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Role Model's Email Leads to 2nd Journal Article

12/22/2014

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Happy to report here the publication of my second academic journal article, "Ferguson, Journalism, Twitter. The News Media and Social Media: Together for Better and for Worse." This article is co-authored by one of my role models, Sue Ellen Christian, and can be found in the fall 2014 issue of Zeteo: The Journal of Interdisciplinary Writing. Here is an excerpt:
Our own evaluation of the performance of traditional and social media in the Ferguson story is mixed. News consumers have had access to great reporting and predictable, tablet-thin coverage, as well as to a powerful social-media movement that has roiled the Twittersphere with posts both smart and stupid. Twitter and the news media will be intertwined for some time as the story in Ferguson and related police shootings and protests, in New York and elsewhere nationwide, continue to be broadcast via hashtags. ... What follows relates to how, in a sense, and even if unintentionally, traditional and social media worked together to report what happened in Ferguson. We will first address Twitter’s most salient contributions, then traditional media’s, and then similarities between the two.
Christian and I met at the inaugural Teachapalooza conference for journalism educators in 2011. She's a former staff reporter for the Chicago Tribune, author of "Overcoming Bias: A Journalist's Guide to Culture and Context" and an associate professor of journalism at Western Michigan University. So when Christian emailed me in August about looking together at mainstream media's coverage of the Michael Brown case, well, it was yes at hello. That Zeteo might publish our work with #Ferguson still timely and, as she also wrote, it would give educators some tools for talking about the matter in their classes all seemed worthwhile.

My key concern was fairly contributing to the collaboration given my returning that same week to teaching for the first time in a year – and in the coming weeks having to facilitate the second annual O'Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism conference, keynote a NAACP banquet in Illinois and do a presentation on digital branding at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. Thankfully, Christian and the Zeteo editors were very patient and helpful. I learned a great deal through the process and hope to work with my co-author and the editors again soon.

Did I say this is my second journal article? Here's a blog post about the first one, "An Online Hoax Reminds Journalists to Do Their Duty," published in the "Journal of Mass Media Ethics" in 2012. With these academic works and my graduate school thesis now behind me, I am looking forward to my next opportunity to do something scholarly. What and when will it be?

How Twitter affected the news media's coverage of Ferguson - published today. http://t.co/Ods2aAtzmm @ZeteoJ @herbertlowe #WMU #Ferguson

— Sue Ellen Christian (@sechristian1) December 17, 2014

Thanks for the hat tip, @marissaaevans. @herbertlowe @ZeteoJ

— Sue Ellen Christian (@sechristian1) December 18, 2014
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#loweclass Project Explores MU EOP

12/16/2014

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What's in this blog post is also published as the About page on a new website – "EOP Excels at Offering Avenues to College Students: A Digital Journalism Class Project About Marquette's Educational Opportunity Program" – found at loweclass-mueop.weebly.com.

The work of my journalism students this semester was first conceived when Joseph Green, Ph.D., appeared at a board meeting of the Marquette University Ethnic Alumni Association (EAA) in 2010. Green had recently become director of the university's Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) and said that one of his priorities was finding ways to capture and present its legacy and activities. To my surprise, everyone around the table immediately looked to me.

As a proud Marquette and EOP graduate, I left that EAA meeting eager to help Green and others tell the program's story and those of its nearly 2,000 graduates. As a new faculty member, the possibilities for student journalists to contribute were obvious. Four years later, EOP's 45th anniversary celebration coincided nicely with my desire for a worthwhile final project for my Digital Journalism III (JOUR 2100) class.

Also known as #loweclass, my 14 students plus one joining us via an independent study readily took to the idea, as junior Natalie Ragusin shares in an introduction that includes excerpts from blog posts written after all but a couple learned that EOP existed. Several of them later attended a symposium focusing on events that caused Marquette to start EOP in 1969. Junior Henry Greening recounts the symposium using excerpts from blog posts written afterward.

Elizabeth Baker offers a story about EOP founding director Arnold Mitchem, Ph.D., considering his life's work, after the junior reviewed a DVD of my half-hour interview with him after Marquette premiered a documentary about the program during alumni reunion weekend in July. Junior Madeline Kennedy and senior Robyn St. John worked together to create a photo gallery featuring the best from among scores of images taken at EOP events during that weekend.

Teaching students to use video as journalists is one of JOUR 2100's primary goals. Sophomore Brittany Carloni and seniors Thomas Conroy and Madeline Pieschel produced a video about the tutoring service EOP provides for undergraduates. Juniors Jenna Ebbers, Estefania Ebbers and Caroline Roers offer one about the program moving its offices to elsewhere on campus. After most of the class had reviewed unused footage from the before-mentioned documentary, Baker, Greening and Ragusin teamed with juniors DeWayne Gage and Teran Powell to present personal reflections from six people linked to EOP.

This final project also includes interactive storytelling and basic data visualization. Sophomore Devi Shastri and Junior Roque Redondo (with copyediting by Baker) developed a timeline that reviews EOP's history and efforts in Milwaukee and nationally to provide better higher education opportunities for students of color. Several of the students also joined to create illustrations based on program-related data provided by EOP officials and discovered using other sources.

#loweclass considered lots of options for sharing all of this work. We hope it will soon find its way onto Marquette's website alongside existing content showcasing EOP. For now, my thanks to Kennedy and Pieschel for coming into my office on a Sunday afternoon to help me fashion this site a day before Greene and others examined it during our final exam period.

"It's incredibly impressive," EOP Administrative Coordinator Claire Dinkelman, our main contact for both securing data and access to her colleagues, told the class. "It's so comprehensive. It's not just a film. It's all these other little pieces together."

University Archivist Michelle Sweetser, who worked with Shastri to locate material for the timeline, brought along others from Raynor Memorial Libraries for the unveiling. “It’s really great to see the work that you have put together," she said, adding "you have created a new entry, basically, in the scholarly world ... about the EOP program. You’ve created this great resource."

Green also congratulated #loweclass for its efforts. "This is fabulous. I want to thank you all ... for this work – and I really believe (that) this is going to be really impactful nationwide in terms of capturing what we do in TRIO (the set of federally funded college opportunity programs begun during President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty in the 1960s)." 

The director added: "I can envision this being (available to) people like myself who are interested in TRIO, or people who are just interested in working with first-generation, low-income, underrepresented students. They will hear this story in a way in which you all have laid it out. So I can imagine years from now this will continue to go on and inform people. So you should be really proud of this work ... because I can see how it will really help move not just EOP and Marquette forward, but just this kind of movement forward – the TRIO movement forward – the way in which you captured this.”

My sentiments would echo what Green, Sweetser and Dinkelman said. So let me end with a new #loweclass signature from this semester: #soproud.

Thankful to @herbertlowe and my fellow members of #loweclass for a semester of great #journalism experiences.

— Brittany Carloni (@CarloniBrittany) December 9, 2014

Well #loweclass it has been a treat working with you all! So proud of the work we did this semester

— Robyn St. John (@RobynJStJohn) December 9, 2014

I bet the 17 #loweclass students for next semester won't have a final project attached to the word "legacy." #AcceptTheChallenge

— Jenna Ebbers (@jenna_ebbers) December 9, 2014
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Student Has Two Reasons to be "So Proud"

12/9/2014

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This semester in Digital Journalism III (JOUR 2100) began in August with efforts to persuade my 14 students to focus on grammar, spelling, punctuation and the Associated Press Stylebook. After a few AP Style quizzes that once again failed to earn me any favor, #loweclass found itself poised for a second chance at greatness on the term's penultimate day: Answering at least 40 questions correctly out of the possible 50, the same opportunity afforded the first week of class.

Well, I can report that despite her predecessors all having two attempts each during semesters past, on Dec. 1 a third student joined #loweclass legends Alec Brooks and Rob Gebelhoff as the only ones to earn 80 percent or better on the massive quiz. Congratulations, Elizabeth Baker. After appreciative and admiring applause and congratulatory tweets from her classmates, she had only two words when asked for a reaction: "So proud."

Gebelhoff (88 percent) and Brooks (84 percent) outscored Baker on the quiz. However, she has the distinction of also joining other #loweclass legends Caroline Campbell, Erin Caughey, Victor Jacobo and Kaitlyn Farmer as an AP Style Bowl winner. While my questions weren't the best – note to self: create a set of questions updated for the 2014 stylebook – the double-elimination competition took longer than expected as the class was on its game.


I am looking forward to renewing these #loweclass traditions with the 17 students registered for JOUR 2100 next term. Let it also be said that two misguided souls from the Marquette University Office of Marketing and Communications have illusions, ah, intentions of either her passing the grammar, spelling and punctuation quiz or his class beating my students in a competition. As stated before: 1) how cute and 2) I really don't think they're ready.

Shout out to @elizabethebaker on outdoing everyone in #loweclass and getting a 40 out of 50 on the AP Style quiz today.

— Madeline Pieschel (@MattiePieschel) December 1, 2014

Shout out to @elizabethebaker on winning the @APStylebook bowl in #loweclass today! #LikeABoss

— Devi Shastri (@DeviShastri) December 8, 2014

A successful AP Style Bowl and final project unveiling. Thank you @herbertlowe for an unforgettable semester! #loweclass

— Elizabeth Baker (@elizabethebaker) December 8, 2014
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    My journalism DNA remains strong as I learn and teach new ways to tell and present stories, especially via digital and social media. This blog is where I share what happens in my classroom and my life and, from time to time, offer my views on current events. I appreciate your feedback – either as comments herein or in an email to herbert.lowe [at] marquette [dot] edu.

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