UNC School of Journalism Issues Recommendations to Help Meet Community Info Needs

By on June 13, 2012 in FCC, Journalism

Back in January, the center hosted a workshop that brought together more than 50 media scholars, professionals, attorneys and community leaders to discuss how Internet, cable television, satellite television and mobile broadband service providers could help promote local accountability journalism in North Carolina and the nation.  The full-day event was intended to hash out some of the recommendations and issues raised by the FCC’s recent report on the “Information Needs of Communities.”  The workshop was one of 11 conducted at leading universities around the country, in an effort to increase the impact of the FCC’s report, the most comprehensive look at media policy in a generation.

I’m pleased to announce that the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication has released its report from the workshop (available as a PDF here).  It recommends multiple ways to meet the information needs of communities and will be incorporated into a set of recommendations to be issued jointly by the deans of top journalism programs participating in the Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the January workshop.  I hope this is the start of a long-term collaboration on these important issues.  And thank you to Dr. Dean Smith, who conducted more than a dozen follow-up interviews with participants at the workshop and served as the lead author of the UNC report.

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Media law dissertation best in nation

By on May 25, 2012 in First Amendment

A recent Ph.D. graduate of the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication has won the 2012 Nafziger-White-Salwen Dissertation Award for the best dissertation in the field of mass communication.

The winner is Dr. Dean Smith, an affiliated scholar of the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy. The dissertation award is given by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) and will be presented during the association’s national convention in August.

The title of Smith’s dissertation is “Legislating the First Amendment: Statutory Shield Laws as Non-Judicial Precedents.” The work will be published as a book next year by LBF Scholarly Publishing.

Smith’s dissertation adviser was Dr. Cathy Packer, co-director of the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy.

In the fall, Smith will join the faculty at N.C. State University as a teaching visiting professor of journalism in the English Department. He also will teach as an adjunct professor at High Point University.

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Students sweep media law research prizes

By on May 24, 2012 in Journalism

UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication graduate students have won the first, second and third-place top-student-paper awards for media law research they will present at the annual convention of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication in August.

Also winning prizes in the AEJMC Law and Policy Division are two recent graduates of the J-School’s Ph.D. program.

First-place student paper and winner of the Whitney and Shirley Mundt Top Student Paper Award: Master’s student Jeanne-Marie DeStefano for her paper “An Analysis of FTC Cases Involving Substantiation of Health Claims in Food Advertising”

Second-place student paper: Doctoral student Lisa Barnard for her paper titled “Tracking, Technology and Tweens: Better Regulation to Protect Children’s Privacy Online”

Third-place student paper: Master’s student John Remensperger for his paper titled “Who are the Media? The Media Exemption to Campaign Finance Laws”

Recent graduate Dr. Dean Smith won second-place faculty paper for his paper titled “The Real Story Behind the Nation’s First Shield Law: Maryland 1894-1897.” Smith will join the faculty at N.C. State University in the fall.

Recent graduate Dr. Woody Hartzog had a paper accepted titled “The Life, Death, and Revival of Implied Confidentiality.” Hartzog is on the faculty at the Cumberland School of Law at Samford University in Alabama.

For acceptance, all papers were double blind-reviewed by judges with no distinction made between student and faculty papers. This means students competed with all submitted papers for acceptance including faculty-authored papers. Once accepted, student-authored papers were identified and selected for top-student-paper awards.

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Ekstrand joins J-School’s media law faculty

By on May 24, 2012 in Center for Media Law and Policy

Dr. Victoria “Tori” Ekstrand will join the faculty of the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication this fall to teach media law and Interent law and work in the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy.

Ekstrand’s research interests include the history of news piracy in the United States, anonymous speech and the digital free culture movement. She is the author of a book on the hot news doctrine and currently is working on a new, updated edition of that book.

Ekstrand earned a Ph.D. in mass communication from UNC in 2003. At that time, she was honored as the outstanding Ph.D. graduate in her class. Since then she has been on the faculty at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

Ekstrand also worked in corporate communications for the Associated Press in New York from 1990 to 1999. She ended her time there as the director of corporate communications. Before that she worked for several years as a reporter and anchor for AM radio stations.

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Center Co-Director to Join in Sunshine Day Celebration

By on March 12, 2012 in Transparency

UNC Center for Media Law and Policy Co-Director Cathy Packer will moderate a panel discussion about the strengths and weaknesses of the N.C. Public Records Law as part of the N.C. Open Government Coalition’s annual Sunshine Day celebration. The event will be held Wednesday, March 14, 2012, at Elon University. It is open to the public.

Discussing the public records law will be Hugh Stevens, a media law attorney from Raleigh; Fleming Bell, professor of public law and government in the UNC School of Government; Tom McCormick, Raleigh’s city attorney; and Fred Clasen-Kelly, a reporter for The Charlotte Observer.

Click here for a full description of the Sunshine Day event.

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