The National Press Foundation’s AARP Awards for Excellence in Journalism on Aging was established in 2023 to focus on this growing field. Among judges this year were Assistant Professor Amy Eisman and SOC adjunct Chris Adams. The excellent and creative winners are listed here. The entries were eye-opening and wide-ranging and showed how seriously this field is being explored.
Pallavi Kumar was quoted in an article in Becker Hospital Review about John’s Hopkins Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg losing the court case related to the Netflix documentary, “Take Care of Maya.”
Kurt Braddock provided comment to Voice of America regarding former President Trump's rhetoric surrounding his intention to be a 'dictator.' Kurt notes that although Republicans are trying to dismiss his comments are jokes, whether he is joking is immaterial. The normalization of rhetoric about dictatorship and violence renders his supporters more supportive of them.
Former WaPo fellow and practicum student Alejandra Matos (Wassem) was just named as a managing editor of the Houston Chronicle. She is a graduate of UTEP, where Katarina Kulagina and John Sullivan developed a partnership for master's students attending AU offering reduced tuition.
The SOC Dean’s Office Announced the 2023-2024 Race Matters grants. You can read about this year’s projects on the SOC website. (Thanks to Tia Milledge, Gemma Puglisi, and Filippo Trevisan for putting together this announcement).
Scientific American recommended Aram Sinnreich’s new novel “A Second Chance for Yesterday” as one of its 55 books recommended in 2023 (clocking in at #7).
Joe Campbell was interviewed this week for an ITV documentary tentatively titled, "Trump: The Last Stand." The ITV producer asked Joe several questions about poll results showing Donald Trump leading Joe Biden in hypothetical 2024 ballot matchups. Among other points, Campbell noted the poll results months before voting are not necessarily predictive and that presidential elections tend to be referenda on the incumbent. The documentary is to be aired next month on the British commercial television network.
Political Comedian Jordan Klepper spoke to 100 students for a Kennedy Political Union event. Klepper sat down for a conversation with Scott Talan, an assistant professor of Public Relations & Strategic Communication. Throughout the event, Talan posed questions to Klepper about his career and approach to political comedy. Both Talan and Klepper added humor to the conversation, eliciting laughter from the full crowd of students. Klepper spoke about how his roots in improv comedy informs his current work on television and comedy in general.
CEF associate director Larry Engel represented the Film and Media Arts Division at the CILECT 2023 Congress held in Rome in October. (CILECT is the premiere international association of film schools). While there, he helped lead a session about sustainability and bringing green production to all CILECT schools. The CILECT Executive Committee is forming a Committee on Sustainability to which Larry is expected to be assigned.
Currently, the Film and Media Arts Division is a member of the Green Film School Alliance (UFVA) and we are going green in all our production courses. Graduate student ambassadors visit production courses to discuss the GFSA initiative and help students gain sustainability recognition through the EMA laurel (Environmental Media Association). For those interested, here is a link to FMA’s adaptation of the GFSA green checklist.
Larry also was one of three finalist judges to determine JW’s inaugural Green Filmmaking Award at this year’s Jackson Wild. He also is part of the JW Sustainable Coalition. The winner is “Jane Goodall–Reasons for Hope. To watch the case study presented at JW, please follow this link.
CEF has been directly involved in green filmmaking since 2009, when it supported Larry’s and Andrew Buchanan’s (UK producer) Code of Best Practices for Sustainable Filmmaking, the first such code ever published.
At CILECT, Larry also was appointed to the editorial board for a new textbook on cinematography that will be published by CILECT.
