Student News

Christopher Terry Matthew Weber

CHRISTOPHER TERRY published a Benton Foundation op-ed on the FCC’s Supreme Court petition in the Prometheus Radio Project cases, and had an article about the cases accepted for publication in the Federal Communications Law Journal.

BENJAMIN TOFF and Ph.D. student Nicholas Mathews have embarked on a large-scale study of social media engagement with local and community news, which involves examining 2.4 million Facebook posts made over a two-year period by news organizations in three states (Arizona, Minnesota, and Virginia). The project, which was proposed for a special issue of the journal Digital Journalism, will assess different factors believed to be fueling the crisis facing local news by testing how ownership, audience demographics, and the platform itself are impacting engagement patterns online.

EMILY VRAGA received the Sharon Dunwoody Early Career Award from her alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She also published an analysis of correction behavior on social media regarding COVID-19 in The Washington Post in May.

MATTHEW WEBER published a new article in Digital Journalism that examines new models for supporting local news, and examines how some states are taking action to provide aide to the industry. In addition, Weber was the keynote speaker at the WARCNet kickoff conference in Aarhus, Denmark. He gave a virtual keynote about the importance of media archives as a research tool in the current media environment.

GRADUATE STUDENT NEWS

JONATHAN ANDERSON received the top student paper award in the History Division at the 2020 AEJMC Southeast Colloquium for his paper “Adjudicating press freedom: Legal dimensions of the Minnesota News Council.” He also presented a paper in the Law and Policy Division titled “The right to know about the right to stay: Access to information about immigration courts.”

MICHELLE CHEN will join Brock University (St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada) as an assistant professor.

MARY CORNELIUS was named communications specialist for Minnetonka Public Schools.

CHUQING DONG will be joining the faculty at Michigan State University's College of Communication Arts and Sciences as an assistant professor.

YUMING FANG received a Human in Data Fellowship from the Digital Arts, Sciences, and Humanities (DASH) program, which supports faculty and students looking to employ digital methodologies and technologies in their research, engagement, and teaching, for her research “Empowered social bots: Content analysis of bots-created anti-vaccine information on Twitter.”

NICHOLAS MATHEWS’ paper “Life in a news desert” about the study of how a Central Virginia weekly newspaper's closure impacted its community residents won top student paper award for the Journalism Studies Division of the International Communication Association's annual conference in May 2020. SCOTT MEMMEL was awarded the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication Ralph D. Casey Dissertation Research Award, the highest honor a graduate student in the School can earn. He was also named a postdoctoral associate in the Hubbard School.

FERNANDO SEVERINO will be joining the faculty at California State University Dominguez Hills as a tenure track assistant professor.

ALLISON STEINKE virtually presented two papers at the 2020 International Communication Association Conference: “A voice for the voiceless: Social justice, emotions and the detached journalist” with co-author Valerie Belair-Gagnon; and a solo-authored paper, "Prosecution, protection, prevention and partnership: The strategic ritual of emotionality in sex trafficking news media coverage.”

SARAH KAY WILEY’S paper “Identity, autonomy, and press freedom in computational journalism” won the top student paper award for the Journalism Studies Division of the International Communication Association's annual conference in May 2020.

UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT NEWS

GENEVIEVE BENSON won a Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association scholarship in April 2020.

TIFFANY BUI received a Dow Jones News Fund internship in data journalism. Because of COVID-19, recipients either participated virtually or locally. Bui interned with MinnPost.

PAUL HODOWANIC was nominated for the Hearst Sports Writing contest.

JESSICA JURCEK was named a 2020 Hollings Scholar by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. She receives a scholarship for the next two years and a summer internship.

SCHUYLER MCKINNEY and TEENY (CHRISTINE) KELLY were selected to be part of the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s) Multicultural Advertising Internship Program (MAIP) for 2020. This prestigious program typically selects a couple hundred multicultural students from around the county. McKinney was placed as an account management intern at the MullenLowe agency in Boston and Kelly was placed as a public relations intern at Dailey in Los Angeles. COVID-19 curtailed the program before the students were able to fully participate.

DYLAN MIETTINEN was named editorin-chief and chief student director of the Minnesota Daily.

TIFFANY WELTY was named business operations officer and chief student director of the Minnesota Daily.

NSAC TEAM COMPETES IN THE NATIONAL SEMI-FINALS

The National Student Advertising Competition student group performed well during the 2019-2020 academic year in spite of COVID-19 setbacks. The assignment for all teams was a B2B project for Adobe to generate awareness for their Experience Cloud for Advertising program. It was the first B2B assignment in the more than 40-year history of NSAC. When COVID-19 hit, the teams had to finish working on the book apart from each other and present at the district competition virtually. The Hubbard School NSAC team handled this challenge successfully and won the District 8 competition for the first time in four years on March 28, 2020. The team moved on to the National semi-finals, which were held virtually on May 7. Even though the Hubbard School team did not move forward, the group finished as one of the top 17 teams in country, out of the more than 100 colleges and universities that completed this year.

WINTER TRIPS BEFORE COVID-19

While many students spent their winter break getting away from school, eight upper-class students in PRSSA (Public Relations Student Society of America) packed up and headed off to Nashville, Tenn., Jan. 16–18 for their annual winter trip, where they learned more about careers in public relations and connected with industry professionals.

During their stay in “Music City,” the group toured ST8MNT Creative Brand Agency, heard from panelists at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, visited the PR team at MP&F Strategic Communications, and closed out their trip speaking with the director of communications for the Nashville Predators’ ice hockey team, to get an inside look at the sports side of communication.

AdClub also took a winter trip and traveled to Phoenix, Ariz., Jan. 8-11, where they mingled with professionals in the advertising industry. Tempe, an art-filled city just east of Phoenix, was the group’s first stop as they met with the creative director at the full-service ad agency, Zion and Zion, which focuses on bridging the gap between strategy and creativity.

Next on AdClub’s itinerary was another agency in Tempe, August United. August United is a smaller influencer marketing agency where the group learned how advertising is affected by social media. Lastly, the group stopped by OH Partners, one of the fastest growing marketing agencies in Phoenix.

Above: AdClub visited agencies in Arizona for their winter trip.

Left: PRSSA headed to Nashville to connect with professionals.