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?
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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