Eric Meyer speaks to JMC 201, Current Issues in Journalism, last Thursday

The JMC-School held William Allen White Day festivities last week, welcoming the Marion County Record. Thursday marked the first time in the history of the William Allen White Foundation that the national citation went to an organization instead of an individual.

Eric Meyer, the editor of the Record, accepted the award on the newspaper’s behalf. Meyer spoke to two JMC classes during his visit and stopped by Media Crossroads for an interview with KUJH-TV. JMC School students were recognized at the Awards ceremony on Thursday and students were inducted into Kappa Tau Alpha. Cal Butcher, director of Media Crossroads and lecturer, received the Bengtson Faculty Mentor award. Tim Bengtson, the namesake of the award, passed away on April 4. He mentored students for more than 30 years at KU.

Photo courtesy of Professor and Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development Hyunjin Seo.

JMC School celebrates 10-year anniversary of Ph.D. program: The panel sessions, "Looking Back" and "Looking Forward" were hosted by faculty, alumni and graduate students last Friday in Stauffer-Flint Hall.

Seven journalists from Africa, Asia, Central America, the Middle East and Eastern Europe met with staff of The Kansas Reflector last Friday to hear about the Reflector’s reporting on the raid on the Marion County Record. The Reflector became national news when Facebook removed all of its links — to 6,000 articles from four years — on April 4. 

Janet Rose (left), Juan Valadez Carrillo (center) and Rebekka Schlichting (right) post for a photo last Friday. 

Juan Valadez Carrillo’s short film “Midnight Harvest” debuted Friday, April 12, at the KC Film Fest International. The Film Fest International selected Carrillo’s film as a finalist in the “Horror” category. Assistant Professor of the Practice Rebekka Schlichting and Professor of the Practice Janet Rose attended the festival. Carrillo created the film as a final project for Schlichting’s JMC 440 Creative Producing & Directing class. Lane Phifer assisted with sound production.  

Eudora Times wins 32 newspaper awards: The student-produced online publication won 32 awards in the Kansas Press Association contest for its reporting, multimedia and advertising work in 2023. The recognition included seven first-place awards as well as former sports editor Jack Denebeim winning third place in the statewide new journalist of the year competition. The Times primarily competes against other professional newspapers that have a similar circulation size. 

KU Ad Club students visited VML Chicago last week as part of its ad crawl in Chicago. Students had the chance to ask agency professionals questions to learn more about the advertising world. 

Alternative Breaks is a service-learning organization dedicated to providing KU students with immersive volunteer opportunities both within the local community, as well as across the nation. Alternative Breaks is looking for new members to help with its mission of sending students on volunteer trips to local and out-of-state sites. 

Students from JMC 611, Sales Strategies, have been visiting the class business partners in the Lawrence and Kansas City area to learn about their business model, their sales/business development process and their unique value proposition. The students will present what they learned from their meetings to the entire class on Monday, April 22. 

KAB Award Available: The Kansas Association of Broadcasters offers up to $20,000 in collegiate scholarships to help guarantee the future of broadcasting in Kansas. The deadline to apply is May 1. Apply here.

JMC 611 students Ellie Chestler (3rd from left) and Megan Funkey (2nd from left) are pictured here with their host Kelly Cooper, (far left) Senior Vice President, Parris Communications, Kansas City and several other Parris Communication colleagues. 

Free Expression on the Hill, will occur on April 23 at 5 p.m. in the Kansas Union’s Jayhawk Room. Students will collaborate on scenarios that reveal the tensions of free expression with Richard Levy from KU Law and discuss how exercising free expression impacts mental health with Ash Wilson from the Office of Civil Rights and Title IX. The workshop aims to clarify KU policies around topics such as guest speakers, counter-protests, and postings but also encourage thinking about the limitations, benefits, and intricacies that accompany free expression. Please RSVP in advance to attend. 

The Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Department will host Emily Rems for a talk pitched at graduate students who are interested in feminism, journalism, fiction, and pop culture on Monday, April 22 from 3-4 p.m. in the Maker’s Space (Room 203A) in Anschutz Library. Rems is a feminist writer, editor, and podcaster who recently moved from New York to Kansas and was a 2021 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Fiction. She is known as the former editor-in-chief of the young women’s pop culture magazine BUST and as host of BUST’s podcast Poptarts. Emily will discuss her history with BUST as well as advice for pitching and freelancing.

Associate Professor Alyssa Appelman has been elected to the Publications Committee of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (ACES).

Dr. Annalise Baines (j’23, University of Zurich), Professor Hyunjin Seo, and Dr. Darcey Altschwager (j’22, UpMetrics) are co-authors of a research paper, “Technology Learning and Justice-impacted Communities,” which has been accepted for publication in The Journal of Public Interest Communications. 

Professor Hyunjin Seo gave a presentation at Princeton University on April 3 on how to work with justice-impacted communities regarding evidence-based digital skills training and online misinformation assessments. 

Assistant Professor Chris Etheridge shares how reflective learning, or helping students realize that data can be used to tell a story that is true to their own experiences, can be a new approach to writing instruction in the new book, “Better Practices: Exploring the Teaching of Writing in Online and Hybrid Spaces.” The key is helping students realize data is not a set of arcane numbers hidden in official databases but rather information that informs everyday life, such as tax information, sports statistics, traffic rates and business figures. Read the full KU Today release. 

Future JMC faculty member wins Nafziger-White-Salwen Dissertation Award: Tamar Wilner is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Information, and this fall she will start as an assistant professor at the University of Kansas’s William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications. Her research interests center around news literacy, misinformation, and the gap between journalism scholarship and practice. Her service efforts focus on helping academics and journalists to bridge that gap.

Internship and student jobs

Job opportunities

Make sure you keep up with updates on Resource Center hours by following @jschooltech on social media.

Stop by the JBar and get help on your final projects. Special time has been reserved for the following classes/topics, so please make plans to attend. Need something else? Make an appointment.

304 (and above) portfolios 
Thursday, April 18, 8-11 a.m. 
Wednesday, April 24, 3-5 p.m.
Monday, April 29, 10 a.m.-12 p.m.
Wednesday, May 1, 3-5 p.m.
Friday, May 3, 10 a.m.-12 p.m.

300 infographics
Friday, April 19, 10 a.m.-12 p.m.
Monday, April 22, 8 a.m.-12 p.m.
Monday, April 29, 8-10 a.m.
Wednesday, May 1, 1-3 p.m.
Friday, May 3, 8-10 a.m.

Amie Just (j’17) of the Lincoln Journal Star won first place in the 2023 Associated Press Sports Editors contest in the Division C Project category for reporting on the financial gains made by the University of Nebraska volleyball program.

Alumni job updates

Calendar

William Allen White School of Journalism & Mass Communications
journalism.ku.edu

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