Best Thinking in Mass Communication

Featured Content

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  No News is Good news
  Topic by Saideh P Jamshidi

  Do you read the news? Do you watch talk shows? Would you consider yourself drawn into heated discussions wherein a specific point of view is heavily discussed and encouraged, or would you be attracted to a more fair and balanced talk show? Or perhaps you’re the type that does not pay...

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  U.S. Loses Momentum in Global Media Landscape
  Topic by Erin Luhmann

  By way of introductions in the Women’s International Human Rights course I am taking this semester at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, we shared which news sources we turn to for our international news intake. In a class of roughly 40 students, CNN, BBC and the New York Times led the...

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  Women's Service Magazines: A Viable Business Model
  Topic by Erin Luhmann

  Women’s Day magazine turned 75 this year. Instead of stirring up nostalgia with a vintage issue, editors decided to celebrate the magazine’s relevancy with readers today. By leveraging tradition with content that is relevant for today’s readers, women’s service magazines like Women’s Day...

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  Are Journalists Losing Their Spine?
  Topic by Erin Luhmann

  A reporter's job is to report. That means to tell what really happened, what people did and what they said. If a written report includes a quotation, it's exactly what the individual who is quoted said. Right? Well, not always. There's the matter of context, for example. In the interest...

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  Why Curation Will Replace Mainstream Media
  Topic by Cooper McGoodwin

  Mainstream media is in an irreversible slide. Multiple factors are contributing to the decline including bad management, increasingly inexperienced journalists, and a lack of credibility. Mainstream reporters mistakenly believe they are producing original and superior content, but...

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  Journalism in 2012: A Hazardous Profession
  Topic by Erin Luhmann

  A Western journalist who criticizes local authorizes may burn a bridge or two with government sources. A journalist who criticizes local authorities in a nation plagued by corruption may face censorship, prison, emotional threats, physical attacks, or murder. For journalists working in...

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  Nancy Grace: Victim or Vicious?
  Topic by Nidhi Singh

  Throughout the three years of media coverage of the Casey Anthony case, the nation's public became quite familiar with Nancy Grace, a justice-seeking prosecutor publicly convicting whoever she believed to be guilty in criminal trials. For years, she has come under fire for the behavior and...

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  Is Social Media a Legitimate News Source?
  Topic by Enelda Butler

  It was recently revealed that the author of the "A Gay Girl in Damascus" blog was an American man living in Turkey. The blog chronicled the life of a supposedly Syrian-American woman named Amina Abdallah, who allegedly went missing in early June of 2011. Major news outlets covered the...

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  Data Visualization & Journalism
  Topic by Erin Luhmann

  A news hook, supported by strong quotes, is not enough to carry a hard news story. It needs to be grounded in hard fact – in numbers. Building ratios and percentages into the article is one way to meet this credential. Throw in a colorful bar graph or pie chart and the facts become even more...

• Fake Bylines Further Erode Our Trust in Newspapers
  Topic by Derrick Bang
• The Writer's Corner: Getting Started and Developing a Marketing Plan
  Article by Kathleen A Kendall-Tackett
• Which Countries Exile Journalists the Most?
  Topic by Nidhi Singh