Category Archives: Uncategorized

Research director examines environmental journalism graduate education

Leave a reply
Bruno Takahashi and Perry Parks

Bruno Takahashi and Perry Parks

Knight Center Research Director Bruno Takahashi and PhD student Perry Parks have published an article examining the experiences of environmental journalists and communicators during their Master’s program in journalism at Michigan State University. The study, published in the journal Frontiers in Science and Environmental Communication, reports that the graduates of the program reflected positively on the networking opportunities and hands-on experiences provided during their studies. On the other hand, respondents highlighted some challenges during their graduate studies, such as the perceived gap between communication theory, statistics and research methods, and the practice of journalism.

The results of the study suggest that graduate programs face an uphill battle in delivering competencies such as content knowledge and mass communication knowledge in ways that are effective or meaningful to students representing a broad range of backgrounds and professional aspirations. The study explains that graduate journalism programs face the challenge of building enough flexibility into curricula to respond to changing conditions in the media industry, considering the need for journalists to specialize and carve a niche in an a highly competitive media and information environment.

The manuscript is published as open-acess and can be read here.

Visiting scholar discusses mass media in Kazakhstan

Leave a reply
Sayagul Alimbekova

Sayagul Alimbekova

Sayagul Alimbekova, a visiting scholar from Al-Farabi Kazakh National University in Almaty, Kazakhstan, recently gave a public presentation on “Mass Media in Kazakhstan: Development and Problems,” sponsored by the School of Journalism and MSU’s Center for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies.

Alimbekova arrived at MSU in mid-October on a research internship to explore internet dependency among university students for her doctoral dissertation. She has been working closely with Knight Center director Eric Freedman and Professor Serena Carpenter and will be surveying journalism students from MSU and her home university in early 2018.  She also interviewed Freedman about changes in the press in Kazakhstan for an article in the national newspaper Egemen Kazakhstan (“Independent Kazakhstan”), which has a circulation of more than 200,000.

Knight Center affiliate explores Rachel Carson’s impact on popular culture of environmentalism

Leave a reply
Perry Parks

Perry Parks

During his studies in journalism and science communication, Perry Parks, a Knight Center affiliate and doctoral candidate in the School of Journalism, noticed recurring references to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in academic literature, environmental reporting texts and popular mass media. Parks was intrigued both that the 1962 book on pesticides was still so prominent in the culture and that nearly every reference credited Silent Spring in some way with launching the modern environmental movement.

Parks decided to investigate Silent Spring’s role in environmentalism and the causes of its staying power. So he read previous research on the book and conducted a historical and cultural analysis of every reference to the term “silent spring” in the New York Times and the Washington Post over 50 years. That turned out to be more than 1,000 news stories, editorials, letters to the editor, calendar listings and other items. Continue reading →

A lesson in style from Lady Bird

Leave a reply

By Eric Freedman
The cover is faded, and it’s certainly not the most dramatic or eye-catching item on display at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Texas.
But it is important.

Lady Bird Johnson Style Guide

Lady Bird Johnson Style Guide


It’s Lady Bird Johnson’s newspaper stylebook — “Rules Governing Newspaper Style” — from her days as a journalism student at the University of Texas. She graduated with honors in 1934 and ventured into journalism — the media management side of things to be precise — in 1943 when she bought Austin radio station KTBC for $17,500. She later bought KTBC-TV, a CBS affiliate.
Those investments made millionaires of Lady Bird Johnson and her husband, the future president of the United States. When she died in 2012, her Dallas Morning News obituary noted that “she was the first wife of a president to become a millionaire in her own right. “
I’m not sure how much Lady Bird Johnson would have credited her use of the stylebook for her success as a media mogul — if she were alive, that is.
But truth be told, the Associated Press Stylebook is an important tool for learning to do journalism right and with precision. We use it in our School of Journalism classes and it’s the gold standard in newsrooms.
When Keith Shelton was a journalist-in-residence at the University of North Texas, he wrote a column called “Everything I ever needed to know I learned from my ‘Stylebook’” for Editor & Publisher magazine. I often hand out copies to my students and tell them the stylebook is their friend — with an admonition not to abandon their friend. Continue reading →