked her up at her home and drove her to a 25-Year Club dinner for faculty in Mitten Hall,” Trayes said. “The ride down from her home went very quickly since the conversation was lively, the humor flowing and the memories many.”

Dr. Jean Brodey

Another colleague, longtime adjunct professor Lew Klein, knew Brodey since they were schoolchildren.

“When I consider the members of the faculty from the early days when the school was just emerging, Jean was one of the best,” Klein said.

Trayes said her passion for teaching was obvious in the relationships she built with her students. He will forever remember her as the women with a big heart who loved to sing. “Jean was a terrific colleague,” Trayes said. “Her Temple retirement party was memorable. Quite the blowout.”

Prior to teaching at Temple, Brodey practiced public relations at Hall Mercer Community Mental Health Center and at Temple. She was also a correspondent at Montgomery Newspapers and a freelance poet who published two books of her poems, “My Way to Anywhere” and “Mid-Life Careers.”

Menendez said Brodey’s “knowledge of the [public relations] field and sharp strategic eye was present until the end and her wisdom and counsel was unmatched. She was my professor, my mentor and my friend and I am honored to have known her.”

Survivors include a daughter, Lisette; a son, Kenneth; and a granddaughter, Dara.

A Facebook page has been set up with information about a memorial reception on May 22: facebook.com/DrJeanBrodey.

By Jeff Cronin
SMC Communications
jcronin@temple.edu

Book showcases benefits diversity brings to the workplace

There exists a sentiment in corporate America that diversity in the workplace can negatively impact the bottom line because hiring people from different backgrounds could spark more internal conflict.

Not necessarily so, writes Donnalyn Pompper in her latest book.

A stack of Pompper's new book, Practical and Theoretical Implications of Successfully Doing Difference in Organizations. The associate professor of strategic communication, who has taught at Temple University’s School of Media and Communication since 2007, has published Practical and Theoretical Implications of Successfully Doing Difference in Organizations with Emerald Group Publishing. The book examines why a conscious and sustained commitment to diversity is needed in organizations.

It’s a hard case to argue, Pompper said, because the benefits, such as building respect among co-workers or enhanced creativity, may be less tangible than financial success or failure.

“Diversity management in organizations remains a highly controversial issue – and valuing all people by providing equal opportunities at work persists as one of the central challenges of the 21st century,” Pompper said.

As a result, she found that diversity programs in organizations “fail to explore root causes of enduring power relations, which perpetually stratify people negatively according to their social identity dimensions.”

Pompper said workplace diversity goes beyond ethnicity and race.

“My book is about how these social identity dimensions are important, but that diversity is much, much more than that one social identity dimension, because each intersects with so many others,” she said, noting that age, culture, gender, physical/psychological ability, faith, sexual orientation, social class and more should all be taken under consideration.

When there’s a solid “business case,” for diverse hiring, Pompper said a company is more likely to take that step. For example, a PR firm may hire a Latina to work on Hispanic business accounts or an ad agency might hire a gay man for its fashion accounts.

“There’s a lot of push-back from employees when they suspect a colleague is hired only because he or she is x,” Pompper said, “because everyone wants processes to be fair and equitable.”

It’s her hope that the findings in her book can help its readers become “future managers and researchers who embrace social identity difference.”

Media contact:
Jeff Cronin
jcronin@temple.edu
215-204-3324

SMC names 2013-14 faculty award winners

The School of Media and Communication announced the winners of the 2013-14 faculty awards May 6 at the annual spring SMC faculty assembly meeting.

Research

Nancy Morris, professor and chair of media studies and production

Teaching

Ed Trayes, professor of journalism (senior faculty)

Adrienne Shaw, assistant professor of media studies and production (junior faculty)

Service

Gregg Feistman, associate professor of strategic communication

Class analyzes how LGBT community is portrayed in media

Adrienne Shaw points to an item on the print version of the class’s digital timeline of LGBT history. (photo by Joseph V. Labolito/Temple University)

Alex Jaconski discovered grunge music in the summer of 2004.

Nirvana – one of the mainstays of music 10 years previously – appeared on a VH1 countdown. Their songs struck a chord for the 11-year-old.

“That’s a stage in your life when you’re trying to figure out who you are. [Grunge] is a little bit darker and a little bit sadder,” he said. “That music definitely hit a note that made sense — that I could connect to and have something to rely on when I didn’t really know who else to turn to.”

Themes of isolation and solitude can resonate with people in all walks of life, so Jaconski thought grunge music would be the perfect focal point of his final project in the School of Media and Communication’s “LGBT Media Representation” class, the first of its kind at Temple University.

Jaconski did what scholars call a “queer reading” of the lyrics of songs from Nirvana, Sound Garden and other bands of the genre. Even from his perspective outside of the LGBT community, the 21-year-old native of Philadelphia’s Roxborough neighborhood said this music showcases “the emotional disenfranchisement of [the LGBT community] being forced to deny who they are.”

Adrienne Shaw, an assistant professor of media studies and production (MSP), who created the class, said it’s an important time in history to discuss how LGBT people are portrayed in media.

“Especially given a lot of different political shifts that have happened over the past five years, there are more and more gay issues and queer issues in the news and in media, but I feel like a lot of students don’t necessarily understand the history of where those images came from,” Shaw said. “The class is providing the background of that history and theoretical tools for unpacking why images of homosexuality, of queerness or of transgender identity, exist they way they do now.”

Students listen to Adrienne Shaw as she lectures to the class.

The “LGBT Media Representation” class is the first of its kind at Temple. (photo by Joseph V. Labolito/Temple University)

She said the analysis of LGBT people in media is “almost never” a standard part of a communication school’s curriculum, which it is at Temple.

“One of the things I appreciate most about [the MSP] program is that is matches media studies and production together. In order to be a good media producer, especially in this day and age with the amount of critics online, you have to understand what those critiques might be and where they’re coming from,” Shaw said. “It’s not enough to just learn how to make a movie or how make a TV show. You have to understand the history of representation.”

Even when a movie or a song isn’t explicitly written for or about the LGBT community, Shaw said it’s important to take a look at popular media from that perspective, much like Jaconski is doing for his project, to understand how they might see themselves. Other students are examining works like Frozen and Mulan.

“A lot of meaning from media comes from what the audience brings to it,” she said. “Queer readings are a way for people to see themselves in this world… and see that something about themselves connects to this media that may not specifically be about them.”

When shows only represent LGBT characters in specific ways – for example showing gay men as white and affluent– Shaw said it is hard for people who are gay but not white and affluent to connect to those characters. She believes movies like Frozen or television shows like Mighty Morphin Power Rangers are much more about difference and accepting diversity.

“It’s not to say that explicit representation isn’t good. It’s important for people who aren’t queer to see that there are queer people who exist in the world,” she said. “Implicit representation can be really important for people who are a part of marginalized groups because it allows them to imagine possibility.”

For the most part, Shaw said many forms of media – especially television – are getting better at portraying the LGBT community because, “People going into those industries grew up taking classes in media studies programs that taught them to think about these things. You see more nuanced characters. You see more characters not included to be the ‘gay problem’ in the show, but to be another character.”

The true social impact of LGBT people being shown in a realistic way is hard to determine, but Shaw has heard stories of positive results.

“I know people who say their parents were homophobic and then, after watching Will and Grace for 10 years, don’t say things that are as homophobic. It doesn’t mean that their politics got better, but they began to recognize that gay people exist, which is always a step in the right direction,” Shaw said. “That is one of the kinds of social change that you see from media representation.”

Media Contact
Jeff Cronin
jcronin@temple.edu
215-204-3324

SMC professors earn Provost merit awards

Thirty-nine faculty members from the School of Media and Communication have received awards for meritorious activity from the Temple University Office of the Provost.

Each year, Temple University recognizes faculty for outstanding performance in teaching and instruction, research, scholarship, creative activity and/or service to the university or their individual professions or disciplines. The selection process began in fall 2013, through either nominations by the provost, deans, department chairs and colleagues or self-nominations.

“A merit award reflects our faculty’s continued dedication and commitment to scholarship and students, and highlights the exceptional drive for excellence in teaching, innovation and performance,” Provost Dai said. “Our deans, college and department committees, and department chairs were committed to ensuring that these deserving and distinguished individuals received recognition. I want to thank everyone for their time and diligence in this important process.”

SMC’s recipients are:

Advertising

Brooke Duffy
Jennifer Lovrinic Freeman
Joseph Glennon
Stacey Harpster
Sheryl Kantrowitz
Michael Maynard
Katherine Mueller
Dana Saewitz

Journalism

Fabienne Darling-Wolf
Christopher Harper
Carolyn Kitch
Andrew Mendelson
George Miller
Maida Odom
Larry Stains
Lori Tharps
Edward Trayes
Karen M. Turner
Linn Washington

Media Studies and Production

Amy Caples
Sherri Hope Culver
Jan Fernback
Matthew Fine
Paul Gluck
Peter Jaroff
Jack Klotz
Matthew Lombard
Nancy Morris
Adrienne Shaw
Barry Vacker
Kristine Trever Weatherston
Laura Zaylea

Strategic Communication

Gregg Feistman
Scott Gratson
Donnalyn Pompper
Cornelius Pratt
Tracey Weiss
Thomas Wright
Kaibin Xu

Dean Boardman fights to improve media’s White House access

David Boardman, dean of the Temple University School of Media and Communication, is helping lead the charge to improve journalistic access to the White House.

David Boardman

Boardman, president of the American Society of News Editors, and a group of leaders representing the Associated Press Media Editors, the National Press Photographers Association, the White House Correspondents’ Association and the Associated Press met with White House Press Secretary Jay Carney and other officials in December to discuss the importance of allowing journalists to photograph the president.Boardman believed there were positive steps taken at last year’s meeting, but, on Feb. 21, the White House did not allow photojournalists to document President Obama’s meeting with the Dalai Lama, and instead released its own image.

In this Q-and-A, Dean Boardman talks about why this continuing fight for access is so important.

What’s the issue at hand?

The message of transparency was a drumbeat throughout President Obama’s first term. Even though administration officials pledged that they would be the most open in history, in a lot of ways, they have been one of the most closed. In particular, they have closed doors to photojournalists and are instead asking media organizations to use images shot by the White House photographer. It’s the assessment of many professional journalism groups that President Obama may be the most closed to press photography of any president in the history of photojournalism.

Why aren’t they letting photojournalists in?

We believe it flows naturally from their very adept use of social media. It’s part of what got him elected and certainly has been used very effectively since. The White House has generally circumvented the people’s press and simply goes right to the public with their message. In other regimes around the world, we call that propaganda.

What are these organizations asking for?

We’re not demanding to be in the Oval Office while the president is having a one-on-one conversation with the leader of another country. But when they come out as they always do for a photo op or when the president signs a bill into law, we want to be there. There have been many occasions when only the White House photographer was allowed to take pictures, which the White House then distributed.

What steps are you taking?

As president of the American Society of News Editors, I wrote a letter to our membership asking the newspapers to stop using White House photography. They only way we’re going to have leverage is if we stop publishing them.

What’s the difference between a White House photo and a photojournalist’s photo?

Let’s say there was a moment of tension between the president and a visiting dignitary and there is some sort of a slight. Professional photojournalists are trained to read body language and look for detail to find those telling moments. The White House isn’t going to distribute that image.

But isn’t any photo better than none at all?

It’s not up to the White House to determine what images the people see of their president. It might mean not having a photograph of the president in the newspaper for some period of time, but in the long run it’s very much in the readers’ interest. We’re not naïve about the fact that any number of web sites like BuzzFeed will pick up the hand-out photos and use them in the mean time.

What’s next?

Leaders of the organizations involved in the initial meeting are getting together and planning for the next meeting of a smaller working group of association leaders and White House officials. To the White House’s credit, they are staying in the conversation. I’m optimistic that we’re going to be able to work out an agreement.

What is the lesson that will come out of this situation?

It’s less about photography and much more about the role of the press as the watchdog of government. The White House will continue to use social media to communicate directly with the people. Some people would say that makes the job of the press less relevant, but I say that makes it more important than ever. It’s the media’s role to help people navigate through what’s fact and what’s propaganda. It’s certainly what we’re trying to instill in our students so they can be powerful and influential communicators going forward.

by Jeff Cronin
jcronin@temple.edu

How Temple is helping ensure the future of data journalism

Assistant Professor Meredith Broussard works with junior journalism major Greg Pinto as other students look on. (Photo by Ryan S. Brandenberg/Temple University)

A data journalism class at the School of Media and Communication places Temple University at the forefront of a new wave of programs teaching aspiring reporters how to crunch numbers and find new ways to tell stories hidden in data.

Assistant Professor Meredith Broussard, a computer scientist-turned-reporter, said she created her class to teach “the practice of finding stories in numbers and using numbers to tell stories.”

David Herzog, RTF ’84, the academic adviser for the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting (NICAR), sees a growing trend at the nation’s top universities of classes that target the needs of the changing journalism job market.

“A lot of the classes that had been in place for several years are traditional [computer-assisted reporting] classes” that focused on the number analysis, he said. “What’s happening how is we’re seeing more and more schools who are realizing the value of offering classes that go beyond that. Temple’s class … is in the first wave of those trying to do that.”

Throughout the semester, students have learned how to use databases, spreadsheets and visualization tools and are developing the ability to find and clean data for investigative stories. Students will end the semester by creating an interactive piece of data journalism.

Finding truth in numbers
Marcus McCarthy, 21, a junior journalism major from Charlestown, R.I., said data journalism is one of the best things to come out of the media’s shifting identity.

“Although I appreciate the place for anecdotal evidence, many times it isn’t enough to tell a story since the sample size is typically too small. However, accounting for the bias data can bring, statistical evidence can more accurately portray the larger issues facing our society,” he said. “This means that we can now take on the issues that we were previously unable to accurately report on. That prospect is very exciting to me and I see it making a big difference in bettering our society.”

It seems McCarthy has learned one of the key points of Broussard’s class: the existence of data doesn’t always equal truth.

“We tend to think of data as this immutable object that exists outside of any kind of human intervention – because there’s data, that means it’s true,” Broussard explained. “But the thing is, data are created by people. It’s socially constructed by people who ask certain types of questions and who have certain agendas. Understanding that dimension of data helps us understand the numbers and the social context of the numbers.”

Broussard, 39, brings to students her own history of practical experience in data journalism. As a journalist, she has worked on a variety of data-driven projects that provide insight on the reporting methods students will need to be successful in today’s competitive job market.

Professor Broussard lectures from the front of the class.

The spring 2014 semester marks the first time a data journalism class has been taught at Temple. (Photo by Ryan S. Brandenberg/Temple University)

Using her creative and technical skills, Broussard last year created stackedup.org, a site that showcases an algorithm that mines Philadelphia School District data to determine if schools have enough of the right books to equip students with the knowledge to succeed on standardized tests. The articles she wrote based on her analysis prompted the district to reallocate books to schools with the most need, as well as make some staff changes and financial reforms.

Data leads to a Pulitzer
Dylan Purcell, JOUR ’00, a data journalist at The Philadelphia Inquirer for the past eight years, knows the impact this type of work can have. He was part of the paper’s Pulitzer Prize-winning team that worked on a series of stories about violence in the city’s schools. Purcell dove deep into the school district’s crime statistics during the investigation.

“No one had ever looked at the district’s crime patterns,” he said. “They were touting a big drop in crime, but they weren’t accounting for the enrollment dropping drastically.”

Without hard numbers to support their reporting, “I don’t know if we would have been able to change as much as we did. The data can reinforce your traditional storytelling.”

Purcell has seen his work evolve over the past decade in the way he tells his part of a story. Much of his work includes interactive online graphics and maps – an encouraging welcome mat for the next generation of reporters now learning how to use this technology.

“There is a either a requirement or a strong recommendation to have at least some basic data skills,” Herzog said of the current job market. “Employers are seeing the value of having journalists who know how to do this kind of work, so there is a premium being placed on these skills. This class is very strong in that regard.”

Media Contact:
Jeff Cronin
jcronin@temple.edu
215-204-3324

Study finds hints of social responsibility in top Fortune 500 company mission statements

Wal-Mart wants to “save people money.” Chevron aspires to “be the global energy company most admired for its people, partnerships and performance.” Microsoft’s mission statement says the company’s goal is to “help people and businesses realize their full potential.”

Donnalyn Pompper

In her most recent study, Donnalyn Pompper, associate professor of strategic communication at the Temple University School of Media and Communication, found that the most profitable companies at the top of the Fortune 500 list are balancing financial success with social responsibility better than companies at the bottom.

“It is fairly well-acknowledged that many corporations hesitate to ‘do the right thing’ when it comes to stakeholders [employees, customers, etc.] and the environment if doing so will detract from the bottom line,” Pompper said. “Our study findings suggest that the higher-performing Fortune 500 companies may have found a way to accomplish both aims — to be socially responsible and to turn a profit.”

Pompper, who co-authored the study with Taejin Jung, associate professor of communication studies at SUNY-Oswego, compared the mission statements of the top Fortune 500 companies like Wal-Mart and AT&T with the bottom-tier Fortune 500 companies, such as H&R Block and Electronic Arts.

“The top 20 higher-performing corporations’ mission statements more frequently mentioned non-financial objectives and concern for satisfying shareholders than the bottom 20 lower-performing corporations,” the professors wrote in their paper, “Assessing Instrumentality of Mission Statements and Social-Financial Performance Links: Corporate Social Responsibility as Context,” which was published this year in the International Journal of Strategic Communication.

Pompper and Jung said it’s important for these companies to work toward the goals in their mission statements in practical ways.

“Corporations with strong public image components in mission statements must periodically evaluate contribution of these image goals against genuine relationships with publics in order to achieve balance and to counterbalance negative perceptions of public relations as a green washing tool when it comes to [corporate social responsibility],” they wrote.

Pompper said the research can be used a catalyst to dive deeper into the relationship between financial success and social responsibility to determine if one causes the other: Do responsible companies earn more money, or does having more money give a company the ability to be more socially responsible?

“With these findings, we discovered that there may be a relationship between being profitable and mission statements,” Pompper said. “Being socially responsible may be a key; one that deserves deeper scrutiny.”

By Jeff Cronin
jcronin@temple.edu
215-204-3324

New book edition updates history of black hair in America

Over the past decade, the internet has impacted the way to do just about everything – right down to how we talk about hair.

A headshot of Lori Tharps With such a game-changing phenomenon, Lori Tharps, an assistant professor of journalism at Temple’s School of Media and Communication, released a new edition of a book she co-authored, Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America, which chronicles how the conversation about black hair has evolved since the 15th century.

“Hair Story is still the only book that does that,” she said. “No other book talks about black hair so comprehensively.”

Tharps said it’s much more than a book about hair. It’s about history.

“Black hair represents the black experience is this country,” she said. “As a people we were enslaved and systematically told that our physical features were inferior. We have to unpack those ideals of beauty and respectability when it comes to our hair. Until we as a complete society have done that, it’s never going to be ‘just hair’.”

Tharps, who co-wrote the first edition in 2001 with journalist Ayana Byrd, realized that black hair was going through an undocumented renaissance and warranted an update to their text.

A busy decade
“We committed to telling the history of black hair in America from the past to the present,” said Tharps. “The book ended in 2000 and we [caught up] in 2013. A lot of things have happened in the world of black hair since the beginning of the 21st century.”

Leading the list of what’s affected hair the most in the last decade? The internet.

With the rise of YouTube and social media, the conversation about black hair has opened up to the non-black demographic. Hashtags like #TeamNatural, terms like “co-wash,” (the process of washing with conditioner and not shampoo because of the adverse effects of sulfates) and “protective styling” are branching out to the general public. The internet has also encouraged a new wave of entrepreneurship.

“You see the rise of a lot of female entrepreneurs who have launched businesses that they would’ve never made it had the internet not given them a distribution model,” said Tharps. “These are really big changes in the world of black hair that we felt had to be documented.”

Now, hair care blogs, consultants and manufacturers have found a way to build a business and a brand online.

In two new chapters, Tharps and Byrd bring to light the cultural and political questions many now face within the black community. Is she trying to “look white” with her straight hair? Is her natural hair a political statement? They examine how the opinions of black people, when it comes to their hair, are changing and being vocalized.

“The problem has been that black people have always compared their hair to white hair as if white hair was the standard and we’re always trying to emulate that, which makes sense because they’re in the majority and they told us that’s what we should be trying to do. But if you’re always comparing it, it’s never going to meet up to the standards,” said Tharps.

A window into a culture
Tharps said the book’s topic is vital to cultural understanding in America and is often overlooked in race-related dialogue.

“It’s very easy to not know what’s going on in the world of black hair and yet you come in contact with black hair through friends, colleagues, employees or celebrities,” she said. “If you don’t understand the background you’re missing a large part of our culture and you’re creating the potential for ethnic miscommunication.”

Tharps hopes in the future people will read her book with the same level of interest they have in other cultural phenomonon that has shaped American history . She wants them to be in awe of the past generations’ triumphs.

“I would hope that we get to place where we can just celebrate our hair and not have to justify, explain or apologize for it,” said Tharps. “What I hope, is that we will finally make it to a point where black people’s hair is just hair.”

On the web: hairstoryonline.com.

-By Sofiya Ballin
SMC Communications