Category Archives: Journalism

Faculty authors talk shop during Alumni Weekend

Two School of Communications and Theater faculty members offered insights into the creative writing process April 16 as part of Alumni Weekend 2011.

Assistant Professor Gregg Feistman, STRC, and Assistant Professor Lori Tharps, JOUR, stepped out of their normal roles in front of the classroom and offered a peek into their lives as writers through a discussion moderated by Tamala Edwards of 6ABC.

They spoke of character creation and working toward an editor’s definition of “reader friendly.”

The two authors differed most on their approach to research.

Tharps says she knew her characters well when she first conceptualized Substitute Me, but she needed several years to fully develop them and her storyline.

“I didn’t sit down with a blank piece of paper and say ‘Speak to me,’” she said.

The years of research benefitted her when she finally sat down to write the novel; it only took three weeks.

Feistman, on the other hand, researched background for his novel, The War Merchants, as he wrote it. He said he doesn’t work from an outline, but knows the ending and will let the story tell itself. When it comes time to ensure he’s writing about something accurately, “Google is a wonderful tool.”

The editing process can be a gut wrenching process for both Tharps and Feistman, whether done by themselves or someone else.

“A good writer has to be a good self-editor, which is hard,” Feistman said. “If I don’t throw up [when editing], then it stays in.”

Tharps said her cousin’s criticism of a later draft was the hardest to swallow during her editing process. “She thought the main character was boring. It took a long time to care about her. That broke my heart.”

SCT’s Alumni Weekend events continued with a lunch in Annenberg Hall’s Joe First Media Center and a performance of Temple Theaters’ A View From the Bridge.

The authors share a laugh with the audience.
Assistant Professor Lori Tharps and 6ABC reporter Tamala Edwards.
Assistant Professor Lori Tharps
Lori Tharps and Gregg Feistman sign books for their new fans.
Alumni gather in the Joe First Media Center for lunch during Alumni Weekend 2011.
Several alumni take the opportunity to tour the new TUTV facility during the SCT lunch.

photos by Hillary Petrozziello/Aperture Agency

Assistant Professor Miller creates music magazine — WHYY Newsworks

Assistant Professor George Miller, JOUR, produces a new local music magazine, Jump, out of his own laptop and those of his network of volunteers, students and interns. With low overhead costs and no ambition to get rich, the former photojournalist is committed to creating a print magazine. “We’re a big, glossy magazine — you can rip these pages out and hang them on your walls,” said Miller. The first issue will hit the streets March 11.

Click here to read the full story.

New 24-hour traffic channel blazes trail like ESPN, CNN – Philadelphia Inquirer

Tango Traffic went on the air Jan. 1 to report rubbernecking and crashes, 24/7, whether at the height of rush hour or in the dead of night. “Thirty years ago, everybody laughed at CNN, and 20 years ago, a lot of people were laughing at ESPN,” said Associate Professor Chris Harper, JOUR. “Do we really need a traffic station? For a group of people, the answer is yes.”

Click here to read the full story.

Does media coverage foster more violence? — Philadelphia Inquirer

In the aftermath of the shooting of Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, some are wondering if there is a possible link between this violence, a perceived toxicity in political discourse and how it’s all reported in the media.

One way to abate future violence, says Associate Professor Chris Harper, JOUR, may be to reduce the sensationalistic way many outlets report on suspects.

Click here to read the full story.

Associate Professor Harper releases new book

Associate Professor Chris Harper’s new book, “Flyover Country: Baby Boomers and their Stories,” was released Dec. 6.

It examines several members of the Class of 1969 in Sioux Falls, S.D., including Harper and his rock band, The Trippers, which was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the South Dakota Rock and Roll Music Association in 2010. The book tells the stories of their lives and the impact they had on their town and their country.

Associate Professor Harper: Wikileaks’ Assange ‘has an agenda’ — KYW News Radio

Associate Professor Christopher Harper, JOUR, co-director of Temple’s Multimedia Urban Reporting Lab, questions the motives of Julian Assange, Wikileaks’ spokesperson and editor in chief. “I just see the actions that are taking place right now as making him not a credible source,” Harper said. “He has an agenda. He’s not doing it out of the goodness of his heart, for the greater good of the world, to embarrass world leaders and to show what’s going on. I think his motives are highly suspect.”

Click here to read the full story

Assistant Professor Tharps publishes new novel

Lori Tharps (photo by John Barone)

Assistant Professor Lori Tharps, JOUR, has published her most recent novel, “Substitute Me” (Atria Books).

Prior to joining Temple’s School of Communications and Theater, Tharps was a staff writer for Vibe magazine and a correspondent for Entertainment Weekly. She continues to write and has appeared in publications such as Glamour, Essence and Vogue Black. She has authored three books.

Synopsis: “Zora Anderson, an African American 30-year-old college dropout with wanderlust, leaves her accidental au pair position in Paris and returns to her hometown of Ann Arbor with no life plan in mind and no real goals on the horizon.  With pressure mounting from her well-educated, upper-middle class parents to do something useful with her life and with her own self-doubt growing, Zora decides to start over in New York and sublets a small Fort Greene studio apartment from a friend who is attending college in Massachusetts.  After combing the newspaper classifieds and finding a want ad for a “substitute me,” Zora lands a job in Park Slope with a WASP-y professional couple in their 30s, Kate and Brad Carter, to look after their young son, Oliver. Although Zora’s primary goal is to merely keep the rent money coming in to pay for her sublet, she soon becomes attached to Oliver, a baby with a sweet disposition who is adored by his parents. But as happy as she is with the Carters, Zora keeps her job a secret from her parents whom she is certain will view her position as demeaning and not much different than one of servitude. While Oliver’s mother, Kate, initially feels ambivalent about returning to work after her maternity leave, she soon adjusts to being back in the office and spends long hours there as she keeps a close eye on a competitive colleague who wants her job. With Kate’s new long hours, Zora begins working overtime to accommodate her employer’s hectic schedule and becomes a true substitute in the Carter household in ways she never would have imagined.”

Visit Tharps’ website.

PhIJI welcomes Philadelphia’s newest publisher to campus

Greg Osberg discusses his plans for philly.com.

Journalism students and faculty members in the School of Communications and Theater are constantly trying to peer into the future of their trade to determine how to best prepare for what lies ahead.

They’re in good company. Greg Osberg, the new publisher and CEO of Philadelphia Media Network, which consists of the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News and philly.com, is doing the same thing.

Osberg was welcomed to Temple University Nov. 2 by the Philadelphia Initiative for Journalistic Innovation (PhIJI), a program sponsored by the Journalism Department.

On his official first day on the job Oct. 11 (he was hired by the ownership group approximately a year prior to that), Osberg was greeted with several staggering figures. In recent years, the company has lost 25 percent of its circulation, 50 percent of its advertising revenue and 90 percent of its profitability.

“I knew on day one that we had some big challenges,” he said.

Osberg has set the bar high for improvement. His goal is to evolve Philadelphia Media Network into “the most successful regional media company in the United States.”

What makes his objective even more challenging is that there is no proven business model to follow – it has to be created from scratch.

Osberg has already made some significant changes. He no longer wants philly.com to be viewed as a separate entity from the print products. The philly.com staff has moved back into the company’s main office and advertising representatives have been charged with selling ads across both platforms. In the newsroom, reporters are being encouraged to think about reporting for both the web and the newspaper. Osberg said he plans on providing reporters the tools to write and submit their stories from the field.

In January, the company will begin an “incubator” program in which they will house a start-up media company (rent-free) whose product can benefit the website.

“I want us to find the next Foursquare and house them at philly.com,” he said.

Greg Osberg speaks one-on-one with a student following his presentation.

Osberg also wants to establish content-sharing relationships with other media companies across the region to increase its suburban coverage and forge strong ties with the region’s business and academic communities.

It is the students’ generation, Osberg said, that has sparked the need to overhaul the media industry. But it’s also this next generation of journalists who will help get the industry back on its feet. In the future, the company’s reporters will focus on long-form investigative journalism and bringing the local angle on national stories to their readers.

“We don’t know the new editorial mission [of the newspapers] yet, but I can guarantee you that it is going to be different than today,” Osberg said.

Osberg started his career at Chilton Publishing Co. and then moved on to a trade publication before assuming leadership positions at Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report and Buzzwire. He advised students to take any position in the industry they’re offered. “Don’t get discouraged with the brand that you start in. Just get your foot in the door.”

He also encouraged the students to continuously broaden their skill sets: “I wouldn’t advise being a specialist in today’s world.” For under Osberg’s plan, reporters with diverse skills will be the ones who find the most success.

SCT, Iraqi media experts connect for social media webinar

Approximately 50 students, as well as faculty and media professionals, participated in the webinar in Erbil, Iraq.

Three faculty members from the Department of Journalism spent the morning of Oct. 26 discussing the benefits of integrating social media into their classrooms.

What made the presentation special was their audience.

Half a world away, the images of Associate Professor Chris Harper, Assistant Professor Susan Jacobson and Assistant Professor Shenid Bhayroo were received by students, faculty and media professionals at the Institute of Technology in Erbil, Iraq, via Skype.

The project was led by Moustafa Ayad, a new media specialist working with the United Nations Development Program in Baghdad and the International Research and Exchanges Board on an initiative to connect universities throughout the Middle East and North Africa with institutions in America and the United Kingdom to discuss media development.

“People really want to learn how to use these tools,” Ayad said. “This project is about creating knowledge bases [of people in Iraq] who can then pass it along to other media professionals.”

(L-R): Associate Professor Chris Harper, Assistant Professor Susan Jacobson and Assistant Professor Shenid Bhayroo participate in a Skype discussion with professors and students in Iraq.

The Temple University professors touched on some of the ways social media has pervaded the School of Communications and Theater. Harper discussed how WordPress runs philadelphianeighborhoods.com, the capstone of the Journalism Department, and the Facebook and Twitter pages that support it.

“Although the students and professors are Iraqi citizens, they are Kurds, which is a rather independent group and geographical area in the country. It is good to see how the school is already using social media tools in the curriculum,” Harper said.

Bhayroo took a broader look at new media and how it’s used for research, while underscoring the importance of verifying and fact-checking every piece of information found on-line.

“The questions from our colleagues and students in Erbil highlighted their concerns about verifying identities and information obtained online. Their questions also highlighted security anxieties about publishing stories online, and the challenges they face in building transparent and representative media in the war-ravaged country,” he said.

Jacobson rounded out the webinar with a discussion on social media optimization: “how journalists are starting to use social media networks to increase their online audiences.”

“One of the professors told us that people in Erbil often use … social media sites to disseminate news when it was difficult to get information because of conflict,” Jacobson said.  “[A] professor asked why we would use social networks for news in the United States, when the flow of information is much freer.”

She replied with the notion that the trend toward social media is being driven by the young generation of media consumers.

Connecting people around the world through the Internet brings its fair share of challenges, especially in Iraq, where power outages are the norm. Ayad said they tested other technology, such as online streaming services and an open-source option that could be viewed by anyone. But he decided Skype proved to be the most reliable technology and would work the best for this project. The session at Temple, the first to connect with an Iraqi audience, was briefly impacted by a bandwidth issue, but it otherwise ran unhampered.

“We want to help media professionals and to create better media students and a better media environment through these collaborations,” Ayad said.

While discussions on this subject on Western college campuses aren’t out of the norm, Ayad said they’re vital to the future of Iraqi media. “This is a meaningful form of collaboration,” he said. “It’s a way to connect with viewpoints that you’re not otherwise going to have a chance to interact with.”

Ayad said many Iraqis are on Facebook, but the access to the Internet – and reliable electricity – can be tough to find. He said estimates on the percentage of Iraqis online ranges from 1 percent to 25 percent of the population. Active users, though, tend to see Facebook as solely a social entity

He hopes future webinars between Iraqi and Western universities can focus on issues such as curriculum development, media law and other subjects.