Carolina Communicator - Summer 2014

Study shows sexy banner ads affect networking profile impressions

Faculty book details how digital media economics can save community journalism

Chuck Stone leaves legacy of leadership, diversity and opportunity at UNC J-school

jomc.unc.edu/carolinacommunicator

UNC J-school professor Dana McMahan’s advertising students accepted FOX Sports University’s challenge to increase fan engagement with its promotion of NASCAR and the Daytona 500. After successfully pitching to FOX Sports and NASCAR, students attended the Daytona 500 to see their ideas in action. Learn more, and see what students, including Cynthia Betubiza, pictured, had to say about FOX Sports U, NASCAR and life in the fast lane at jomc.unc.edu/nascar. i mag e court e s y of fox s p ort s u

summer 2014

To our Carolina J-school family and friends:

I

like to think we’re in the business of igniting the conversation.

This holds true whether the conversations are about news, politics and public policy; businesses, brands and economics; or the scholarly pursuit of knowledge that helps us understand journalism and communication at deeper levels.

I’m proud to report that the school has just gone on another extraordinary run of recognition that distinguishes us among our academic peers and demonstrates our leadership pipeline to industry.

SXSW Interactive Award. Webby. College Emmy.

Top national dissertations in mass communication research and health communication.

Susan King @susking Address corrections:

Meghan Hunt meg_hunt@unc.edu (919) 962-3037 UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication Development and Alumni Affairs Carroll Hall 311, CB 3365 Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3365

National Student Advertising Competition regional champs and national finalist. InSpire Awards from the N.C. Public Relations Society of America five years running. Domination in Society for News Design competitions. Top five in the Hearst Awards for 11 straight years.

I love seeing the hard work of our students bringing home the hardware to Carroll Hall. What I love even more is seeing our students launch into promising careers prepared and eager to reimagine journalism and the media industries.

And our graduates are getting jobs. In our most recent survey, 87 percent were employed full-time within six months of graduation. (Many who were not employed were traveling or going to graduate school.) They are expanding our footprint from traditional news and communication jobs to include companies in growing fields. Think Google, Twitter, BuzzFeed, Facebook.

Diversity is essential to our success. We’ve completed our second year of a diversity fellowship

program in which we partner with WRAL-TV in Raleigh to seed industry diversity. The National Association of Black Journalists just named one recent grad as its student journalist of the year and another grad as its educator of the year. We’re having an impact.

I’m pleased to announce three excellent additions to our faculty. Dan Kim joins our advertising faculty via the University of Texas. Adam Saffer joins our public relations faculty from the University of Oklahoma.

Lisa Villamil joins our visual communication faculty by way of Ohio University.

One of our greatest strengths as a school has been a willingness to embrace changes in technology.

That continues. The school has become a hotspot for hackathons, drawing students and professionals from all over. We are coding, working with big data and researching the viability of media product ideas developed by students.

I’m proud of our school. We are providing immersive learning experiences, producing research with impact and nurturing the culture of excellence and innovation that keeps us on the leading edge.

We’re thankful for your gifts, your time and for being a representative and advocate for the UNC J-school.

Stay in touch, and come see us in Chapel Hill when you can.

Susa n K i n g D e an

John T. Kerr Distinguished Professor

Jim Mullen, father of the school’s advertising program and an N.C. Advertising Hall of Famer, passed away in May at the age of 91.

Read more and share your memories at jomc.unc.edu/mullen.

north carolina

Join us for a special evening honoring

n.c. halls

fame

Date friday , october 10, 2014

For tickets and more information visit jomc.unc.edu/hof2014

journalism, advertising public relations

News for more news:

Don’t miss a beat in the

N.C. General Assembly

jomc.unc.edu/news

Receive email alerts about keywords you care about.

reese news lab launches audio archive and alert system to track n.c. legislative proceedings

online m.a. program graduates its first class to job promotions and career advancement

The online Master of Arts in Technology and Communication (MATC) program graduated its inaugural cohort of students at the school’s spring commencement ceremony.

The students began classes in August 2011 and progressed through the two-and-a-half-year program, forming a rich community, professional network and lasting friendships. The graduates are using their degrees to move their organizations and careers forward – 88 percent have earned promotions or made career changes since enrolling.

Learn more at matc.jomc.unc.edu.

The J-school’s Reese News Lab has launched Capitol Hound, enabling subscribers to monitor discussions in N.C. General Assembly floor sessions and select committee meetings. Capitol Hound generates transcripts of audio recordings of legislative sessions and allows subscribers to search for exact words spoken by lawmakers. Users can also specify keywords and receive email alerts with links to sound bites that include the keyword. The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Prototype Fund, which supports early-stage media and information ideas, awarded the project a $35,000 grant. For more information, visit capitolhound.com.

‘women-only’ hackathon inspires community of female programmers

Students from North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland universities hosted the first Pearl Hacks — a hackathon for more than 200 college and high school women interested in computer programming — at the UNC J-school and computer science department this spring. Maegan Clawges, a Carolina journalism and computer science double major interning at Google, organized Pearl Hacks to build, encourage and inspire a community of young female programmers. Poornima Vijayashanker, founding engineer of mint.com and Femgineer, gave the keynote.

Learn more at pearlhacks.com.

Guillory leads breakdown of N.C. political landscape for D.C. journalists

Professor of the practice of journalism Ferrel Guillory, director of the UNC Program on Public Life based in the school, organized and led a roundtable discussion about the North Carolina political landscape in Washington, D.C., this spring. Dean Susan King moderated the discussion that included Guillory, UNC Board of Governors chairman Peter Hans, law school professor Kareem Crayton and business school professors Jim Johnson and Nicholas Didow. Access the school’s Program on Public Life data and publications at southnow.org.

leadership and innovation in digital storytelling on display with consecutive sxsw interactive wins, webby award

“Heart of the High Country,” an innovative student project that tells the stories of people in the N.C. mountains, won the 2014 South by Southwest Interactive award in the student category — the third consecutive year UNC J-school students have won the award. “Living Galápagos” — an interactive multimedia website that explores the impact of mankind on the Galápagos Islands — won a People’s Voice Webby Award in the 18th Annual Webby Awards. Experience these winning projects and more student work at jomc.unc.edu/academics/student-work.

research with impact: sexy banner ads change impressions left by online networking profiles

A

re you looking to boost your online appeal on social, professional or dating network websites?

That boost might come from an unexpected — and possibly unwanted — source according to research published in the journal Media Psychology by J-school associate professor Francesca Carpentier and doctoral graduates Temple Northup and Scott Parrott.

They looked at networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and BlackBookSingles that showed banner and sidebar ads using sex to sell wares alongside a person’s business or social profile.

The research found that sexually suggestive ads altered the lens through which site users evaluated the person in the profile. The users tended to think of the profiled person as more sexy and alluring, and therefore more appealing overall. The ads can have this effect even if the exposure to them is only out of the corner of one’s eye.

The concept of “media priming” is central to the study. The term describes how exposure to a media stimulus primes or triggers ideas in our minds that we use when making subsequent judgments.

Priming studies have shown that media depictions of violence elevate aggression in consumers. Similar effects have been found for music, video games and television.

“We’re bombarded by media messages every day. Much of our exposure occurs incidentally without our seeking it out, and messages can sneak into our thoughts under the radar,” said Carpentier. “I study priming effects of media to discover the extent to which these elements do creep into our thought processes without us noticing.”

Digital media economics can save community journalism

A

s Internet and mobile devices move toward ubiquity, small-town newspapers must reinvent their print-based businesses.

legacy print-only readers age, you need to transform content in both print and online editions to accommodate younger readers.

In “Saving Community Journalism: The Path to Profitability,” Knight Chair in Journalism and Digital Media Economics Penny Abernathy presents bold initiatives to help community newspapers reconfigure for the digital age.

Go social. Now that smartphones allow us to carry the world in our pockets, it’s easy for readers to capture and share original content.

Ask to feature a reader’s photos. Use social networks to interact with your audience in real time. Look for ways to integrate them into your editorial process, posting their comments online and printing them in the paper.

She calls for a three-pronged strategy for smalltown newspapers.

• Shed legacy costs • Build a vibrant community • Pursue new revenue Here’s how former student Steven Norton – now a Wall Street Journal reporter – suggests newspapers build a vibrant community.

Think about selling your content as you create it. As you brainstorm ideas, always ask who your audience is and how your ideas fit into the long-term vision for the paper. As

Don’t let technology issues become longterm problems. Make it a priority to fix glitches, add new features and experiment across both web and mobile platforms.

Streamlining online processes can make all the difference in the way you and your readers view your digital efforts, and interact with one another.

visit savingcommunityjournalism.com

Charles Sumner “Chuck” Stone Jr., 1924-2014

C

elebrated journalist and beloved UNC journalism school professor Chuck Stone died April 6, 2014. The school hosted a celebration of Chuck’s life May 3 on the UNC campus.

Stone joined the UNC journalism school’s faculty as the Walter Spearman Professor in 1991 and retired in 2004. He left lifelong impressions on Carolina students and colleagues alike.

For students, Stone was a window to history — recounting first-hand experiences with historical icons such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, and telling stories from his reporting, editing and column-writing days at publications that included the New York Age, the Washington Afro-American, the Chicago Daily Defender and the Philadelphia Daily News.

Though more than that, former students remembered him as a source of unfailing encouragement, a model of respect and grace.

Chuck’s gift was the ability to work in the margins between separate groups and find common ground for mutual understanding,” wrote professor emeritus Phil Meyer.

An important part of the Chuck Stone legacy is his work and teaching to make the world a better and more just place — a legacy that lives on in his students and the Carolina community.

Honoring Chuck At the request of Chuck Stone’s family, memorial gifts may be directed to UNC J-school programs named in his honor.

Gifts may be made online at jomc.unc.edu/gift.

Select a designation in the “Please Select a Fund” menu.

Checks (made payable to the School of Journalism and Mass Communication with the designated fund noted) may be mailed to: UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication Development and Alumni Affairs, ATTN: Meghan Hunt Carroll Hall, CB# 3365, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3365

Chuck Stone Program for Diversity in Education and Media The school hosts a five-day workshop every summer for diverse rising high school seniors. Diversity in the program includes, but is not limited to religion, ethnicity, socioeconomic status and gender. The students learn multi-platform storytelling and gain real-world reporting experience from professional mentors and J-school faculty. Nearly 30 Stone scholars have gone on to attend UNC.

Chuck Stone Citizen of the World Award The Citizen of the World Award enables students to travel internationally for study or work on journalism or communication projects. The name of the award recognizes Stone’s fondness for quoting Francis Bacon: “If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island, cut off from other lands.”

JOMC.UNC.EDU/gift

Stu d en ts, alumni n etwor k in Bay Area d u r i ng spr ing break Ten UNC J-school students visited San Francisco during spring break for a two-day networking experience that took them to meet with alumni at organizations including Google, Pixar, EA, FleishmanHillard and Mother Jones.

One of the students, May 2014 graduate Risi Ademola, was even offered a one-year fellowship with FleishmanHillard immediately following the trip.

The school hosted a reception at the Galleria Park Hotel, where students networked with alumni and thanked alumna Catherine Becker ’03 for her continued support of the school’s networking trips.

To learn more or to support the trips, visit jomc.unc.edu/networkingtrips.

J-school networking spring breakers on the Google campus with alumni working at Google – Jane Hall ‘13, Allen Mask ‘10, Jeff Eisenberg ‘05 and Josh Clinard ‘13.

Nonprofit Org US Postage PA I D Chapel Hill, NC Permit no. 177

the university of north carolina at chapel hill campus box 3365, carroll hall chapel hill, nc 27599 -3365

Thank you, Napoleon and Queenie!

Since Napoleon Byars joined the faculty in 2006 and Queenie in 2008, both as public relations professors, the husband-and-wife pair has championed students and grown the school’s commitment to diversity.

They retired at the end of the 2013-14 school year.

With deep gratitude for their service to the school and its students, the J-school wishes Napoleon and Queenie the best of luck in all that they do.

An innovative online master’s degree in digital media for working professionals. For program and industry-related updates follow @UNC_MATC on Twitter. Learn more at matc.jomc.unc.edu.