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RELIGION
AND MEDIA INTEREST GROUP NEWS
RELIGION
MATTERS Fall 2007
The Newsletter of the Religion and Media Interest
Group
of the Association for Education in Journalism
and Mass Communication
Articles:
1. Editor's Introduction
2. The Chair's Corner
3. Want your students to get
religion? Show it. Don't Just Tell It.
4. New RMIG Officers Elected
5. Submissions sought
for Mid-Winter Meeting
6. Resources
Editor's
Introduction
By Crystal Y. Lumpkins
RMIG Co-Newsletter Editor
University of Kansas
We
are well into the fall semester, and many of
us are starting to feel the crunch of research
deadlines, grade a mountain of papers and projects,
or just managing all of the duties that come
along with the exciting life of academe. One
of the reasons many of us decided to take this
career path is to engage with students, yet
with so many other obligations the student oftentimes
becomes an afterthought. RMIG member Michael
Longinow has contributed a thought-provoking
piece to this newsletter about how to reach
students by moving from our comfort zone to
theirs. He encourages the reader to not only
be a purveyor of information but a "doer"
as well.
This
newsletter also details the new 2007-08 offices,
upcoming deadlines for paper submissions, and
information concerning a free Religion Stylebook.
You'll notice that the fall newsletter is a
bit thin. We'd like the spring newsletter to
be comprehensive and representative of what's
going on in the industry and encourage you to
submit your ideas. Newsletter co-editor Jim
Trammell will edit the spring issue, and he
welcomes your ideas at jtrammell@sjfc.edu.
Look for a call for submission in January of
next year. You may also send them to me at lumpkins@ku.edu.
I
hope you enjoy the fall newsletter, and I look
forward to hearing from you.
The
Chair's Corner
By Ralph Frasca
RMIG Chair
Welcome to another year with your Religion and
Media Interest Group.
We
are coming off a very successful year last year
including some thought-provoking panels and
papers at the San Francisco conference. We co-sponsored
two very interesting panels: one with SCIGroup
on coverage of the Intelligent Design controversy,
and another with the Media and Disabilities
interest group on Religion, Media and Persons
with Disabilities. Both panels featured presenters
who were not RMIG members, which allowed us
to increase our exposure to other AEJ members.
At
our business meeting we voted to have a formal
relationship with the Journal of Religion and
Media. An RMIG membership will now also include
electronic access to the journal, including
the newest issues, which are embargoed from
many library subscriptions. Our business meeting
gave us the chance to honor RMIG founding member
Judith Buddenbaum on the occasion of her retirement.
The
2008 convention promises to be a great one as
well, with the location in Washington, D.C.
If you have contacts in Washington who might
make a good person for several RMIG members
to join for lunch or dinner one of the days
of the convention, please let me know. We are
no longer in chip reduction, so we will have
a full slate of co-sponsored panels. We are
counting on you and your paper submissions,
as well.
Do
you have friends or colleagues who have an interest
in religion and media? Ask them if they are
members of RMIG and, if not, encourage them
to join.
Want
your students to get religion? Show it. Don't
Just Tell It.
 By
Michael A. Longinow, Asbury College
Biola University
Somebody
once said it's a sin to bore a kid. I'm not
sure I completely agree with that, but I'm ready
to suggest we might be hurting the cause of
religion in journalism if we don't get with
the program. And the program, if we're going
to get it, involves entertainment. (Boredom
might be students' fault, or it might be ours.)
Before
you stop reading, notice how many students from
your classes showed up at "Office Parties"
when that show (The Office) premiered
this season? If you haven't been using Facebook,
MySpace and YouTube in your instruction, your
students are probably wondering why. They live
there.
And
if we want to connect with our students in their
understanding of religion in both news and other
types of journalism, we need to at least start
where students live. The age of requiring them
to come where we are - or even inviting them
to our intellectual neighborhood - won't do
it anymore. Maybe it never did. John Dewey wasn't
stupid. Neither was Rousseau. Their point, (one
they shared anyway), was that students' minds
are activated by the imagination that comes
from what their hands are on regularly.
Most
students who care about religion in their study
of journalism aren't theologians. They are journalists
in the making who live in a world of stories.
The wallpaper of their lives is a world of color,
music, and cinematic power. The bright side
of that is Hollywood's tendency, in recent years,
for putting stories out there that have journalism
laced through them, and not all of it the type
that makes us cringe.
Take
the Daniel Pearl biopic A Mighty Heart
as an example. Pearl's story is a true-to-life
journalistic parable. As a moment in the journalistic
history of our nation, it's hard to dwell on.
But we do our students a disservice if we act
like what happened to him isn't what embedded
and non-embedded reporters and photographers
live with everyday. USA Today pointed
this out in May when they quoted Asra Nomani,
a friend of Pearl's who taught a seminar at
Georgetown on the truth and fictions surrounding
Pearl's death. Her class was set at about the
time the film about Pearl debuted in theatres.
The film didn't do well at the box office, but
its shelf life as a DVD - much like Shattered
Glass - will serve as instructive material
for journalism faculty for quite some time.
Do
we end with movie clips? No. Do we let movie
clips stand alone without discussion? Never.
Do movie clips and the fictions of our culture
and those of other cultures help springboard
our students into discussion about religion
in the developed and developing world? Unquestionably.
The
hard part about use of Hollywood as our entree
to the minds and hearts of students is the whole
bridge thing. At some point, we need to escort
them back across the canyon from fiction to
fact. We all probably know how to do that. We
do it in photojournalism. Donna Ferrato has
done the Western world an enormous service with
her images of domestic violence. We don't need
a movie (though, again, it helps) to get that
theme across. But if we do, Ferrato's book Living
With the Enemy is our ticket back home.
Critical
as you might be of print news media, CNN, Fox
News, MSNBC, PBS and other news outlets that
tackle religion, mainstream news still stands
as the palette we use to paint a picture of
religion journalism. But to begin there won't
always get our students interested in the religion
that's deep in the human heart - the stuff that
causes us to lose ourselves in something (or
someone) greater than even our imagination.
Film,
and the interactive networks of our students'
worlds, are another palette we should reserve
as an intro to the painting lessons we've been
doing for so long.
New
RMIG Officers Elected
Several
individuals were elected to new positions during
the AEJMC conference in Washington D.C., and
others were re-elected for the same position.
Ralph Frasca of Belmont Abbey College was elected
as the new head of RMIG, and the Vice Head/Program
Chair is David Scott of the University of South
Carolina. A complete listing and e-mail addresses
are included below.
Head:
Ralph Frasca, Belmont Abbey College; ralphfrasca@bac.edu
Vice Head/Program Chair: David Scott, University
of South Carolina; david.scott@usc.jour.sc.edu
Research Chair: Paola Banchero, University
of Alaska-Anchorage; paola@uaa.alaska.edu
PF&R Chair: Anita Day, Loyola U.
of New Orleans; aday@loyno.edu
Teaching Standards Chair: Quint Randle,
Bringham Young U.; Quint_Randle@byu.edu
Membership Chair: Dan Stout, University
of Nevada-Las Vegas; daniel.stout@unlv.edu
Newsletter Co-Editors: Crystal Lumpkins,
University of Kansas; lumpkins@ku.edu
Jim Trammell, St. John Fisher College; jtrammell@sjfc.edu
Submissions
sought for Mid-Winter Meeting
The
Religion and Media Interest Group is hoping
to participate in the annual Mid-Winter Meeting
this year, and we need you and your students
to submit work.
The
meeting will be hosted by Point Park University
in Pittsburgh on Feb. 29 and March 1, 2008.
It is traditionally a time for scholars to present
work being completed for submission to the major
AEJ conference that year. It is student friendly
and a nice way to interact with others from
AEJ in a smaller environment. The organizers
work hard to keep the "on the ground"
costs very low. RMIG is looking for submissions
and volunteer reviewers.
Here
is information from the call:
Paper
Submissions
Authors should submit research paper proposals
in an approximate 300- to 500-word abstract.
The abstracts should give a clear sense of the
scope of the research, its relevant hypotheses
and/or research questions and the method of
inquiry used. Conclusions should be highlighted
for works that have been completed by the submission
deadline. Do not submit full papers to the paper
chairs; abstracts are all that is required in
order to be considered for presentation at the
Midwinter Conference. However, authors of accepted
papers must submit complete research papers,
not exceeding 30 pages, to their discussant
two weeks prior to the conference. Papers presented
at this conference also are eligible for presentation
at the national AEJMC convention. Authors are
encouraged to use the feedback from reviewers
and other Midwinter Conference attendees as
they improve upon and finalize works in progress
for submission to the national convention.
Panel
submissions
Panel organizers should submit proposals indicating
the panel title, a description of the session's
focus, the issues to be discussed, and a list
of potential or confirmed panelists, including
their university or professional affiliation.
Information
for Paper Submitters and Panel Organizers
Identify the paper's author(s) or panel's organizer(s)
on the title page only, and include the mailing
address, telephone number and e-mail address
of the person to whom inquiries should be addressed.
The title should be on the first page of the
text and on running heads on each page of text.
Send your abstract or proposal as an attachment
in a standard word-processing format (preferably
Word or RTF). Also, please ensure that you remove
any identifying information from your document
(with the exception of the title page).
All
abstracts and panel proposals must be e-mailed
to the appropriate division's midwinter paper
chair (see below) by December 7, 2007.
Send abstracts and proposals to Dr. Amanda Sturgill,
Amanda_Sturgill@baylor.edu.
Please include an e-mail address. Authors will
be notified by January 10, 2008 as to the status
of their paper.
I
hope to see your paper and to see you in Pittsburgh.
Resources
RELIGION STYLEBOOK
AVAILABLE
Religion Newswriters Association has published
a free Religion Stylebook, available to all
journalism educators. The 132-page guide includes
hundreds of terms from many faiths and is intended
to supplement The Associated Press Stylebook.
To get copies, email Amy Schiska, Schiska@RNA.org.
The stylebook is also online at www.religionstylebook.org.
JOURNAL OF
MEDIA AND RELIGION
JMR seeks book reviewers. We especially need
people who can review books about religion and
popular media such as movies and music. If you
are interested in reviewing, send an email to
Debra Mason at MasonDL@Missouri.edu.
Please include your research expertise and methodological
specialties.
Dates to Remember
•
Next Newsletter: February 2008
• Deadline for Summer issue: June
2008
• AEJMC Deadline for Paper Submission
- April 1, 2008
RMIG
Web link: http://www.rnasecure.org/aejmc/
Other helpful links: http://www.religionwriters.com/
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