Professors Newspaper Publishing Award
-- contest proposal

by Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez
    Program Chair

    Do you, or another faculty member in your unit, produce a newspaper? Could it be time for us in the Newspaper Division to check out what we faculty are doing in this area? Maybe even evaluate them and promote their production?

    Case in point, our school of journalism at UT Austin has produced no less than ten newspapers in the past four years. In some cases these are lab publications, in other cases they are hybrids. But in all cases for us, it is the faculty who are driving the effort as a way of teaching production to our students, while at the same time providing a valuable public service. The students do most of the writing, but these are not student publications: faculty involvement is evident throughout in the editing, and sometimes in laying out, designing and copy-editing.

    One example: in our department, Prof. George Sylvie's class a couple of years ago produced a tabloid that focused on diversity of all kinds on campus. It was an excellent piece of journalism and an innovative way of teaching diversity and inclusion. The rest of the faculty applauded his and his students' work. But there was really no mechanism in place either internally or externally to recognize the excellence of the project because, although there are several contests for student produced newspapers and student writers, there aren't many for newspapers edited by a college/university unit or individual professor as part of a class or lab, or as a curriculum initiative.

 

    My proposal is for the newspaper division to sponsor an annual contest for newspapers like this, in which the professor or unit is the driving force. A nice plaque will suffice as an award. But we in the newspaper division would be able to provide the external review, suggestions for improvement, and the recognition that this sort of work is valued within the academy. It might also be a good idea to get professionals to judge the papers – one method of professional outreach.

    There are doubtless dozens of these publication and we don't get to see what others are doing outside of our own departments. Just showcasing those at AEJ would be an affirmation.
    If you're interested in developing this contest – or if you would like to send us some examples of similar publications that might be considered -- please contact me at mrivas@mail.utexas.edu. We will need people to make up criteria and eligibility (I have come up with some suggestions after evaluating several other contests), finding the judges and organizing that part of it, and, finally, doing up a nice award reception (?). I hope we will be able to be able to have enough in place that we can actually open up the competition in 2005, and announce the winners at the San Antonio AEJMC conference. This year in Toronto, we can at least display some of these publications and give a preliminary report on criteria, etc.

    If I don't hear from you, some of you will be hearing from me… I ain't shy.