…And journalism majors Nathan Alber and Noah Bunn were there to record the aftermath of the high winds and tornadoes that swept the area on Friday May 2. Noah’s picture is above and click here to watch Nathan’s video.

TIME’s managing editor Richard Stengel delivered one of the most thought-provoking, eye-opening lectures to an overflowing lecture hall, with standing-room only audience, at the department of journalism at The University of Mississippi. The entire April 21st lecture can be watched here. I know it is more than an hour-long with questions and answers at the end, but I promise you, you want to watch the entire speech. If you are looking for answers to the many questions regarding the future of journalism and the weeklies, Stengel gives you answers. Richard Stengel changed the covers of TIME magazine from questions to answers with an assertive point of view. It you want answers to your questions than give yourself an hour and sit down, relax and watch Richard Stengel answer the questions that each and everyone of us are asking: What the future of journalism? Click here to watch the entire speech.
Would love to hear your comments on Richard Stengel’s lecture.

The following is a blog entry by Assistant Professor (soon to be Associate Professor) Nancy Dupont:

Media Mania—that’s my nickname for the annual conclave of broadcasting organizations which occurs during one week in April every year in Las Vegas. Tens of thousands of people, ranging from the professional to the merely interested, flood into the desert for the meetings of the National Association of Broadcasters, the Radio-Television News Directors Association, and the Broadcast Education Association, all accompanied by the largest showcase of communication equipment and software in the world. It is dizzying, thrilling, and exhausting, all at the same time.
I was one of four Ole Miss Journalism Department faculty members who went to “mania” week, and I think I speak for all of us in saying that we learned a lot of things which can help us answer the all-important question: How can we communicate better, faster, and with greater impact? And how can we help our students discover their own answers to the questions, both for now and in the future?
But there was a certain touch of sadness this year. Over and over again during discussions at BEA, we returned to the issue of campus violence and our students’ ability to deal with it, as students and well as student-journalists. We examined the performance of student media at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University where gunmen unleashed so much tragedy during the past year. As we all pondered our students’ ability to deal with such an event, the message came through loud and clear: it could happen anywhere. Even here.
Twenty-first century student media are now faced with a number of new issues. Should there be an emergency plan for student-journalists? Is there a need for an off-campus gathering site for student-journalists should the campus be locked down? Should student-journalists have cameras with them all the time so they could capture a violent incident? Do they need press credentials? And should there be a network of counselors available for student-journalists if they were to witness something tragic?
I have no doubt that Ole Miss students would be brave in trying to tell a tragic story; Sidna Brower Mitchell proved in 1962 that excellent journalism can come from young reporters, even in the worst of times. But I am worried that violence is even a possibility for all of our students in a time and place that should provide their opportunity to grow and learn without worries about their own safety.
It is a sign of our times, and not a good one.

By Taylor McGraw, Mississippi High School Journalist of the Year

Approximately 400 students and 50 advisers from 32 high school and middle school journalism staffs across the state attended the annual Mississippi Scholastic Press Association conference on the University of Mississippi campus Friday, March 28.
MSPA offered a total of 70 sessions in the areas of newspaper, magazine, yearbook, broadcast and on-line media as well as hands-on labs in PhotoShop, InDesign, broadcast and podcasting over the course of the day.
“This was one of the best and biggest conferences we have ever had for MSPA. Our goal is to provide training and assistance for more high school and middle school publications and journalism classes,” MSPA Director Beth Fitts said.
The conference kicked off around 9 a.m. with an opening ceremony at Nutt Auditorium. Fitts took the podium, welcomed the packed crowd of young journalists, recognized current MSPA officers Nathan Weber from Madison Central and Catherine Threlkeld from Oxford High School and then introduced the new MSPA officers, president Catherine Threlkeld and vice-president Lydia Roberts, both from Oxford High School. Dr. Samir Husni, chair of the journalism department at the University and one of the nation’s leading experts on magazines, then addressed the audience.
Journalism Department Chair Samir Husni, who moved to America from Lebanon in 1978 to get his doctorate degree, addressed the audience. He described himself as “an adopted son of Mississippi.” He started a magazine program at Ole Miss when he first came to Oxford and has been instrumental in the advancement of the University’s journalism department, soon to be the School of Journalism. His
advice to students seeking a career in journalism was simple: go after the three F’s – fun, fame and fortune.
Husni then introduced his former student and the morning’s keynote speaker, Clint Smith. Smith is the senior editor of Southern Accents magazine in Atlanta and, according to Husni, one of the leaders on magazine design in the country.
In his address, the 1999 Ole Miss graduate described his rise from a member of the yearbook staff at a Texas junior college to editor-in-chief of Atlanta Homes and Lifestyles and now his current position at Southern Accents. He closed with several pieces of advice for the aspiring journalists attending the convention.
“Don’t be afraid of hard work or working for free. Make yourself indispensable,” Smith said. “People are watching. People are reading what you’re doing.”
After a warm ovation and some closing remarks by Fitts, students and advisers dispersed to their first of four 40-minute sessions located at Farley Hall, the Student Union or Barnard Observatory. Journalistic professionals and many Ole Miss faculty members presented these sessions with titles ranging from “Radio: the Theater of the Mind” to “Reporter’s Privilege and the Rights You Have.”
“I think by offering such a diverse program, we are helping to build programs at the schools in Mississippi,” Fitts said. “We want Mississippi advisers to know that they are not alone; we will help them get the support and training they need.”
Members of the professional media that presented sessions included Layne Bruce, executive director of the Mississippi Press Association; Otis Sanford, opinions editor of The Commercial Appeal; Laura Schaub, National Creative Accounts Manager for Jostens Publishing Company; Karen Loden and Brandy Seawright of Taylor Publishing Company; Marc Perrusquia, investigative reporter for The Commercial Appeal; Brooks Taylor of the Tunica Times; Sue Lynn Mills, John Davis and Jon Scott of The Oxford Eagle, Todd Vinyard and Todd Sherman of the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, and Barry Burleson of The South Reporter.
After three sessions, students and advisers took an hour break for a catered lunch. Jostens Publishing Company hosted advisers for lunch in the Overby Center. Student lunches were in the Grove sponsored by Taylor Publishing Company, Herff Jones Publishing Company and The University of Mississippi. Students refueled on sub-style sandwiches, pasta salad, potato chips, cookies and sweet tea before heading to their last session at 1 p.m.
After the final session ended, students and advisers congregated again at Nutt Auditorium for the closing awards ceremony. Prior to the convention, each of the MSPA-member schools had the opportunity to submit entries in various newspaper, yearbook, magazine, on-line media and broadcast categories. MSPA judges selected the winners and MSPA presented a total of 141 awards to staff members and advisers.
Adam Pugh from Lafayette High School was recognized as the MSPA Administrator of the Year and took the opportunity to address the students.
Cynthia Ferguson from Oxford High School was presented the JoAnn Sellers Newspaper Adviser of the Year Award, and Kim Hosket from French Camp Academy was named the MSPA Yearbook Adviser of the Year.
Mac Warren from Oxford High School was named Newspaper Editor of the Year, and Jasmine Phillips from Water Valley High School was recognized as the Yearbook Editor of the Year.
Clara Bradford from Terry High School was recognized as Newspaper Staff Member of the Year, and Emily Henderson from French Camp Academy was named Yearbook Staff Member of the Year.
Fitts said she was pleased with the number of schools that attended the convention.
“We are growing every year, and we eventually want to reach every school in the state and get them involved with our program. We offer so many benefits for advisers and students: fall training, competitions, newsletters with lesson plan helps, e-mail assistance with problems, scholarship information, and hands-on training twice at year. We will also be offering summer workshop training for advisers and students in late June,” Fitts said.
Scholarship applications and workshop application froms for those programs can be found online at http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/journalism. The deadline for summer workshops is April 15. MSPA membership forms can also be found online. Those interested may contact Beth Fitts at 662-915-7146 or at mefitts@olemiss.edu.

The Society of Professional Journalists Regional Conference will be held in the city of New Orleans March 28 and 29. The University of Mississippi’s Public Relations Department issued the following press release yesterday.

OXFORD, Miss. - Four University of Mississippi journalism faculty members are program participants for the six-state Society of Professional Journalists Regional Conference March 28-29 in New Orleans.

Kathleen Wickham, associate professor of journalism, is program chair for the annual event, and Wickham’s faculty colleagues Jeanni Atkins, Samir Husni and Curtis Wilkie are slated as program participants.

The conference, being held jointly between SPJ Regions 8 and 12, is expected to attract journalists from six Southern states, said Wickham, UM’s SPJ chapter adviser. The two regions comprise the states of Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and Tennessee.

Husni, journalism chair and Herderman Lecturer of Journalism, is Saturday’s keynote speaker for the conference. He plans to deliver the address “The Future of Newspapers (It’s the Content, Silly)” at the noon luncheon.

Wilkie, associate professor, Cook Chair and Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics Fellow, is to be a panelist for the discussion “Rascals, Renegades and Rapscallions: Veteran Journalists on Getting Beneath a Subject’s Public Persona.” Atkins, associate professor, is the moderator. Other panelists are Julia Reed, contributing editor for Vogue and Newsweek, and James Gill, columnist with the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

SPJ is the nation’s largest professional journalism organization with nearly 10,000 members dedicated to encouraging the free practice of journalism and stimulating high standards of ethical behavior. The regional spring conferences also serve to highlight the work of collegiate journalists with the presentation of awards in print, magazine, broadcast and online categories.

Conference events are scheduled at the Maison Saint Charles Hotel and Loyola University. Registration is $60 for students and $95 for professionals. For more information on SPJ, including membership in the organization, visit

http://www.spj.org

or make requests to Kathleen Wickham, 131 Farley Hall, University of Mississippi, University, MS 38677. Send registration fee by check or money order payable to: SPJ, Region 8 & 12 Conference, Travis Poling, Conference Registration Chair, 2114 Northcrest Drive, New Braunfels, TX 78130. No credit cards, please.

The conference programs also include the following titles and presenters:

-”The Journalism of Disaster, Part 1: Using ‘Doctors Without Borders’ to prepare for covering a humanitarian crisis” features panelists Maira Garcia, editor, Texas State University Star; Chris Boehm, reporter, Texas State University Star; and Susan Weill, associate professor, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Texas State University. Moderator is Kym Fox, senior lecturer and print sequence head, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Texas State University.

-”The Journalism of Disaster, Part 2: The media’s response in Katrina’s wake” features David Meeks, city editor, The Times-Picayune; Jonathan Shelley, news director, WDSU-TV, New Orleans; Marlin Defillo, assistant superintendent Bureau of Investigations, New Orleans Police Department; and Sally Forman, former communications director, City of New Orleans. Moderator is Crystal Bolner, Loyola University SPJ chapter adviser.

-”The Journalism of Race and Class: Did the media get the Jena story right?” features Wendi C. Thomas, metro columnist, The Commercial Appeal, Memphis; Craig Franklin, associate editor/photographer, The Jena Times, Jena, La.; Nicole Hutcheson, reporter, St. Petersburg Times, St. Petersburg, Fla. Moderator is Sandy Davis, reporter, The Advocate, Baton Rouge.

-”Plagiarism in an Online World: When to use them, when to refuse them” featuring George Kennedy, professor emeritus, School of Journalism, University of Missouri-Columbia, Nicole Dahmen, assistant professor, Manship School of Mass Communication, Louisiana State University; and John Zibluk, associate professor, Arkansas State University. Moderator is Joseph Hayden, assistant professor, University of Memphis.

-”Defending Open Meetings: A case study from Knoxville, Tenn., and Access to the Courts in Louisiana” features Jack McElroy, editor, Knoxville News Sentinel; and Sherry Lee Alexander, associate professor, School of Communication, Loyola University, SPJ Louisiana Sunshine Chair, vice president of the Louisiana Coalition on Open Government.

-”Journalism in a Converged World: How to balance our First Amendment responsibility with the search for the money to support it” features Freda Yarbrough, new media director, The Advocate, Baton Rouge; Joe Hight, director of information and development, The Oklahoman/NewOK.com, Oklahoma City; and Dwayne Fatherree, managing editor of NOLA.com. Moderator is C.M. “Sonny” Rhodes, assistant professor, Mass Communications Department, University of Arkansas-Little Rock.

For more information on journalism education at Ole Miss visit

www.olemiss.edu/depts/journalism/.

Starting this week, MBlog will publish Professor Joe Atkins’ state-wide column which appears in Mississippi newspapers.

“Mississippi’s `closed society’ and immigrants … “

By JOE ATKINS
OXFORD – Forty-four years ago, Ole Miss history professor James W. Silver put a tag on Mississippi that stung hard but proved true enough to serve even today as a
bitter reminder of the state’s not-so-long-ago dark ages. Mississippi is “the closed society,” Silver wrote, a society that comes “as near to approximating a police state as anything we have yet seen in America.” He wrote
those words in 1964, a time when racist, xenophobic Mississippians would even kill to preserve a “hyper-orthodox social order” that defied “fact, logic, or reason.” Thankfully, torched black churches and murdered civil rights workers aren’t part of the landscape of today’s Mississippi, but a new xenophobia is rising that threatens once again to lock down the state’s borders and resurrect the “closed society” that once made it the shame of the nation.
Proof positive of that xenophobia is what the state Legislature recently sent Gov. Haley Barbour to sign, a bill sponsored by state Sen. Michael Watson of Pascagoula
that called for the imprisonment of undocumented workers for up to five years plus a fine of up to $10,000. Employers hiring them would lose their business licenses for a year and government contracts for up to three years.
It’s the kind of document that politicians from Mississippi’s dark ages—James K. Vardaman, Theodore Bilbo, John Rankin, Ross Barnett—would have loved to brandish at their courthouse rallies—a crackdown on dark-skinned people who can’t vote and have no power, the perfect formula for stirring up the masses and making them forget you’re not doing much else for them.
Just like in the old days, the newest crop of rabble-rousing demagogues—Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant, state Sen. Watson and their ilk—have their media messenger boys. In the 1960s, Jackson Daily News editor Jimmy Ward used his column as a bully pulpit for segregation. Bryant and crowd look to radio personalities like J.T. and Dave to inflame listeners about the threat from south of the border.
Watson’s bill “criminalizes work,” said longtime activist and civil rights veteran Rims Barber at a meeting of the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance in Jackson last week. “It makes work a felony. Five years serving time for someone who’s simply trying to earn a buck.”
State Rep. Jim Evans of Jackson had even stronger words about Watson’s bill. “It’s evil,” said Evans, working people’s strongest champion in the Mississippi Legislature. As for the bill’s sponsors and backers, “They’re greedy, they’re hateful, and they’re ignorant.”
Evans and MIRA work tirelessly and successfully each legislative session to kill similar bills. This one got through, however, due to the powerful backing of pols like
Bryant and to grassroots efforts to raise fear and anger against Latino workers even though those workers deserve much of the credit for the rebuilding that has taken place on the Mississippi Gulf Coast since Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005.
Immigrant workers—whether from Mexico or India—come here to work. Often recruited by unscrupulous agents, they arrive to find themselves part of a growing
army of invisible people who do hazard-ridden jobs under unprotected conditions for employers whose greed overwhelms any sense of common humanity. They’re preyed upon by state-sanctioned border patrols and every hoodlum who knows they don’t have bank accounts for their paltry earnings.
Then they’re preyed upon by politicians in desperate need of a new issue now that their old rants against homosexuals, abortionists, and big government have grown stale. Few point to the dismal failures of free trade treaties like NAFTA in creating a situation where people are forced to leave their countries to find work
to feed their families. Like anyone, they would prefer home to a hostile place that first exploits and then threatens them.
Immigrant workers are making Mississippi a richer, better place. Maybe someday in the future, as Othón Pérez’s noted poem about immigrants says, “no one, ever again, has to abandon their land … to go searching for a destiny in other lands … to go into exile and waste away alone.”

Rheta Grimsley Johnson, syndicated newspaper columnist and our 1992 Silver Em winner, will be at Square Books Thursday.
Here’s some info from her publicist:

Rheta Grimsley Johnson will be at Square Books on Thursday, March 20
at 5pm. She’s there to celebrate publication of her new memoir, Poor
Man’s Provence: Finding Myself in Cajun Louisiana. An engaging
speaker, she’ll talk about the great adventure (houseboat included)
that stretched her understanding of Southern culture and the book
that emerged of it.

Poor Man’s Provence is a memoir-cum-travelogue, written in the mode
of the best-selling book A Year in Provence. It’s about Rheta’s life
in Bayou country, and the people she’s met and friendships formed and
her understanding gained about Cajun history, culture, landscape and
food. She presently lives in Iuka, Mississippi, but several years ago
made a second home on a houseboat in Henderson, LA. The experience
pretty much sealed her love affair with all things Cajun.

The Mississippi primary yesterday brought more than the elections to the city of Oxford. It brought one of our own: Shepard Smith, the Fox News Network anchor who studied under the late Jim Pratt at the Department of Journalism in the mid 80s. For two days (Monday and Tuesday) Smith anchored both his shows “Studio B” and “The Fox Report” programs from the Oxford Square. I have vivid memories of Dr. Pratt’s accolades regarding Shepard. He was so proud to count him one of his students and he was always bragging about Shepard. I am sure that Dr. Pratt, who founded the television program at the Department of Journalism and started its NewsWatch, is proud, very proud of the accomplishments of one of his own: Shepard Smith.

MZine (the j-dept. on-line magazine) presents a complete guide to the issues that matter most to the voters of our state prior to the March 11 Mississippi Primary. In a special issue of the magazine, the j-department students cover three important issues regarding the upcoming presidential primary: the issues, the donations, and the debate. Read the entire issue of MZine by clicking here.

Al Cross, Director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky recapped the memorial service held for our Advisory Board member Rudy Abramson. The memorial service took place at the Newseum last Tuesday in Washington, D.C.

Here is the intro to Professor Cross’ blog:

Rudy Abramson was a role model for reporters and an advocate for rural America who put on no airs and treasured his small-town roots, his friends and admirers said at his memorial service in Washington this week.

Abramson, 70, died Feb. 13 of injuries suffered in a fall at his home. After a stellar career with The Tennessean and the Washington bureau of the Los Angeles Times, he became an acclaimed author and a fighter for the public interest, usually through journalism. He co-founded the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues and was chair of its national Advisory Board.

Above all, he was a storyteller, one who “understood the power of storytelling,” said Freedom Forum Chairman and CEO Charles Overby, who presided at Tuesday’s service on the top floor of the Freedom Forum’s new Newseum, scheduled to open April 11.

To read the entire tribute to Rudy Abramson, click here.