IDW Publishing is about to release Presidential Material, two separate “graphic biographies” on presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and John McCain. According to IDW’s promotional site the books are “painstakingly researched and beautifully drawn depictions of the two men vying for what is arguably the most important job in the world.”
Larry Gross, director of the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California, has been named the 2008 winner of the Roy F. Aarons Award for his contribution to education and research on issues affecting the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered (GLBT) communities. The GLBT Interest Group will present Gross with the award at the business meeting on Thursday, Aug. 7, 2008.
A specialist in the areas of media and culture, art and communication, visual communication and media portrayals of minorities, Gross helped found the field of gay and lesbian studies. He is the author of Contested Closets: The Politics and Ethics of Outing (University of Minnesota Press) and Up From Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Media in America (Columbia University Press) and the editor of The Columbia Reader on Lesbians and Gay Men in Media, Society and Politics (Columbia).
Gross spent 35 years teaching communication at the University of Pennsylvania before joining USC Annenberg in 2003 as director of the School of Communication. At Penn, he was the Sol Worth Professor of Communication and deputy dean of the Annenberg School for Communication.
After earning degrees from Brandeis University and Columbia University, Gross became a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania in 1968, mentoring more than 180 students through their theses and dissertations, chairing the University’s Faculty Senate, and heading numerous university committees and other organizations.
From 1971 to 1991, Gross co-directed the Cultural Indicators Project with George Gerbner, which focused on television content and its influence on viewer attitudes and behavior, introducing the theory of cultivation. He was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 1998 and received the International Communication Association’s Aubrey Fisher Mentorship Award in 2001. He is an elected Fellow of the International Communication Association.
Gross has written and edited books covering a wide variety of issues in visual and cultural communication. In addition to the publications above, his editing credits also include Communications Technology And Social Policy (Wiley); Studying Visual Communication (University of Pennsylvania Press); Image Ethics: The Moral Rights Of Subjects In Photography, Film And Television (Oxford University Press); Image Ethics in the Digital Age (University of Minnesota Press); On The Margins of Art Worlds (Westview Press); and the International Encyclopedia Of Communications (Oxford University Press). (more…)
Thursday, August 7, 3:15 p.m.
Chicago Marriott Downtown
Los Angeles & Miami, 5th Floor
Cass Sunstein, constitutional lawyer and author of
Republic.com 2.0 discusses the potential impact of new communication technologies on democracy.
Source: EPIC
A Chinese intelligence agency has ordered foreign-owned hotels to install invasive snooping equipment that monitors Olympic visitors’ Internet activity. Senator Sam Brownback announced that he has obtained an order from the Chinese Public Security Bureau that directs hotels to intercept and record the Internet activities of all guests, including “journalists, athletes’ families, and other visitors.” Senator Brownback observed that this directive contradicts China’s pledge to the International Olympic Committee that the country would “maintain an environment free of government censorship during the Games.” The spying plan also contravenes longstanding international privacy and human rights norms, including Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which prohibits “arbitrary interference with privacy, family, home or correspondence.” For more information, see EPIC’s Privacy and Human Rights report and EPIC’s page on Olympic Privacy.
Marc Rotenberg, Executive Director of EPIC will deliver the Keynote address at the 2008 AEJMC Convention in Chicago, August 6-9.
The Newspaper Division of AEJMC is contemplating a possible name change and has an excellent discussion going on its e-mail list. Following this, an article from Maui Time Weekly explores the trouble newspapers are in. The following excerpt contains some rather strong advice from author Ted Rall:
…First: newspapers should go offline. If the last decade has proven anything, it’s that you can’t charge for a product–in this case, news–that you give away. So stop! All the members of the Newspaper Association of America should shut down their websites. At the very least, papers ought to charge online readers twice as much as for print subscriptions–searchability must be worth something. Want news? Buy a “dead tree” newspaper.
Second, copyright every article in the newspaper… (more…)
With more than 700 research papers and 100 panels scheduled, the 2008 AEJMC Convention in Chicago will feature the latest in technology, teaching, research and public service, including:
Download our list of Top Sessions
Related: “The Promise and Peril of Transformation” by AEJMC President, Charles Self
Source: USA Today:
Forget Paris! Chicagoans are much happier with their city. So are New Yorkers, according to a survey of 8,600 people in 14 of the world’s largest cities. Overall, 83% of big-city residents around the world are satisfied with where they live and 75% want to stay. But they want greener and cleaner cities that are more affordable, says Veolia Environnement, the environmental services company that conducted the survey.
Photo: Jennifer Dronkers (Unity News)
Article: WSJ: Just minutes before the program aired, the audience of minority journalists had been told to “maintain professional decorum” to prevent any perception that they are biased in favor of the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. In previous days here, at the Unity Journalists of Color convention, the not-so-subtle reminder had been repeated at banquets and in a missive e-mailed to the 5,600 attendees.
Yet when Obama emerged from a curtain on stage, the audience of more than 2,000 bolted to its feet, cheered and whistled. His remarks drew repeated applause throughout the 30-minute broadcast, which CNN and Time Inc. sponsored. (more…)