Winter 2024 Murphy Reporter

REPORTER MURPHY

WINTER 2024

DISCOVER THE WAYS THE SCHOOL PREPARES STUDENTS FOR THE JOB MARKET

ALSO INSIDE: FACULTY RESEARCH ❘ ALUMNI NEWS ❘ DONOR REPORT

CONTENTS MURPHY

REPORTER WINTER 2024 DIRECTOR Elisia Cohen

EDITOR

Amanda Fretheim Gates

DESIGN

Jeanne Schacht

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Regan Carter, Katie Dohman and Mallory Harrington

PROOFREADER Katie Dohman

ALUMNI RECORDS Alex Stern

2023-2024 HSJMC ALUMNI SOCIETY BOARD MEMBERS Kelli Brady Alexa Cushman McKenna Ewen Riham Feshir Maggie Habashy Suzy Langdell Adam Meyer Nicole Miller Shreya Mukherjee Jenni Pinkley Michael Schommer Karen Schultz Emme Strauss

1

NEWS FROM THE DIRECTOR

2

AROUND MURPHY HALL

6

Klobuchar Visits to Launch NextGenTV ................. 2 Balanced Reporting in Divisive Times..................... 2 Backpack Celebrates 10 Years............................... 2 Kathy Tunheim Receives Award.............................. 3 Notable Alumni Award............................................ 3 38th Annual Silha Lecture..................................... 18

4 20+ WAYS STUDENTS GET CAREER READY

18

Experiential Learning............................................... 6 Student Groups & Media Orgs................................ 8 Career Events & Opportunities.............................. 10 Where Our Alums are working.............................. 12

14 FACULTY RESEARCH

Restoring Trust in the News.................................. 14 Computational Advertising.................................... 16

23 TEACH The Murphy Reporter is published semiannually by the University of Minnesota Hubbard School of Journalism & Mass Communication for alumni, faculty, staff, students and friends of the school.

Send questions or comments to murphrep@ umn.edu or Murphy Reporter, 111 Murphy Hall, 206 SE Church St., Minneapolis, MN 55455 The University of Minnesota shall provide equal access to and opportunity in its programs, facilities and employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, national origin, gender, age, marital status, disability, public assistance status, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.

This publication is available in alternative formats upon request. Direct requests to murphrep@umn.edu

Faculty News......................................................... 23

25 LEARN

Graduate Student News....................................... 25 Undergraduate Student News.............................. 26 Meet a Student..................................................... 27

28 ALUMS

Why I Give............................................................. 20 Alumni Spotlight................................................... 28 Alumni News........................................................ 29

4 CONNECT WITH US! facebook.com/umnhsjmc twitter.com/umn_hsjmc instagram.com/umnhsjmc youtube.com/umnhsjmc U of MN Hubbard School of Journalism & Mass Communication Alumni Back cover photos by Matt Gade

NEWS FROM THE DIRECTOR

AT THE HUBBARD SCHOOL, WE

a variety of speakers and workshops on contemporary

PRIDE OURSELVES ON BEING A

professional challenges designed to give students,

PROFESSIONAL PROGRAM that

faculty and professionals tools that they can use in their

offers hands-on training to our

careers. We have annual conferences,

more than 900 undergraduate

such as Northern Exposure (see the

student majors and nearly 100

back cover), and we also have multiple

graduate and professional

student-facing career development

students, so that when

roundtables and events. This fall, we

graduation comes, they

created and hosted the “Balanced

feel ready. This is not a new

Reporting in Divisive Times” workshop (p.

endeavor either. As our alums know, we have always

2) and we are currently planning a parallel

had learning outcomes associated with our accredited

workshop addressing “Effective Strategic

major programs that relied on training students in

Communication in Divisive Times,”

understanding the liberal arts and becoming deeply

touching on crisis communication,

offers hands-on

skilled in writing, creating, planning and evaluation for

corporate social responsibility and

the communication profession.

environmental sustainability goals.

training to all

In this issue, we share many of the ways we help

We couldn’t train our students the way

students get career ready (p. 4), from courses

we do, like with our new and growing

to experiential learning to out-of-classroom

initiatives—such as Report for Minnesota

opportunities. One of the advantages of attending the

and the Hubbard Reporting Experience—

Hubbard School is the opportunity to learn and work

without alumni and donor support, and we

in the Twin Cities. When I joined the School as director

feature two of those donors (p. 20) in this

in 2017, I was impressed with how many alums and

issue. And in addition to highlighting our

local industry professionals were willing to offer time

career initiatives in this issue, we spotlight

and encounters for our students, and also struck that

important faculty research, valuable partnerships and

the School could use a dedicated staff member to

recent events, and the latest student and alumni news.

follow up on leads that I would have. In late 2021, we hired Becky Borg as our Associate Director of External Relations and Career Coach and it has been terrific to have her in-house to help our students make the leap from classroom to careers.

At the Hubbard School, we pride ourselves on being a professional program that

our students, so that when graduation comes, they feel ready.

Finally, you’ll see our annual Donor Report (p. 31), which lists everyone who has given to the School in 2023.

Our continued thanks to those of you who support our students and our programs, including those who help them start off on the right foot in the real world. If you’re

Our curriculum offers capstone experiences in each

looking to get involved, or want to have a conversation

of our accredited majors that is experiential in nature,

about our career readiness efforts, please reach out at

whether by having students work for a client like Best

sjmc-director@umn.edu.

Buy for our campaigns classes, embedding with local media for our advanced reporting courses, or writing

All my best,

and designing a magazine. The School also offers specialized student programs such as Backpack, Reporting Experience.

With Becky’s help, our faculty bring in about 150 guest speakers from the industry each semester (you may have been one of them!). And each semester we host 1 MURPHY REPORTER ❙ Winter 2024

Elisia L. Cohen, Ph.D. Director and Professor

PHOTO BY PAT O'LEARY

NSAC, Report for Minnesota, and the Hubbard

AROUND MURPHY HALL

KLOBUCHAR VISITS TO LAUNCH NEXTGEN TV

Left to right: Char Stanberry, NAB Government Relations; Wendy Paulson, president of Minnesota Broadcasters Association; Senator Amy Klobuchar; Hubbard School Director Elisia Cohen; and Anne Schelle, managing director of Pearl TV broadcaster group.

ON AUG. 22, 2023, THE HUBBARD SCHOOL HOSTED the launch of NEXT-

GEN TV in Minnesota, along with Senator Amy Klobuchar, the Minnesota Broadcasters Association, Pearl TV, broadcast executives, government officials, and university students, as five local stations—CW, channel 23, KSTP-TV, WCCO-TV, FOX’s KMSP-TV; and KARE-TV—switched on the new transmission standard.

Coinciding with the launch of the new service, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) announced at the event that the Hubbard School will become the host for its

BALANCED REPORTING IN DIVISIVE TIMES ON NOV. 9-10, THE HUBBARD SCHOOL

held a three-part conference for students and the public on Balanced Reporting in Divisive Times. On Nov. 9, the School welcomed Dr. Andrea Wenzel, an Associate Professor of Journalism at Temple University’s Klein College. She spoke about her new book, Antiracist Journalism: The Challenge of Creating Equitable Local News, which looks into local news entities in Philadelphia and the strides and missteps of their diversity efforts.

On Nov. 10, Professor Jane Kirtley spoke about hate speech and the First Amendment. She shared past case histories that have tried to toe the line between protected speech and speech that is not covered by the First Amendment. Later that day, five local journalists spoke to students about covering minority communities, misinformation, hateful language, and many other difficult decisions newsrooms 2 MURPHY REPORTER ❙ Winter 2024

next PILOT Next Generation TV Fellowship. The NAB, and its PILOT program, are dedicated to advancing broadcast technologies and cultivating new media opportunities.

The fellowship is an immersive program designed to educate and introduce students to television broadcasting through practical experience.

have to make in divisive times. The panelists included: Max Nesterak from Minnesota Reformer; Chao Xiong from Sahan Journal; Sarah Thamer from

MPR; Ava Kian from MinnPost; and Lev Gringauz from TC Jewfolk. Nearly 200 people attended the conference at different times during the two days.

BACKPACK CELEBRATES 10 YEARS On Sept. 13, 2023, Backpack (formerly called CLAgency), the student-run communications agency housed in the School, held its 10th anniversary. The event took place on the patio at Campus Club in Coffman Memorial Union, where about 50 faculty and staff members, board members, and current and former Backpack student employees gathered to celebrate and share memories. The student agency continues to provide strategy, design, media planning and more services for internal and external clients, including the Carlson School and Serve Minnesota. For those interested in hiring Backpack, visit backpackumn.com.

AROUND MURPHY HALL

KATHY TUNHEIM RECEIVES AWARD Program honored Kathy Tunheim (B.A. ’79) with the inaugural Aluminary Award during the program’s Annual Lecture, held at the Bell Museum on Oct. 25, 2023. The award, presented by Hubbard School Director Elisia Cohen, recognizes Tunheim’s storied career, her commitment to the industry, and

her generosity to not only the Hubbard School but also the Professional Master’s Program, where she holds a seat on the professional advisory board.

When presenting the award, Cohen said, “Kathy, your relentless pursuit of excellence and your invaluable contributions to the strategic communication profession have paved the way for future generations. Your legacy at the

Hubbard School is a beacon of inspiration, and it’s an honor to present you with the very first Aluminary Award.”

The Aluminary Award is a symbol of outstanding excellence, a testament to the substantial impact one individual can have on the strategic communication profession and acts as a reminder of the inspirational legacy left by the School’s esteemed alumni.

Far left: Director Elisia Cohen and Kathy Tunheim.

Left: Event keynote speaker Torod Neptune, senior vice president and chief communications officer at Medtronic, with Kathy Tunheim.

NOTABLE ALUMNI AWARD

ANOTHER OPPORTUNITY TO GIVE TO THE MAX THE SCHOOL RAISED NEARLY $2,000 on

JÖRG PIERACH (B.A. ’89) RECEIVED THE 2023 ALUMNI

of Notable Achievement Award from the University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts for “living out the promise of a liberal arts education and transforming communities for the better.” Pierach is a Twin Cities-based marketer and entrepreneur and the founder of Fast Horse, a Minneapolis-based integrated creative agency he established in 2001.

He also sits on the advisory boards for Backpack, the student-run communications agency, and the Hubbard School's Professional Master's program in Strategic Communication.

Give to the Max Day (Nov. 16, 2023).

The money raised supports emergency student scholarships for undergraduate and graduate students. The gifts help with any unforeseen financial bumps that come up, including scholarships for students who face unexpected technology issues, need internship support, are short money for books, have a medical emergency, and more. Last year, thanks to our donors, we were able to help 29 students with a wide range of needs.

Help us support students in 2024! Please give at z.umn.edu/HubbardGiving

HUBBARD SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATION 3

FORUM PHOTOS BY PAT O’LEARY

THE HUBBARD SCHOOL’S PROFESSIONAL MASTER’S in Strategic Communication

4 MURPHY REPORTER ❙ Winter 2024

20+ W AY S T H E HUBBARD SCHOOL P R E PA R E S STUDENTS FOR THE JOB MARKET

A

BY AMANDA FRETHEIM GATES

s only one of three ‘schools’ in the College of Liberal Arts, the faculty and staff in the Hubbard School have always considered the unit to be a professional program with a mission to train and prepare students for life after graduation.

“Our goal is to meet students where they are and help them ramp up their education and training to be well prepared for professional success,” said Director Elisia Cohen. “We are consistently increasing the access and availability of in-house professional development workshops for students.”

For a century, students have had access to experiences and opportunities like student groups, professional organizations, Radio K and the Minnesota Daily, to build resumes, portfolios and clip reels. The offerings, such as the mentor program, capstone courses, internship scholarships and more, only grew stronger and in greater numbers. All of these opportunities send Hubbard students out into the job market prepared and ready to hire anywhere in the world. (See p. 12 for a look at where our alums are located.)

Most recently, the School hired its own Associate Director of External Relations and Career Coach, Becky Borg, to provide industry-specific advising, host career-focused events, and build partnerships with alumni and local organizations. Borg’s calendar has been very busy since she started in 2021, and she knows how valuable any career readiness initiatives are to employers.

“Employers frequently tell us that internships and similar experiences that offer opportunities to build skills such as teamwork, critical thinking, communication, and time management are valuable to obtaining and transitioning into entry-level roles,” said Borg, who meets with students individually to answer questions about anything from resume writing and interviewing to job search strategies and more. “Identifying career goals and applying to job and internship opportunities can be daunting for anyone, and college students are no exception,” she said.

The School’s career-ready offerings in both strategic communication and journalism are only as strong as they are because of faculty and staff support. Faculty and staff strive to keep long-time, student-focused

HUBBARD SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATION 5

CAREER READINESS

partnerships going, as well as create new and innovative learning experiences that not only build skills but also keep up with the changing times. “[These opportunities] are critically important for preparing students to work in journalism,” said instructor Gayle Golden. “Put mildly, they can make or break a first internship or job for a student. They often are the first step in building the portfolio students carry with them beyond their time in the Hubbard School. For some, it's a chance to get polished clips. For others, it's the initial glimpse at what it means to work in a professional newsroom. The experiences teach everyone that good journalism is done collaboratively in teams, not singularly in competition for

a grade. And in all of the experiences, students learn by reporting out in the world, by walking out the door to find the best stories and the truest threads on what's really happening in communities.”

Strategic communication offerings like capstone courses, student groups and the National Student Advertising Competition (see more below) do the same for advertising and public relations majors. Students get the chance to present in front of real-world clients, build campaigns for their portfolios and meet and network with high-ranking industry executives.

EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING From courses to internships to mini boot camps, Hubbard School students have a number of experiential learning opportunities they can register or apply for that earn credits or stipends. The professional faculty in the School work tirelessly to form these partnerships with outside organizations and continue to nurture those relationships each and every year. Keeping these courses available takes a lot of time and work, but the School sees the partnerships as a win-win.

“It seems like a natural, symbiotic relationship to partner with local news organizations to hire student interns to produce copy for their publications,” journalism instructor Seth Richardson

said. “Students get paid experience working with a professional editor and producing a published piece they can add to their portfolio. Local news organizations get access to our students’ high-quality work as well as foster connections with budding reporters for potential freelance opportunities. I think the end result is a more enriched environment for our journalism students and a stronger local news scene.”

Some of the experiences the School offers are relatively new, while others have been the backbone of the program for decades. The School's desire to fine-tune and grow keeps the offerings fresh for each new major.

MICRO-INTERNSHIP: PARK BUGLE

FIELD-BASED PRACTICUM COURSE

Last spring, Richardson and Borg set out to create a program that helps students who don’t have clips in their portfolio earn some real newsroom experience. Richardson partnered with the Park Bugle, a community paper in St. Paul. Students write for one month and are paid by the article, receiving feedback from the editor. Students apply to a pool of applicants and since July 2023, eight students have participated with more than 10 published articles. “Students are getting paid for real, quality journalism,” Richardson said.

“Not only that, they're making connections in the local news scene. I'm thrilled with the response.”

This class, now more than 20-years strong, teaches advanced reporting skills through hands-on experience, professional oversight and thoughtful discussions with working journalists. Classes are held at news organizations, such as MPR and the Pioneer Press, where students work directly with editors to produce news, features or other content. That work experience is complemented in weekly sessions by readings, projects and discussions with journalists. Students leave the semester with published clips for their portfolios.

6 MURPHY REPORTER ❙ Winter 2024

BROVALD-SIM COMMUNITY JOURNALISM COURSE Every spring, students focus on covering an underrepresented community in and around the University of Minnesota and highlight stories on the course’s own website: AccessU. The students conduct an intensive survey of the chosen community and feature stories and photos about the community and its relationship to the University. Communities covered in the past include the disability community, the Black community, the LGTBQ+ community, and those in recovery.

REPORT FOR MINNESOTA Only two years old, but growing quickly due to generous donor support, Report for Minnesota offers a professional development opportunity for journalism students in outstate Minnesota. In Summer 2023, four students were placed at outstate newspapers, including The Brainerd Dispatch and the Duluth News Tribune. The students received a stipend and travel expenses so they could spend 20 hours per week for 10 weeks learning in a real newsroom.

For 2024, the program will provide students with a larger housing stipend and 40 hours a week paid for 10 weeks at an outstate newspaper. “Being able to learn and gain experience at a small-town newspaper was a great opportunity,” said student Hannah Ward, who worked in Brainerd last summer. “I know I wouldn’t have felt as confident in my abilities if I had jumped into an internship in the city. I got to cover everything from government to features to public safety.”

HUBBARD REPORTING EXPERIENCE

MAGAZINE PRODUCTION COURSE This course focuses on magazine and web writing, editing, photography, graphic design, and production. Students study concepts of magazine and web communication with a special concern for how words, pictures, multimedia and design can be combined effectively. Over the semester, the class creates and publishes a professional quality single-theme magazine and website.

NATIONAL STUDENT ADVERTISING COMPETITION (NSAC) COURSE Once a student group, NSAC is now a spring course (for credit) designed to bring together all aspects of strategic communication planning that students have gained from previous classes. The class aids students in COURSE SPOTLIGHT the development of decision-making skills that are needed to develop an “The NSAC journey was the integrated strategic communications highlight of my college career. plan. All the essentials of developing While the value of this time a campaign are covered, including together is surely unquanadvertising strategy, brand positiontifiable, I can confidently ing, developing creative/content, say that the friendships we consumer research, planning and forged, memories made, and setting communication objectives, connections fostered during media strategies/plans, budgeting, our NSAC journey enriched public relations programs, digital, our lives beyond any fathomsocial, and promotion. The core able comparison. For this, I project in this course is participaam eternally grateful.” tion in the AAF’s National Student – Haley DeSart, 2023 NSAC Advertising Competition (NSAC). The team Hubbard School NSAC team has made it to the national competition for two years in a row.

Last August, 22 journalism students participated in a brand-new, immersive, full-time, hands-on opportunity to cover the news as it’s done in professional newsrooms, with professional coaching at every step of the process. At the end of the 10-day program, which took place in Murphy Hall with Hubbard School instructors, students received a stipend.

“The Hubbard Reporting Experience allows students on the newscast track to experience pitching a story in the morning, pursuing and producing that story during the day and presenting that story on air that evening, all in the course of an eight-hour shift,” said Senior Fellow Scott Libin, who leads broadcast instruction in the School. “That’s not something we can expect of them during the spring or fall semester, but it's exceptionally valuable in preparing them for the cadence of commercial television news.”

HUBBARD SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATION 7

CAREER READINESS

NEWSCAST PRODUCING The emphasis of the Newscast Producing course is planning, writing, producing and presenting live TV newscasts. Students produce University Report newscasts during the spring semester. Much of the class is spent writing broadcast news copy and students generate their own stories as needed and anchor newscasts or segments. “Our broadcast skills courses are structured to acquaint students with the workflow of a professional newsroom,” said Libin. “That means processes like developing sources, pitching stories, managing files and meeting deadlines are familiar to students the day they start their first jobs as journalists.”

STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION CAMPAIGNS COURSE This course provides an in-depth look at all aspects of strategic communication culminating in the development of a strategically sound communications campaign. Emphasis is on “real-life” examples of campaigns, their creation, and development. All essentials of developing a strategic campaign are covered, including advertising strategy, positioning, developing creative, consumer research, planning and setting objectives, media strategies, budgeting, public relations programs, and promotion. The class focuses on the integration of various techniques and elements available to most effectively create a strategic communications campaign. This course simulates the teamwork involved in working in a strategic communication agency.

STUDENT GROUPS & MEDIA ORGS Outside of the classroom, Hubbard School students can latch on to a number of opportunities that help them build confidence, make connections and gain real-world experience. Whether they join a student group, work at a campus media organization, or both, the School and the University at large offer ventures ripe for the picking.

“Students who get involved in these activities are getting very practical learning that translates into interviewing opportunities,” said lecturer Mark Jenson, who has advised for both NSAC and Ad Club.

“When they have these activities on their resumes, agency recruiters notice this because they understand the value of these programs.

Time and time again I’ve heard students tell me that when they were interviewed, having the ability to talk about the skills and knowledge they gained from these activities played a huge role for them to successfully land an internship or a job.”

8 MURPHY REPORTER ❙ Winter 2024

BACKPACK The strategic communication student agency continues to grow, employing more students in professional development and serving more clients. With clients like the Carlson School of Management, Serve Minnesota and First Nations Repatriation Institute, students apply their education to provide strategy, social media, content creation and media planning.

AD CLUB Ad Club is a student organization dedicated to educating students about the advertising, marketing, and communications industries. Ad Club accomplishes this by hosting guest speakers, attending agency tours, conducting resume reviews, holding networking events, and providing career opportunities.

PUBLIC RELATIONS STUDENT SOCIETY OF AMERICA PRSSA is a student-led organization that provides students who have an interest in public relations or communications with exciting and valuable professional development opportunities, including professional organization visits, networking events, professional development presentations and workshops, competitions and national conferences and mentorship opportunities.

SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS STUDENT CHAPTER The University of Minnesota chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists is a group for students interested in journalism. The group meets monthly during the school year, often holding workshops, speaker presentations and field trips to local newsrooms.

INTERN SPOTLIGHT Carly Berglund, Minnesota Live - KSTP “Every morning before the show, I would print scripts and assist guests backstage. I went along to shoots with reporters and photojournalists, learned how to write for television, and helped produce lifestyle segments. Coming out of this role, I feel so much more confident in my knowledge of the television industry. On my very first day, my supervisor told me that this internship would teach me the inner workings of how a television program comes together.

Mission accomplished!”

MINNESOTA DAILY

RADIO K

The Minnesota Daily is a student-led media organization that has served the University of Minnesota campus and surrounding community for more than 120 years. The Minnesota Daily is now published exclusively online, and readers are able to access special issues and get updates about articles by signing up for their email newsletter.

Hubbard School students have worked for the Daily for 100 years.

STUDIO U

THE WAKE Started by two Hubbard School students in the early 2000s, The Wake Magazine is an arts, culture, politics, and social commentary magazine that provides a space for students to explore themselves and the world around them. Written, designed, and published by HIRE OR HELP? students, for students, The The School’s extensive Wake aims to alumni network is a huge uplift the voices asset for students. Whether and artwork of you’re looking to hire recent anyone attending the University grads, fill internship posiof Minnesota, tions, mentor students, or regardless of stop by Murphy Hall to guest experience or speak in a class, please major.

One of the state’s first broadcasting stations, Radio K operates as the University of Minnesota’s public radio station and provides enrolled students with a hands-on learning opportunity for multimedia at the University. The station's program advisor teaches podcasting in the School.

StudioU is a student-run video production organization that documents, informs, and entertains the greater campus community while providing students with hands-on professional experience.

reach out to Becky Borg at hsjmc-career@umn.edu.

HUBBARD SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATION 9

CAREER READINESS

CAREER EVENTS & OPPORTUNITIES Once Borg was hired in 2021, the School had someone devoted to developing and hosting career events specific to the School, including

WEEKLY NEWSLETTER

“Our alumni and industry partners are invaluable to our students in sharing their own career journeys, helping students hone their networking skills, and making connections within industries,” she said.

CAREER EVENTS

events for both graduate programs. She aims to host four events for undergrads each semester, while also meeting individually with students and assisting faculty with finding guest speakers—up to 150 per semester! To pull these events off, Borg is thankful for the School’s vast and willing alumni network.

Borg is part of the School’s Student Services team and by working together they connect students with programs and resources aimed at career readiness.

Career readiness initiatives at the School have been both tried and true and new and innovative. Some have stood the test of time and others change with the times. It’s a constant consideration in curriculum and syllabi creation, and a strategy with student-facing events.

Faculty, staff, donors and alumni provide the inspiration and the juice to power all the School’s offerings.

“Our goal is to offer unparalleled career development opportunities right here in the Twin Cities,” said Cohen. “We want students in our School to be the envy of students elsewhere in the Big 10, as we know that they have access to internships, specialized programs, and strong career opportunities all year round in Minnesota. Whatever students are interested in, whether it is in advertising, public relations, nonprofit communications, journalism, multimedia producing and storytelling, or media sales, they can find a pathway from their classrooms to an exciting career in the Twin Cities communications industry here.”

10 MURPHY REPORTER ❙ Winter 2024

The Murphy Weekly e-newsletter has been around for decades, offering updates on University policies and registration. But the biggest impact of the email is the links to internship opportunities, upcoming events, job postings, scholarship deadlines and much more. (Employers who want to get their job postings in front of students should reach out to sjmcugs@umn.edu.)

With Borg on staff, the School can offer between eight and 10 industry-specific events for its undergraduate students each year. Recent events have covered wellness in the workplace, internship prep, alumni panel discussions, job search strategies, freelancing tips and more. Each semester the School’s signature Career Roundtable event takes place, where several industry professionals come to Murphy Hall and meet with small groups of students to discuss their careers and answer student questions.

ALUMNI MENTOR PROGRAM

INTERN SPOTLIGHT

The Alumni Mentor Program, now in its 40th year, has been around so long that people who once were mentored as students are now mentoring others. In the last three years alone, more than 1,000 hours were spent mentoring 200 students across 100 different organizations, from print journalism and broadcast to advertising and corporate communications.

“Being able to learn and gain experience at a small town newspaper was a great opportunity. I know I wouldn’t have felt as confident in my abilities if I had jumped into an internship in the city. I got to cover a lot of different local stories, from government to features to public safety.”

BIPOC CAREER EXPLORER The Twin Cities PR BIPOC Career Explorer is an externship program designed for BIPOC students interested in the practice of public relations and communications in the Twin Cities area. Schools partner with local agencies like Tunheim, Weber Shandwick and Padilla, giving students a year-long experience, which includes workshops, networking and more. Since its launch three years ago, more than 25 Hubbard School students have participated in the program.

BRANDLAB The BrandLab connects BIPOC talent interested in the marketing and advertising industry to sustainable careers in creative workplaces. The nonprofit’s mission is to build a more inclusive marketing and advertising industry.

– Hannah Ward, The Brainerd Dispatch

SHOW YOUR SUPPORT The School can only offer events, programming and opportunities like those featured in this story because of the generosity of our donors. If you’re interested in contributing to a program fund or scholarship, please reach out to the School's development officer, Alex Stern, at astern@ umn.edu or give at z.umn.edu/ HubbardGiving.

HUBBARD SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATION 11

CAREER READINESS

WHERE OUR

As our alums know,

Minnesota

the School prepares

Chicago

you for a career anywhere. Our graduate

Canada

alums teach in places like China, Iceland and Korea. Our journalism alums work everywhere from New York City to France.

And our strategic

Los Angeles

D.C.

Hawaii

communication grads have found homes in countries like Ireland, England and Canada.

Want to update us on where you're working? Send your news to murphrep@umn.edu.

12 MURPHY REPORTER ❙ Winter 2024

New York City

Mexico

ALUMS WORK Norway

Ireland

Germany

South Korea

Belgium

China

France

Japan

Spain

Singapore London

India Iceland

Australia New Zealand

HUBBARD SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATION 13

FACULTY RESEARCH

RESTORING TRUST IN THE NEWS: A GLOBAL PROBLEM WITH LOCAL ANSWERS Benjamin Toff investigates what’s driving declines in trust in news, both at home and abroad.

BY REGAN CARTER OVER THE PAST FEW ELECTION CYCLES, “FAKE NEWS” HAS BECOME a phrase that sends shivers down the

spines of voters all along the political spectrum. With so much misinformation overtaking many forms of media, it’s no wonder an increasing number of people turn a wary eye to news outlets. However, suspicion towards the news extends far beyond national borders.

In 2019, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism in the UK sought to more deeply investigate why levels of public trust in the news were declining in so many places across the globe. When the Institute saw that a complex methodology was needed to analyze this issue, they turned to Assistant Professor Benjamin Toff.

A DIFFERENT APPROACH TO DISTRUST

BREAKING DOWN TRUST IN NEWS

Over the course of three years, Toff, along with a team of media experts he put together from the UK, India, and Brazil, sought to answer three essential questions: 14 MURPHY REPORTER ❙ Winter 2024

• • •

What is trust in news?

What is contributing to recent declines in trust?

What can be done to restore faith in ethical news outlets?

This project was unique because, while others have studied similar questions in specific areas, this team was looking for solutions across media markets around the world where the information environments and political context often differ. To do this, researchers had to develop methods and survey strategies that could be compared across major international markets.

The focus of this research was unique, too. Often, research on trust in news starts from the perspective of journalists and the ways that people in news outlets think about what makes their work trustworthy. Toff, on the other hand, said he is pleased that he and his colleagues “put the public at the center of our research.” The team found that many media consumers tend to trust sources

PHOTO BY PAT O’LEARY

Toff’s introduction to research on trust and distrust in the news began while working as a postdoctoral fellow at Oxford University in 2016. Back then, his primary research focus was on news avoidance: when do people turn away from the news, and why do they do that?

Toff’s research methodology also sets him apart.

Data and hard numbers are, of course, essential to discovering meaningful, generalizable findings in any field.

However, they are not the only forms of evidence that can be analyzed. Toff employs a type of mixed-methods research that incorporates not only quantitative analysis of surveys, but also interviews, narratives, and other qualitative data. These, he feels, offer a more well-rounded picture of the numbers and charts.

Toff’s preferred research methods, as well as his international experience and expertise in news avoidance, made him the perfect candidate to help lead Reuters’ Trust in News Project.

LOCAL SOLUTIONS TO A GLOBAL PROBLEM

The third guiding question to this research around rebuilding trust in the news remains the most complex—and its answer, most elusive. The trouble with offering a solution to media trust is that no two outlets approach the same audience from the same place. Toff said he knows that “what’s going to work for one news organization is probably not going to work for another.”

An approach that may appeal to a primary audience segment may only alienate a secondary one. Onesize-fits-all answers simply don’t exist, but the specific views of targeted audiences for each individual organization do. Each viewer or reader group will be approaching news from different backgrounds and with a different set of apprehensions. Over the next year, Toff wants to take what he has learned from this research and work with individual news organizations to test what works, and what doesn’t, when they try to build back trust where it may have been lost. Ideally, he would like to establish whether the specific efforts they are adopting produce measurable impacts on audience attitudes towards these outlets, or news as a whole, in order to develop more concrete recommendations about context-specific best practices.

In addition to this work, Toff is helping to build a database of local news sources in Minnesota. He has found that one of the biggest points of confusion among many local audiences is identifying outlets that focus on topics that matter to them and knowing where to turn for reliable information. Toff hopes that this database helps people find and connect with news organizations serving their communities while also helping to identify where gaps have developed and local news needs are largest.

After three years with the Reuters Institute, Toff is excited to be back at the Hubbard School. He said he hopes that his perspective on the public’s relationships to news can continue to add to the community of scholars and practitioners in the School’s orbit as he serves as research director for the Minnesota Journalism Center in the year ahead.

HERMAN BERNARD FOR UNSPLASH

with which they are most familiar and have a long-term relationship, that they are most familiar with, rather than necessarily differentiating between sources on the basis of their specific journalistic practices.

He said he believes that the group's work made great strides in answering all three of its main questions, although the third question about solutions remains the most challenging. While previous research has surveyed public attitudes on news before, the Reuters Institute team was able to develop a much broader view of the intertwined Over the next factors that influence the year, Toff public’s relationship with news.

While experiences people wants to take have directly engaging with what he has news shape the ideas they hold about journalism, so too learned from does the larger political climate and the changing media techthis research nologies they use to access and work with information and the news individual news habits they do or do not maintain as a result. In turn, those organizations habits affect familiarity with individual news organizations to test what and whether such sources works, and what appear trustworthy as a result.

Even as Toff is excited by doesn’t. the project’s findings around what the public says has damaged their opinion in news organizations, the answer to mending fences between news outlets and audiences is far from cut and dried.

HUBBARD SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATION 15

FACULTY RESEARCH

COMPUTATIONAL ADVERTISING: THE HIDDEN PRACTICE WITNESSED EVERY DAY Do you know what advertisers do with your data? Most consumers don’t. Dr. Jisu Huh aims to close the knowledge gap and empower consumers with the ability to choose what happens to their data.

BY REGAN CARTER FOR MANY, COMPUTATIONAL ADVERTISING IS A PRACTICE

that we see each time we open our internet browser— without ever really being made aware of its presence. It’s a force that makes its effects known while simultaneously hiding its inner workings.

For Raymond O. Mithun Endowed Chair in Advertising and Professor Jisu Huh, computational advertising is an exciting new research field with a great deal of opportunities and concerns in connection to the machinations hiding just beneath the surface of our favorite websites.

SEEING THE INVISIBLE

Today’s consumers are exposed to an increasing number of hyperpersonalized ads created and served by the computational advertising mechanism. If you have ever searched for something online, you likely have received results specifically tied to your interests and previous queries. In the same vein, almost any online shopping you do can affect the ads that pop up across your browser, enticing you to buy similar products. Computational advertising uses machine-learning algorithms based on the analysis of prior consumer behavior to curate a tailored advertising environment for every online shopper.

For Huh, computational advertising is a fascinating research area with many emerging questions about its hidden inner workings as well as questions about its effects on individual consumers and the whole society.

Huh’s research on computational advertising involves interdisciplinary collaborations with computer scientists. Roughly 10 years ago, researchers at the Carlson School of Management, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, and many other related disciplines around the University of Minnesota created the Social Media and Business Analytics Collaborative (SOBACO). This multidisciplinary research community focuses on research problems stemming from emerging 16 MURPHY REPORTER ❙ Winter 2024

social media and big data research. When Huh was invited to join, she met computer scientists with whom a fruitful research collaboration has generated a number of journal publications and conference papers over the years.

The work that Huh did with SOBACO pushed her to continue her interdisciplinary research, leading to the formation of her own lab. Today, Huh proudly continues to operate the Minnesota Computational Advertising Laboratory (MCAL). This space is dedicated to studying emerging phenomena and problems in broader communication fields through the lens of computational social science.

FINDING THE RIGHT BALANCE

Through her work, either in the lab or the classroom, one goal has always been clear to Huh: Advertising is most

simple existence of this little pop-up has provided remarkable education to the average Internet user on data privacy. These small notifications have sparked numerous conversations regarding the collection and use of consumer data by retailers and advertisers.

Other methods of making the invisible visible also exist. Chances are, you are made aware of sponsored social media content through disclaimers on particular posts. Laws that require such disclosures assist in making consumers knowledgeable of precisely when and where they are becoming the target of advertising.

THE TOOLS FOR CONSUMER EMPOWERMENT

KEEPING AN EYE AHEAD

Despite growing concerns about a lack of transparency, to Huh, all hope for trust between advertisers and consumers is not lost. Tools that already exist can provide consumers with heightened awareness of where their data goes and can help rebuild consumer confidence in the computational advertising ecosystem.

For example, on many websites that you use each day, you are prompted to accept or reject cookies. The

Consumers are often unaware of where their data goes when they browse online.

This knowledge gap creates friction between advertisers and their potential customers and can foster mistrust in consumers.

For now, Huh is cautiously optimistic about the future of computational advertising. As Huh continues developing this research area, she works closely with her graduate students and encourages them to take on the role of lead author in their own research.

Huh is particularly excited about the work being done by her current cohort of graduate students. Her students are studying a wide variety of topics, ranging from virtual influencers to social media influencer pay discrepancies and related inequity and diversity issues. Some students are even investigating the future of advertising in the age of AI search engines.

In addition to her research and teaching at the U, Huh eagerly continues her work as Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Advertising. Huh believes that “academic researchers, like myself, have an important role to play to set the vision for… the larger advertising field.” In particular, the vision that she is helping to shape features ethically-motivated advertisers and educated consumers.

To learn more about MCAL, visit mcal.umn.edu

JENNY UEBERBERG FOR UNSPLASH

effective when it achieves a balance between an advertiser’s strategic goals and a consumer’s informational needs.

With this in mind, Huh focuses her research on helping all parties involved in the advertising ecosystem, where different groups may have different goals. The main goal of her research is “to help the advertising industry and advertisers to develop socially responsible and ethical advertising practices, and also inform and empower consumers.” In her view, the act of empowering consumers by equipping them with knowledge about the inner workings of computational advertising is just as important as helping advertisers craft the right strategies to market their products.

In Huh’s experience, consumers are often unaware of where their data goes when they browse online. This knowledge gap creates friction between advertisers and their potential customers and can foster mistrust in consumers. A potential solution may lie in pushing advertisers and tech companies to be more transparent and allowing consumers to learn what advertisers do with their data.

HUBBARD SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATION 17

SILHA

38TH ANNUAL SILHA LECTURE ADDRESSES AI AND DEFAMATION

BY MALLORY HARRINGTON, SILHA CENTER RESEARCH ASSISTANT

Professor James Grimmelmann, Tessler Family Professor of Digital & Information Law at Cornell Tech and Cornell Law School, asked the Artificial Intelligence (AI) image generator Midjourney to illustrate the concept, a striking image appeared (at right).

“What happens when an AI that is capable of turning two words into an image like this meets the legal system?” Grimmelmann asked.

On Oct. 23, 2023, Grimmelmann discussed artificial intelligence and defamation during the 38th Annual Silha Lecture, “The Defamation Machine: Can ChatGPT commit libel?” With a J.D. from Yale Law School and an A.B. in Computer Science from Harvard College, Grimmelmann is both a law and computer expert. Grimmelmann’s lecture focused on ChatGPT, a public-facing AI chatbot developed

by OpenAI and released in November 2022, and the tort of defamation.

Following an introduction by Silha Center Director and Silha Professor of Media Ethics and Law Jane Kirtley, Grimmelmann began with an example of AI hallucination. While writing about a lawsuit involving the Second Amendment Foundation (“SAF”), a journalist asked ChatGPT to summarize it. ChatGPT responded: “[It is] a legal complaint filed

by Alan Gottlieb, the founder and executive vice president of [SAF], against Mark Walters, who is accused of defrauding and embezzling funds from the SAF.” ChatGPT further stated that Walters, a radio host and Second Amendment rights activist, misappropriated funds and manipulated financial records while serving as SAF’s Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer. In fact, Walters has never held a formal position at SAF and the statements ChatGPT produced about Walters were false. Walters sued OpenAI for defamation. This example teed up the Silha Lecture’s central question: Can ChatGPT commit defamation?

Grimmelmann summarized two elements that public figures must prove in defamation cases: falsity and actual malice. They must show that the statement had a false meaning that a reasonable reader would understand to be harmful to their 18 MURPHY REPORTER ❙ Winter 2024

TOP IMAGE GENERATED BY MIDJOURNEY; BOTTOM PHOTO BY PAT O’LEARY

WHAT DOES ACTUAL MALICE LOOK LIKE? When

SILHA

reputation. To prove actual malice, public figures must show that the defendant knew that the statement was false, or recklessly published the statement without regard for whether it was true or false.

Scholars speculate on how defamation law should apply to AI. Grimmelmann noted that responses converge on two themes. First, because the average reader is likely to perceive ChatGPT outputs as factual, the system can convey false meanings. Second, ChatGPT has no state of mind or intent, leading to Grimmelmann’s statement of a key paradox in the application of defamation law: How can ChatGPT produce meaning without knowledge?

First, Grimmelmann argued that meaning is

sued ConEd. ConEd said it turned the power off because the bill sent to the house was not paid. The construction company countered that it sent a letter instructing ConEd to send bills to the construction office, not the house. So, did ConEd, through its agents, know the right address?

Grimmelmann explained: “We are already, in law at least, very comfortable with saying that a company knew something even when it’s not necessarily the case that there was anybody at the company who had all of the facts that were relevant.”

ConEd, as a company, knew the correct address even though its computer system did not. Grimmelmann argued that The Chinese Room knows Chinese, even though the person inside it does not. Similarly, Grimmelmann con-

Grimmelmann argued that if meaning can be attributed, then knowledge can be attributed too. attributed—we treat what people say and write as meaningful. Grimmelmann noted that meaning does not necessarily require a speaker. “The Turing Test,” posed by computer scientist Alan Turing, illustrates this point. Imagine a test where we have to distinguish between the output of a computer and of a person.

In the test, an interrogator communicates with both.

The interrogator asks questions, and the person and computer answer. The interrogator does not need to know whether it is the computer or the person they are talking to. Either way, the interrogator is potentially finding meaning in the answer.

Grimmelmann argued that if meaning can be attributed, then knowledge can be attributed too.

Grimmelmann discussed another thought experiment by philosopher John Searle: “The Chinese Room.” The interrogator communicates in Chinese with another person in a separate room. The person they are communicating with does not know Chinese but has enormous books that direct them to an answer. After a laborious process, the person can answer in Chinese. Searle argued that because the person in the room does not know Chinese, neither does the room itself. Rather, it is a machine working through a process. Although the human can know information, the machine produces an output with no knowledge. However, Grimmelmann suggested that this misses something fundamental about knowledge in the law: We frequently attribute knowledge to non-human entities.

Grimmelmann turned to a case about a house under construction in Queens, N.Y. The energy delivery company, ConEd, turned off the power and the pipes froze, flooding the house. The construction company

cluded, ChatGPT as a system “knows” a lot and can act on that knowledge. So, he asked, does it make sense to hold AI companies accountable for ensuring the correctness of the outputs of their products? Or should we tell users not to rely on AI products for accurate information?

Grimmelmann posited three ways the law could address AI defamation. First, the law could change, applying the actual malice requirement to human actors, but modifying the law as applied to computer systems. Alternatively, our understanding of knowledge could change.

We could say that systems like ChatGPT have knowledge in the way that a business might. Finally, he said “we could continue to insist that we are requiring actual knowledge and actual malice, and just completely lie about how the facts work and say ChatGPT has constructive knowledge of the truth. . . . We use legal fictions all the time.”

In a Q&A session, an attendee asked about newspapers using ChatGPT to create content. Grimmelmann commented that the law may look to journalistic standards to understand how to handle this. “If journalists collectively come to treat the output of ChatGPT or other generative AI like the work of an enthusiastic but somewhat clueless intern . . . then they wouldn't let the intern just write copy and put it on the front page. Somebody is going to read that skeptically. And if journalists’ practice converges on that, then an organization that doesn't use that kind of step might be found to have actual malice.”

A video of the lecture is available at silha.umn.edu. Silha Center activities, including the annual Silha Lecture, are made possible by a generous endowment from the late Otto and Helen Silha.

HUBBARD SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATION 19

WHY I GIVE

WHY I GIVE: CAROL PINE

With her gift, Pine hopes to encourage future generations of entrepreneurs.

BY KATIE DOHMAN CAROL PINE GRADUATED FROM THE JOURNALISM SCHOOL

in 1967 and she’s been working ever since. She says that within a week of graduation, she landed a once-classic, professional-journalism-boot-camp role as an editor of two weekly community newspapers.

“There I was, this young’un, covering three communities in suburban Minneapolis, as the editor of this paper. And I was enjoying it immensely and learning a great deal on the job. But, as you know, weekly newspaper jobs don’t pay too well, and it dawned on me at one point: I could do better than this. I think I better do better than this.”

By 1973, Pine had hung out her shingle, starting a business as a professional writer. What she lacked in information about income statements and balance sheets she made up for with the belief that “the world, the community, and the marketplace needs well-researched, well-edited, well-crafted messages.” The library and her CPA father helped with the knowledge gaps and her grit and talent did the rest—she was profitable from the beginning.

“What I’ve always appreciated is that I’ve never been out of a job because I have this degree,” Pine said. “I’ve been able to remain in the world of journalism, research, writing—and now writing books, which is what I’ve been up to for quite a long time without abating,” she said. “I graduated in 1967 and I’m still at it! That’s remarkable to me. I don’t know how many schools can prep a person for the work of a lifetime they set out to do.”

Still, Pine said she “just learned by doing.” And she started to write about entrepreneurship, learning all about what it takes to have the courage to start a business. That evolved in to co-writing a regular business column for the vaunted Corporate Report magazine, consulting, writing books, and founding Pine and Partners, which has produced more than 40 books about corporations and the people who lead them. She was working virtually, from home, and without any borders or cubicle walls to box in her ambition long before work-from-home was a regularly recognized term in the industry lexicon.

But she wants future Hubbard School graduates to be able to hang a shingle with more than just a library card and a helpful CPA relative on speed dial—she wants the business side of journalism, broadly defined, 20 MURPHY REPORTER ❙ Winter 2024

to be a part of what students learn about in school, too.

That’s why she’s established the Carol Pine Entrepreneurship Fund, which is an estate gift that will go toward supporting programming to instruct and inspire about entrepreneurship for journalism/strategic communication students.

“If we look at a roster of U of M j-school grads, I’m going to guess, a good percentage left the j-school, cut their teeth in the biz, and wound up going out on their own and starting their own venture in some aspect of journalism or communications,” she said.

She may also have a sense for how many entrepreneurial minds have gone through the j-school, since as an adjunct for a class called Media Management—co-taught with Pioneer Press editor legends John Finnegan and

WHY I GIVE: SUSAN SCHUR KAUFMAN Schur Kaufman lifts students who need paying internships.

Walker Lundy—she may have taught many of them herself.

“I used to say, ‘One day you’re going to make your own job. Why not make your own job instead of trying to find one?’ And these days it’s easier than ever.”

After all, she enthuses, what j-school really teaches from the get-go is to research, interview, find the lay of the land, and then present it, either in person or written form.

It also may be a more sustainable path forward in an uncertain industry market—both with the changes that came in the workplace after COVID hit and also the wild industry swings, because the programming would help demystify the business side.

“We’re speaking to the entrepreneurial urge of a young person in j-school,” she said. “We’re saying to them, ‘This may be in your future and here are the skillsets “I graduated in 1967 you need to have if this is the path and I’m still at it! That’s you take.’ Plus, the economic reality remarkable to me. I is becoming really don’t know how many clear: We don’t all have to be a part schools can prep a of expensive organizations that can’t person for the work of a survive.”

Pine’s estate lifetime they set out to gift will be assessed for its market value do.” and then divvied up appropriately for programming, which is yet to be determined, but she’s got ideas for matching up industry giants with promising young entrepreneurial students, among others.

And there’s the fun side, too: Some people just have the entrepreneurial gene and will be more prepared to take the risk. “Students need to be prepared for the reality and possibility—and give themselves the opportunity—that they may start something and it might grow into something. There are whole new ways of working now that we never imagined, and we should be making the most of it, I think.”

BY KATIE DOHMAN SUSAN SCHUR KAUFMAN DIDN’T ATTEND THE HUBBARD SCHOOL, yet she created the Susan Schur Kaufman Fund to give Hubbard School students seeking internships with a focus on ethical and objective political reporting in a state or federal government or nonprofit public service organization the funds they need to pursue them.

She said she became “quite attached to the U” because of her husband, Clayton Kaufman (B.A. ’48), who was a Minnesota Daily reporter and full of school spirit. “He was very devoted to the School,” she said.

Kaufman went on to report for the UPI and spent much of his career at WCCO, including as general manager.

“He was a stickler for precision, accuracy in

“Ethical, unbiased journalism is essential to living a decent life.”

continued on page 22

HUBBARD SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATION 21

WHY I GIVE

reporting, and continued to write letters to the editor” after retirement, Schur Kaufman said, laughing. His passion became an honored, lasting legacy: In 1994, he received the Distinguished Alumni award from the College of Liberal Arts and in 2007, he was inducted into the Minnesota Broadcasters Hall of Fame.

His love of the U was contagious: Schur Kaufman said when they married later in life her “contacts, relationships, support, and activity all became associated with the U.” But she comes at journalism from an equally storied, if different, perspective. As a young idealist with her political science degree in hand, she went to work in public service in Washington, D.C. for the Kennedy administration, surrounded by other idealists. Then, though she said it was “the last thing she thought she’d do with her life,” she entered politics in 1973, and was eventually elected as a Massachusetts state representative in 1980, where she served for 14 years.

“My career there was highlighted—or lowlighted—by the rise of talk radio, the beginning of cable and internet, and the fading of facts and truth and unbiased reporting,” she said. “I’ve kept my idealism, but even back then was disheartened by the direction that information was going out. And that obviously stuck with me through my career and some pretty nasty battles over those years—even more so as we got into the current era; the rise of unfiltered, distorted, biased information has continued to distress me a great deal. It’s not that I’ve become cynical. I’ve become distressed.”

She was also very aware of how some reporters portrayed her quotes or coverage as a legislator, and she sees echoes of this biased coverage today—she said her “favorite quote” came from one talk-radio host who said she was “a cockroach who crawled around in the dark of night, HOW TO GIVE stealing people’s money.”

She also saw biases in how If you’d like to support reporters covered a female our programs, please legislator versus a male one— contact development her quotes would often be attributed with more charged officer Alex Stern at words, such as “argued” astern@umn.edu. instead of “said,” “advocated,” or “contended,” for example.

22 MURPHY REPORTER ❙ Winter 2024

She had her fair share of misquotes.

It gave her a critical lens through which to think about the importance of the education surrounding the privilege of the freedom of the press, and she kept her eye trained on how the media environment has intensified in recent years. “Because my whole life was dedicated to “Because my public service in one form or another, most of my whole life was reading was nonfiction and I was always on top of the dedicated to news,” she said. “I had an addiction following everypublic service thing that was going on.”

That continues today, in one form though she gets most or another, of her news through print and some limited most of my television. She said she’s also distressed about how reading was much further some media nonfiction and outlets have swung, and how students may switch to marketing majors when I was always there’s so clearly a need for ethical, factual, unbion top of the ased reporting. news.”

“I wanted [the scholarship] to stay focused on journalism in whatever form, whether electronic media, print, TV, or radio. That I continue appealing to the idealistic side of students today. And I know they are. This generation is showing it has some very definite concerns about the direction we’re going in,” she said. She wants to help return print journalism to its ideals in a time when “truthiness” has become accepted on some channels as a tenet more than a funny buzzword.

“With every passing day I feel still very strongly about the need to have the kind of journalism it used to be,” she said. “You should be able to get informed and think critically about it as opposed to being brainwashed and/or fed conspiracy theories.

Ethical, unbiased journalism is essential to living a decent life.”

FACULTY NEWS Colin Agur

COLIN AGUR was selected as a

fellow in the University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment’s Affiliate Program, which brings together individuals from various backgrounds and disciplines who are motivated to drive real-world solutions. Fellows are senior researchers and thought-leaders established in their career, having demonstrated excellence in one or more disciplines related to environmental protection or sustainability.

SID BEDINGFIELD contributed a chapter to The Routledge Companion to American Journalism History, which came out in September. Bedingfield’s chapter “Mainstream Journalism and the Black Struggle for Civil Rights in the United States” called for more scrutiny of the role professional journalism played in supporting discrimination of Black Americans in the 20th century.

VALÉRIE BÉLAIR-GAGNON published

an edited book titled “Happiness in Journalism.” The book examines how journalism can overcome harmful institutional issues such as work-related trauma and precarity, focusing specifically on questions of what happiness in journalism means, and how one can be successful and happy on the job. The book also has a YouTube channel and a list of solutions-oriented infographics for educators, journalists and newsroom leaders.

She also became the School’s Director of Undergraduate Studies.

MATT CARLSON presented “Discouraging news consumption: News avoidance cultivation as a threat to journalism” at the Future of Journalism Conference at Cardiff University in September. He also published “Sustaining journalistic continuity in the face of change: Announcing a

Sid Bedingfield

new editor at The New York Times” in Journalism.

DIANE CORMANY presented her poster presentation “Remembering the recession: Marketplace and the status quo” at the Association of Education in Journalism and Mass Communication conference in August 2023.

RUTH DEFOSTER signed a book

contract with Prometheus to publish her upcoming book “The Fear Knot: How Science, History and Culture Shape our Fears—and How to Get Unstuck,” which comes out in January 2025. She also spoke on a panel at Georgetown University’s Free Speech Symposium on hate speech in politics and education in September 2023.

GAYLE GOLDEN moderated a panel

of five local journalists during the School’s Balanced Reporting in Divisive Times conference in November 2023. She also led planning and coordination for the Hubbard Reporting Experience and Report for Minnesota programs.

In October 2023, JISU HUH organized the second Computational Advertising Research Thought Leadership Forum (TLF), which was sponsored and hosted by the Hubbard School. Twenty-five scholars and industry experts from multiple disciplines and five different countries participated. Huh published an article “Urgent topics for advertising research: Addressing critical gaps in the literature” in the International Journal of Advertising as a part of the journal’s 40th anniversary special issue. Former Ph.D. students Hao Xu and Maral Abdollahi also contributed to this article. Another journal article by Huh and her former advisee, Eunah Kim, examining “Intentional ad-viewing to support video creators

Valérie Bélair-Gagnon

Matt Carlson

on digital video-sharing platforms” has been published in the Journal of Marketing Communications. In December, Huh visited Australia and gave public lectures and engaged in research collaboration projects at the University of Melbourne and the University of South Australia.

Diane Cormany

Ruth DeFoster

SHERRI JEAN KATZ and ELISIA COHEN published “Tobacco free nicotine vaping products: A study of health halo effects among middle school youth” in the Journal of Health Communication.

Gayle Golden

JANE KIRTLEY was widely quoted on

the issue of whether cameras should be permitted in the trials of former President Donald Trump. She was a guest on CNN Tonight, and was also quoted by the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, ABC News, Deadline, The Messenger, and the Star Tribune. She participated in a panel discussion held in St. Paul, “The State of Free Speech in America Today,” part of the Free Speech at the Crossroads: A Minnesota Dialogue initiative sponsored by the Free Speech Project at Georgetown University. Kirtley took part in several interviews concerning AI and social media, and she was a panelist for a webinar, One-Day Law School for Journalists, sponsored by Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts. Her panel was titled “Protecting Journalists: First Amendment & Shield Law,” and was attended by approximately 150 journalists and media lawyers.

Jisu Huh

Sherri Jean Katz

Jane Kirtley

SCOTT LIBIN led a team of Hubbard

School students who shot and edited video stories for high schoolers at the ThreeSixty Journalism Summer TV Camp on the campus of the University of St. Thomas in July. He also led the Newscast Track at the first-ever

Scott Libin

HUBBARD SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATION 23

Regina McCombs

Rebekah Nagler

Hubbard Reporting Experience in Murphy Hall in August. In September, Libin led a session titled “Is Objectivity Obsolete?” at the international conference of the Radio Television Digital News Association in Minneapolis.

REGINA MCCOMBS taught journalists,

educators and students about disinformation and visual journalism in Palau in August. She also taught a study abroad course called Documentary Photography: Understanding Germany Through Images in Cologne, Germany, in June.

In November, REBEKAH NAGLER gave an invited talk titled “The impact of conflicting health information: Integrating individual- and population-level approaches” at the Cognitive, Affective, and Social Processes in Health Research (CASPHR) Capstone Meeting at the National Cancer Institute in Rockville, MD.

AMY O’CONNOR won the 2023

National Communication Association Public Relations Division PRIDE Award for Outstanding Book for “The Routledge Handbook for Corporate Social Responsibility Communication.” O’Connor was the editor and authored three chapters. Other Hubbard School faculty had chapters in the handbook, too, including Hyejoon Rim and Adam Saffer.

HYEJOON RIM’s paper “Employees’

voice behavior in response to corporate social irresponsibility (CSI): The role of organizational identification, issue perceptions, and power distance culture” was published in the Public Relations Review. Rim’s paper “Cross-national study of transparency in CSR communication and corporate trust: Mediating roles of perceived 24 MURPHY REPORTER ❙ Winter 2024

Amy O’Connor

Hyejoon Rim

altruism and perceived skepticism” was accepted for publication in the International Journal of Business Communication.

ADAM SAFFER and former Hubbard

School postdoc Yan Qu’s article “Issues, publics, organizations, and personal networks: Toward an integrated issue engagement model” earned the Outstanding Article Award from the National Communication Association PRIDE committee. The article was published in the Journal of Public Relations Research.

CLAIRE M. SEGIJN received a travel

Adam Saffer

Claire M. Segijn

was published by Columbia University Press in December.

CAROLINA VELLOSO published “‘No

wrong way to be a woman’: Media coverage of Serena Williams as a mother” in Feminist Media Studies in October. Her paper “Why she was there in the first place: Media coverage of Brittney Griner and pay inequity in women’s sports,” was accepted for presentation at the International Association for Communication and Sport (IACS) conference in March 2024.

EMILY VRAGA was featured as a

grant by Global Programs and Strategy Alliance to visit Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and Korea University in Seoul for her sabbatical during Fall 2023. During this visit, she exchanged research ideas, gave guest lectures, and discussed potential new collaborations in the field of advertising, privacy, ethics, and AI. She was invited to the University of Zurich to give a research talk on personalized advertising and surveillance.

plenary speaker at The Wildlife Society conference in November 2023. She spoke on the topic of the dangers of science misinformation and what experts can do to help combat its dangers. Vraga was a featured guest speaker discussing the challenges of addressing vaccine misinformation for a postgraduate course at Harvard Medical School called “Infectious Diseases in Primary Care,” which was given virtually to nearly 300 primary care clinicians around the United States in October 2023.

ERICH SOMMERFELDT received

MARCO YZER, along with Jason Siegel

top faculty paper honors from the National Communication Association Public Relations Division for his paper “Bridging dialogue and organizational listening in public relations: The pyramid of genuine dialogic listening” co-authored with Luke W. Capizzo, University of Missouri-Columbia and Katie Place, Quinnipiac University.

ALLISON STEINKE is the new busi-

ness manager for Backpack, the student-run strategic communication agency.

BEN TOFF’s book “Avoiding the News: Reluctant Audiences for Journalism”

Erich Sommerfeldt

Allison Steinke

Benjamin Toff

Carolina Velloso

Emily Vraga

(Claremont Graduate University), is a guest editor for a special issue of the journal Stigma and Health on unintended, adverse effects of anti-stigma campaigns.

ALVIN ZHOU published a new study

with colleagues called “The puzzle of misinformation: Exposure to unreliable content in the United States is higher among the better informed” in New Media & Society. In November, he delivered a keynote speech on computational social science at the European Network of Emerging Scholars (EUNES) series of the EUPRERA.

Marco Yzer

Alvin Zhou

LEARNING

GRADUATE STUDENT NEWS MONICA CRAWFORD earned

a top student paper award in the Association for Education in Journalism and Monica Crawford Mass Communication (AEJMC) Sports Communication Interest Group for her paper “Complicating the Sk8rgrl: Asymmetrical visibility of feminisms in Olympic skateboarding.” She also presented her paper “Anti-gay legislation and the First Amendment: A statutory analysis of 2021-2022 anti-gay curriculum laws” for the Communication Law and Policy and Critical Cultural Studies division at the AEJMC 2023 conference.

GABE GARLOUGH-SHAH was recog-

nized by the Dan Wackman Award committee for his paper “Prior knowledge and search motivation on product-related search queries,” receiving a FirstYear Graduate Student Research Award, Honorable Mention, which comes with a $500 fellowship.

He also serves Gabe Garloughas the editorial Shah assistant for the Journal of Advertising under the current editorin-chief Professor Jisu Huh.

presence” at the 2023 Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) in August 2023.

KATIE KIM

received the Ralph D. Casey Award for her dissertation “Understanding Employees’ Moral CommunicaKatie Haejung tive Behaviors Kim in Response to Corporate Social Irresponsibility.” The Casey Award recognizes outstanding graduate achievement for dissertation projects—the highest honor that the School gives to its graduate students. Kim was awarded $6,000 to put toward her research and given the keynote spot at this year's Graduate Student Orientation conference in March to present her work to the community.

RHYS MOGER

presented their independent study “Get your life together with me: The mythic materialism of Rhys Moger TikTok’s ‘That Girl’ aesthetic” at the Midwest Popular Culture Association Conference from October 6-8, 2023.

RITA TANG received

the Dan Wackman First-Year Graduate Student Research Award for her paper, “Kill two birds with one Rita Tang stone: The role of efficacy messages in motivating correction of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and general misinformation on social media.” Tang received $2,500 in fellowship funds.

The annual Wackman award was established with generous gifts from Hubbard School professor emeritus Dan Wackman and others to honor a first-year graduate student or small group of graduate students who produce the best research paper for a completed first-year graduate project in mass communication. She also contributed to a Wiley Volume on Social Media and Misinformation edited by Dr. Kevin B Wright, coauthored with Caitlin Neal and Associate Professor Emily Vraga with a book chapter about misinformation correction during a crisis.

SARAH KAY WILEY has joined Check My Ads, an adtech watchdog organization, as director of policy and partnerships.

CAITLIN NEAL was

JIACHENG HUANG

presented her paper “Public engagement of corporate social media strategies: Media affordance features and content-based social

graduate students interested in gaining professional experience outside of academia. She plans to use this opportunity to further her media ethics training in an applied setting.

Jiacheng Huang

Caitlin Neal

selected to be part of the 2024 CLA Graduate Student Internship Program at the U, a program designed to provide funding to

Sarah Kay Wiley

HUBBARD SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATION 25

LEARNING

UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT NEWS During the last academic year, the Student Services team started a Hubbard School Ambassador program.

This year they set out with a goal to increase the number of Hubbard Ambassadors, as well as shape the program further. The ambassadors volunteer at and attend events, offer student perspectives in committee meetings, and more. The 10 ambassadors for the 2023-24 academic year are: NATASHA DELION, RENEE DEMARS DEHN, SYDNEY DEPEAUX, BRYN DONOVAN, JACK O’CONNOR, AMIRAH RAZMAN, JESSY REHMANN, ZEYNEB SARIOGLAN, LIBBY SCHOENFELDER, and BRANDON VI. Four students were selected to the American Advertising Federation Most Promising Multicultural Students program for 2024: WESLEY DEAN, MAYA ELLIS, LILY NGUYEN and COOPER OLSON. Students participate in a four-day industry immersion program in New York in February 2024 that includes professional development and personal branding workshops, awards, luncheons and an expo. The Most Promising program gives advertising, media, communications, and tech companies the opportunity to tap into high-achieving talent of 50 diverse college students from across the country.

Both LIAM GILL-SUTTON and SAIJA MAKI-WALLER had election day images published on MPR News. The photos were taken for an assignment in Jour 4302: Photojournalism.

Several Hubbard School students were nominated for Hearst Journalism Awards: GABRIELLE ERENSTEIN, in the photojournalism: news and features category; MAYA MODELLI and MADISON ROTH in the feature writing category; JACK O’CONNOR in the explanatory reporting category; 26 MURPHY REPORTER ❙ Winter 2024

SHANNON BRAULT in the picture story/ series category; and ADAM BEININGEN and SOFIE JACKSON in the television features category. MADISON ROTH took home 20th and JACK O’CONNOR took home eighth.

Several Hubbard School strategic communication students joined the 2024 Student Ad Summit leadership team: ZELIE CAPOLUPO, project manager; ANNIKA CROUSER, account manager; MAYA ELLIS, creative; TAYLOR GISH, social team; KAITLIN LONGERBONE, strategist; ISABELLE OLSON, social team; and SKYE SCHULZ, strategist.

One of the AD STRATEGY AND CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT COURSE sections presented their advertising campaigns to help launch the new Minneapolis Pickleball Club. They also worked on a second campaign for a client, helping introduce the MidCity Kitchen project to the Twin Cities market.

BACKPACK, the student-run agency

held in the Hubbard School, continues to grow, adding a new business manager to help build the group’s roster of external clients, and adding a project management department.

The AdClub student group visited both Broadhead and Fallon agencies during fall semester (below).

One of the

STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION CAMPAIGNS

course sections developed an integrated marketing campaign for Cargill’s new frozen product called PrimeWaters Seafood to help introduce the brand/ product into the Northeast Market.

Four teams presented their final presentations to four clients from Cargill, including alum Emily Berg, in December.

Another section of the course presented their campaigns to client Seven Sundays.

Instructor Mark Jenson and several strategic communication students attended the 2023 British Arrows Award show at the Walker Art Center. Pictured (bottom, left to right) Olivia Rolland, Mark Jenson, Lily Shaw and Lily Nguyen; (top, left to right) Stacy Cossa, Megan Feller, Piper Sondreal and Jacob Nelson.

LEARNING

STUDENT SPOTLIGHT: ADHAM MOHAMED Mohamed enjoys the community he feels in the School.

❙ INTERVIEW BY REGAN CARTER Communication lies in my passion for cultivating meaningful connections with people. I view communication as a powerful tool for storytelling and influencing positive change in the world. With this major, I aspire to make a significant impact on society through effective communication strategies.

Q What has been your favorite part

of your experience at the Hubbard School?

A One of the most enriching experi-

ences during my time at the Hubbard School has been assuming the role of Chapter President of the Public Relations Student Society of America.

This leadership position has not only opened numerous doors for me but has also allowed me to connect with like-minded individuals who share similar aspirations and goals.

Originally from Cairo, senior Adhan Mohamed is pursuing the Media My advice to future Hubbard

& Information major at the Hubbard School. He’s president of the Public

School

Relations Student Society

students

of America (PRSSA) and

is simple:

interns at a public relations

Seize every

agency.

opportunity that comes your way.

Q Which course or professor would

that has surprised you?

A One pleasantly surprising aspect of

my major has been the overwhelming sense of camaraderie and support among students. The sense of community within the Media and Information and Strategic Communication programs has been a source of inspiration and motivation throughout my academic journey.

Q What do you wish you had known

educators at the Hubbard School, I must highlight Allison Steinke as my personal favorite. Her exceptional qualities extend beyond her expertise; she exudes kindness and compassion, fostering a supportive learning environment. Under her guidance, I've been able to establish valuable connections with industry professionals, and her unwavering encouragement has consistently motivated me to excel.

wish I had been more aware of earlier is the level of competitiveness in the field. It's essential to be prepared for the competitive nature of the media and communication industry and to continuously work on honing one's skills and building a strong professional network.

A Among the many exceptional

Q What minors, internships, or

your major?

decision to pursue a major in Media and Information and Strategic

hold the position of Chapter President at PRSSA and have plans to intern at

A The driving force behind my

Q What is one aspect of your major

you recommend for other students in your major?

activities are you pursuing outside of your major? How do you think these enhance your major and/or your future career plans?

Q Why did you decide to pursue

Axia Public Relations during spring semester. These extracurricular activities and internships provide me with valuable hands-on experience and networking opportunities. They allow me to apply the principles and skills I've acquired in my major to real-world scenarios, ultimately enhancing my preparedness for a successful career in the field of media and communication.

A In addition to my major, I currently

about your career path before now?

A One aspect of my career path that I

Q What advice do you have for

future Hubbard School students?

A My advice to future Hubbard School

students is simple: Seize every opportunity that comes your way. College is a time for growth and exploration, and it's through experiences that we truly learn and develop. Don't be afraid to step out of your comfort zone and take on challenges because they often lead to valuable lessons and personal growth.

HUBBARD SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATION 27

ALUMNI

ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT: BRIANNA SISLO-SCHUTTA

Sislo-Schutta is able to live her values through her work at a D.C.-based PR and marketing agency.

❙ INTERVIEW BY KATIE DOHMAN Q What other experiences put you

Bri Sislo-Schutta (B.A.

on the path to your current job at BerlinRosen?

’21) graduated with a

A My first internship was with

double major in strategic communication and political science. Even with COVID disrupting her final two years of college, she was able to pursue a couple of important internships, which helped her land a job as an account executive at BerlinRosen in Washington, D.C., where she develops integrated campaigns for advocacy groups across many areas: digital, social media, email, web support— and/or on the earned media side, outreach, and pitching.

Q You are a fairly recent grad,

coming out of “an unprecedented time.” What was that like and how did it influence what you wanted to do?

A My last internship before I grad-

uated was with Congressperson Ilhan Omar, which was just a couple 28 MURPHY REPORTER ❙ Winter 2024

of days after the Jan. 6 insurrection.

It was a really exhausting time. Our class had to quickly transition from in-person to offline instruction, and it was also coming off the summer of 2020, which was—for me, as a Black woman—a very heightened time. I was leading a lot of advocacy in my communities and starting to lean into skills I was learning in school, too. I wanted to combine social justice and advocacy work and the tactical things I learned in the j-school.

the Met Council, working on the Southwest light rail project. I learned way too much about construction and had no experience with what it took to build a transit “Your advocacy project. But I and the way learned how to take a complex, you show up hard-to-understand topic and in community synthesize it and because of make it easy to understand to what you a community who might be experienced impacted by light gives you a rail construction.

The topic might perspective not have been where I saw that others myself in the don’t have.” future. But it helped me when looking for my next internship, getting closer to my issue areas.

The congresswoman had an opening. But with COVID, the internship ended up being virtual. It was really interesting, having that work-fromhome perspective but also able to learn about The Hill and how it works. It gave me strength when I came to Washington, D.C. Every experience gives you new things you can take with you in your career.

Q What has your professional

experience entailed?

A I discovered BerlinRosen, a firm based in New York with an office

ALUMNI

ALUMNI NEWS

in D.C., and it does a ton of issue advocacy work. They were hiring.

I applied and after rounds of interviews I was able to get a job as an account coordinator. The exciting thing about client services is the variety of issues, organizations, and people you get to touch. I’ve gotten to work with some legacy civil rights organizations and really cool Black-led reproductive justice organizations. I ask: How can we leverage our tactics and skills to help them to achieve their goal?

For example, I had a client arguing in front of the Supreme Court and we leveraged people power to the Court to show that strong base of support. That was really cool work I never thought I’d have the ability to do at this point in my career. I’m exposed to so many great minds.

the amazing things you did, whether in Backpack or student government.

Make people know what you bring to the table. Be really intentional and show up as your best self.

pandemic really changed how companies work: I’m probably one of the [first waves of] people who started fully remote and moved back in-person into the office. What’s exciting is that it seems that more than ever, folks are open to different possibilities for what things can look like. It feels like a woo-woo thing to say, but for me, I’m finding myself reimagining what the day-to-day can be and what is possible for the workplace.

CAROLYN AHLSTROM (B.A. ’06) is

Q How do you translate those

Q How are you feeling about your

politics editor at MPR after eight years as a Minnesota Capitol-based reporter.

skills into finding a job?

A It was all about the community

and connections I built both at the Hubbard School and outside it. Professor Amy O’Connor is the reason I have my job. She knew my interests and passion and connected me with alumni to figure out the next steps.

Meet as many people as you can. If you see someone you want to get to know, someone who went to the same school or came from the same hometown and has a job you’re interested in, reach out and try to build a connection. More often than not, people say yes. The second part is preparing yourself for that conversation. Whether you’re on an informational interview or a job interview, come prepared with good questions about what you want to know. Get thoughtful and make the most of the time you have together.

You never know what connection you might find. They might call you down the road or refer you to someone who is a better fit.

Trust what you know. And you have to sell yourself, too. Talk about

Q What do you think is different for

recent or upcoming grads when it comes to work?

A I think we’re at a time where the

industry’s prospects—and your own?

A I think it’s a really big honor to have

a company and a space that allows you to have those conversations and wants to bring younger voices and newer perspectives. For instance, I’m leading our firm’s DEI committee alongside one of our operations leads. It’s a lot of work, but when I step back and look at it, I feel honored, energized, and excited.

Q What do you think U of M grads

bring to the national workforce?

A I grew up in Shoreview. I’m always

talking about how much I love the state. There’s so much talent in the Midwest. [I would tell Minnesota students] don’t lose touch with what that experience means, because your perspective growing up here is so different than a lot of people: This younger generation has lived through a racial justice movement whose origins are in the Twin Cities. Your advocacy and the way you show up in community because of what you experienced gives you a perspective that others don’t have.

GREGG AAMOT (M.A. ’02), is the

managing editor of Southwest News Media, which runs six weekly newspapers and a website in the southwest Twin Cities suburbs.

SVP, Group Brand Strategy Director at Colle McVoy.

JJ AKIN (M.A. ’22) is assistant to the

president and the Board of Trustees at Gustavus Adolphus College.

ALYSSA ARNOLD (B.S.B. ’23) is a

growth analyst on the Sam’s Club team at Proctor & Gamble.

BRIAN BAKST (B.A. ’98) is senior

TIM BLOTZ (M.A. ’11) received a

2023 regional Emmy for his work as a news anchor on FOX 9.

LAUREN BORCHART (B.A. ’22) is an account executive at Taylor.

SAMANTHA BORING (B.A. ’20) was

awarded first place in Large Market TV News Feature Category for the 2023 Station Awards for Excellence in Broadcasting by the Kansas Association of Broadcasters for her story “How a daily greeting led to a friendship in Goddard.”

JACK CALLAHAN (B.A. ’23) is a

business development coordinator at WONGDOODY.

EMMA DENZER (B.A. ’22) is assistant account executive at JT Mega.

MATTHEW DEPOINT (M.A. ’15) is

in a new role at Cargill supporting R&D and Innovation Global Communications.

HUBBARD SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATION 29

ALUMNI J.D. DUGGAN (B.A. ’20) covers

restaurants and retail at the Business Journal.

EMILY FITZPATRICK (B.A. ’89) joined

the board of the Madison Wisconsin-based Greywolf Foundation.

She also owns Emily Fitzpatrick Real Estate, based in Sarasota, Fla.

CHRISTINE FRUECHTE (B.I.S. ’89)

earned the American Advertising Federation Silver Medal Award, which recognizes men and women who have made outstanding contributions to advertising and who have been active in furthering the industry’s standards, creative excellence, and responsibility in areas of social concern.

JUSTIN GOETZ (B.A. ’23) was an

account manager for the 2024 Student Ad Summit.

JIM GUARNERA (B.A. ’74) is the owner of Bravissimo Recognition Solutions serving Foundations, Schools and Non-Profits.

MACY HARDER (B.A. ’22) is the managing editor of Custom Publications for Greenspring Media.

OLIVIA HULTGREN (B.A. ’20) is digital communications specialist at Goff Public.

EMILY JAMES (B.A. ’21) is associate product designer at Tempo by Clockwork.

TANNER JUREK (B.A. ’17) is senior digital marketing manager at FleishmanHillard.

AVA KIAN (B.A. ’21) received the 2023 Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists Young Journalist of the Year award.

ALYSSA KLINGELHUTZ (B.A. ’23) is a

travel trade marketing coordinator for TimeZoneOne, a destination marketing/advertising agency in Chicago.

30 MURPHY REPORTER ❙ Winter 2024

BRIANNA LAURSEN (B.A. ’23) is an

COLE RANZAU (B.A. ’12) is director of

LARISSA MARTIN (B.A. ’23) is creative

MICHAEL RIETMULDER (B.A. ’11) is the

assistant media planner with Carmichael Lynch.

services producer at KTTC NBC 10.

She was also a project manager for the 2024 Student Ad Summit.

MARISSA MAZZETTA (B.A. ’23) is a producer at WCCO.

OLIVIA MICHEL (B.A. ’23) is a digital marketing intern at Tunheim.

LARISSA MILLES (B.A. ’20) is a multimedia journalist at WOI-TV in Des Moines, Iowa.

MUNA MOHAMED (B.A. ’23) was a

board chair for the 2024 Student Ad Summit.

KATE NELSON (B.A. ’07) received

three 2023 National Native American Media Awards from the Indigenous Journalist Association during the organization’s conference in May. She received a first place award for “The Midwife On A Mission To Revitalize Indigenous Birthing Practices,” which was published in Romper, and second and third place awards in different categories for “Inside the Nation’s Only Abortion Fund For Native Americans,” which was published in ELLE.

TIM NELSON (B.A. ’09, M.A. ’19) is

senior manager, strategic communications at TomTom.

TYREL NELSON’S (B.A. ’03) memoir, Those Darn Stripes, was selected as a Gold Winner in the July 2023 Literary Titan Book Awards.

ANITA NGO (B.A. ’23) was nominated

for the Multicultural Advertising Intern Program’s Golden Gala Diamond of the Decades Award in the 20102023 category.

digital marketing at Strategic Education, Inc.

music writer at The Seattle Times and recently won a Society for Features Journalism Award for Features Beat Writing Portfolio, which recognizes three stories by the same writer on one features specialty topic, such as arts and entertainment, fashion, food, health, religion, technology or travel.

MARY ELLEN RITTER (B.A. ’23) is an

education reporter at The Daytona Beach News-Journal. Her local reporting has been picked up by USA Today and other national publications.

KAREN SCHULTZ (M.A. ’09) is development director for the Page Education Foundation.

JASON SPRENGER (B.A. ’02) is the

Midwest District Director on the Public Relations Society of America Board of Directors.

LUCKETT VANGUARD (B.A. ’23) is a strategic planner at FCB Chicago.

NOLA WINJE (B.A. ’23) is an account coordinator at JT Mega.

IN MEMORIAM

GERI JOSEPH (B.A. ’46) died on Oct. 14, 2023 at 100 years old. As an undergraduate, Joseph was one of the first women to be hired at the Minnesota Daily.

After graduation, she worked at the Star Tribune covering health, education and welfare, winning five American Newspaper Guild awards. She was a speechwriter during Hubert H. Humphrey’s mayoral campaign, and held offices within the DFL and DNC for a dozen years. In 1978, she was named the United States Ambassador to the Netherlands. She was a Senior Fellow at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs from 1984 until her retirement in 1994. Joseph received the Hubbard School Award for Excellence in 1985.

THANK YOU TO HUBBARD SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM & MASS COMMUNICATION DONORS 2023 PRESIDENT’S CLUB MEMBERS ($100,000+) $10 MILLION+ Hubbard Broadcasting, Inc., and the Hubbard Broadcasting Foundation

With gratitude, we would like to acknowledge the generosity of the many donors to the Hubbard School. The President’s Club includes donors who have contributed more than $100,000 to the School over a lifetime, and the Heritage Society includes those individuals and organizations that have pledged a future gift to the School. We are grateful to all our lifetime and 2023 donors, all listed on the following pages.

The strength of our School and evolving programs depends on your ongoing support.

LIFETIME DONORS

T. Dahl

$1 MILLION+

$50,000-$99,999

Wendy F. Horn

Elizabeth B.* and John* Cowles Sr.

3M Co./3M Foundation Inc

Otto A.* & Helen F.* Silha Don R.* & Carole J. Larson

$500,000-$999,999 Herbert Berridge Elliston Memorial Fund Raymond O.* & Doris B.* Mithun

Adath Jeshurun Congregation Keith H. Anderson* Kenneth G. Brown* Stan W. Carlson* The Century Council, Inc. Judith K. Conrad & James E. Stai Michael E. Hill & Barbara H. Bink Judith A. & Steven L. Kopperud*

Lynn M. Casey & Michael J. Thornton

Deborah M. Hudson & Rick S. Pallansch

Richard A.* & Barbara B. Chapman*

John S. & James L. Knight Foundation

Comcast Corp.

Gus L.* & Shirley G. Cooper*

Susan S. & Clayton Kaufman*

Ddb Needham Worldwide, Inc.

Jacqueline S.* & Joseph C. Kinderwater*

Elizabeth D. Edmonds*

Steven P. Krikava & Linda A. Singer

Bruce R. Gefvert

Mark R. Kriss D. J. Leary* & Linda L. Wilson

Fast Horse, Inc. Harvey M. & Gail D. Goldberg Willard A.* & Doris A. Greenleaf* Greenleaf Foundation

Star Tribune and Star Tribune Foundation

Leland T. Lynch & Terry T. Saario

Raymond J. Tarleton

Porter Creative Services Inc

Lester A.* & Lorraine K. Malkerson*

Jennifer A. & Jim L. Schweigert

Elena & Siegfred Mickelson*

Mark J. Heistad*

Joy Winkie Viola

Midwest Communications, Inc.

Henry J. Kaiser Family Fdn

Muriel L.* & Mark Wexler*

Sandra M. & C. R. Morris*

Miriam R. Hernandez

William Randolph Hearst Foundation

Michael L. & Betty A. Soffin

Mary J.* & Graham B. Hovey*

Solutran, Inc.

Todd T. & Karli Jo Hunt*

Star Tribune Media Co. LLC

Interpublic Group

Patrick J. Strother

Jerome Foundation

Brian E. Anderson*

Strother Communications Group

Vicki B. & David C. Cox

Helen V. Beggs*

Charles B. Sweningsen*

John & Mary R. Markle Foundation

Duluth News Tribune

John L. & Neota L. Bradley

Mabel L.* & Willard L. Thompson*

David D. Floren

Phyllis B. Conrad*

Tunheim Partners, Inc.

Freedom Forum

Ellen R. Costello*

Kris S. Wenker

Laurie M. & Joel R. Kramer

Cowles Media Co.

Carol E. Ladwig*

Hazel F. Dicken-Garcia*

$10,000-$24,999

Serge E. Logan*

John F. Dille

ACBL Charity Foundation Corp.

Ferne M. Noreen*

Michael A. Donner*

American Broadcasting Co., Inc

Chuck K. Porter

Eastern Enterprises, Inc.

Jane D.* & Bernard H. Ridder*

Thomas L. & Ann Friedman

Asian American Journalists Association of Minnesota

R. S. & Patricia W. Schuneman

Herman F. Haeberle*

Linda K. Berg

Vincent B. Shea*

Bette M. Hammel

Ann M. Brill

St. Paul Pioneer Press

Patricia J. Heikenen*

Lily T.* & Walter H. Brovald*

Jean W. Ward*

John T.* & Hazel H. Helgeson*

Jane Y. Burk

WCCO AM/TV-WLTE FM

Allan A. & Lois J. Hietala*

Robert W. & Virginia D. Carlson

William D. Wells*

Deborah L. Hopp & Christopher

Donna M.* & Leon C. Carr*

$100,000-$499,999 Michael H. Anderson Paul S. Brainerd CBS Corp/CBS Foundation, Inc China Times Cultural Foundation

$25,000-$49,999

William F.* & Patricia M. Greer*

John Wiley & Sons Inc KTCA/KTCI-Public T V Sam H. Kaufman* Beverly A. Kees* William H.* & Madoline D. Kelty* Land O’Lakes Inc. Foundation Howard P. & Roberta J. Liszt Scott D. Meyer Mithun Mary N. Mullaney* National Broadcasting Co., Inc. The New York Times Co. Foundation, Inc. NYT Capital, Inc. Janell M. Pepper

HUBBARD SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATION 31

(continued from page 31) Photo Marketing Association International Jorg A. & Angela M. Pierach Harold J. Roitenberg* Falsum V. Russell* S.C. Johnson Giving, Inc. Selwoc, Inc. Sigma Delta Chi Foundation Norma B.* & James A. Smutz* Victor N. Stein* Jim M. Sternberg & Marsha E. Sternberg-May* Albert R. Tims & Kathleen A. Hansen Daniel B. & Kathryn Wackman Weber Shandwick John W. Wheeler Dare L.* & William F. White* Milton P. Woodard* Thomas C. & Elizabeth A. Yuzer

HOW TO GIVE If you have comments, questions, corrections or would like to make your own gift, please contact Peter Rogza at the University of Minnesota College of Liberal arts Office of Institutional Advancement at 612624-2848 or rozga@umn.edu

HERITAGE SOCIETY

2023 DIRECTOR’S CIRCLE Thank you to these supporters who made a gift between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2023.

John L. and Neota Johnson Bradley

PARTNER LEVEL

James D. Catalano

John Adams & Mary J. Pitzer

BENEFACTOR LEVEL

Harold* and Phyllis* Conrad

Alliance for Trust in Media

Andrews McMeel Universal

Roy D. Conradi

Megan J. Amland

Julie J. Bartsch

Norma C. and John R.* Finnegan, Sr.

Natalie Amland

CP Charitable Fund

Martin R. & Diane S. Brandt

Paulette M. & Stephen Filing

Jonathan S. Bream

Brian R. Gabrial

Celarity Inc

Nancy C. Goodman

Elisia L. Cohen & Jeff VanCleave

John and Marilyn Shardlow

Melissa Cohen & Sheldon Silberman

Mall of America

Colle & McVoy Inc

Jonathan E. Miller & Ingrid A. Sanden

Sheila M. Gothmann Joan L. Halgren Deborah Hudson and Rick Pallansch Susan and Clayton* Kaufman Robert Koepcke Steven P. Krikava Ashley Larson Don R.* and Carole J. Larson Stephen F. and Bonnie T.* Litton

Helen W. Donovan & Holly Nixholm Thomas H. Dupont & Margaret A. Stopera

Neuger Communications Group Inc Patricia J. Reily

Lisa M. & Thomas F. Fouquette

Diane Siegel-Lund

Sally A. & Charles H. Rix

Lynne S. Goldetsky

Brad Madson

David B. & Lia Royle

Hubbard Broadcasting Inc

Carol L. Pine

John W. & Marilyn F. Shardlow

Tara K. & Wing Young Huie

Daniel and Katherine* Revsbeck

Christian J. & Peggy Trejbal

Robert L. Koepcke

Xcel Energy Foundation

KSTP - AM LLC

Thomas C. & Elizabeth A. Yuzer

Nancy L. Roberts Colleen M. Sauber Elizabeth P. Shippee Christine E. Spencer Karen and Joe Sullivan Mr. and Mrs.* Raymond J. Tarleto David J. and Linda A. Therkelsen

Carole J. Larson Leland T. Lynch & Terry T. Saario Mankato Area Foundation Jack & Terri McKeon Myrna L. Meadows Minnesota Vikings Football LLC David L. & Linda J. Mona Padilla Co

PATRON LEVEL Jacob J. Akin Daryl R. & Rodney Alexander Kwame Ampadu-Nyarkoh Antenna, a 24 Seven Company Douglas D. & Mary D. Armstrong Elizabeth A. Backdahl

Herbert A. Terry and Diane E. Wille

Charles K. & Margit G. Porter

Louis and Colleen Tschudy

Jon F. & Diana L. Scheid

Beehive Strategic Communication

Joy Winkie Viola

Sheldon I. Silberman & Melissa R. Cohen Silberman

Benevity Community Impact Fund

Jean Worrall Ward

Michael L. & Betty A. Soffin

Paula M. & Steven A. Bilitz

Ellen Wartella and Charles Whitney

Target Corporation

Amanda Birkhead

William D. Wells

Linda A. & David J. Therkelsen

Blackbaud Giving Fund

Louis A. & Colleen M. Tschudy

Timothy & Susan Blotz

Joy D. Viola

Kyle J. Bosch

Kristen S. Wenker

Steven C. Brandt & Lynda M. McDonnell

John W. Wheeler Tom and Liz Yuzer

Linda L. Wilson 32 MURPHY REPORTER ❙ Winter 2024

Kevin J. McCarthy

Donald F. Brod Carleton W. Brookins Marian & Loren L. Chamberlain Edward J. Cleary & Dana L. Moorhead Clockwork Active Media Systems Jennifer & Joe Cohen Frances F. Compton David & Joan L. Conners Conners Giving Fund Rina M. Cooper Kevin G. Coss Peter R. & Amy M. Demarest Gregory L. & Ofra F. Dose Lynn M. & Robert E. Drechsel Steven N. Dzubay Theresa A. Eagan David J. Eder & Jason Lue E Cleary & D Moorhead Giving Fund-Fid Char Thomas E. & Sonja A. Eveslage Fast Horse Inc

Jane E. Kirtley & Stephen J. Cribari

Samuel L. & Deborah M. Stern

Jessica S. Lee

Linda V. Kline

Ben B. & Peggy E. Underwood

Brittany Lemardy

W Minneapolis - The Foshay

Diane R. & Jeffrey H. Lovich

Jon Weber & Jean Laing-Weber

Joy E. & David G. McElroy

William Randolph Hearst Fdn

Allen D. Merry

Jodi L. Williamschen & Michael C. Dickens

Minnesota Timberwolves Basketball

Winnebago Industries

Joan O’Fallon

Ward W. Wixon

Susan S. Pastin

Marco Yzer

Pavek Museum

Amy J. Klobuchar & John D. Bessler Megan E. Kruse Marit Lee L. Kucera William F. & Mary M. Kuykendall Sandra J. Larson Philip M. & Frances D. Lewenstein Scott Libin Catherine A. Luther Eric J. Meester Philip C. Meyer Donna M. & Rand A. Middleton Cecilia H. Mische Steven A. & Valerie S. Morawetz Mucklestone Kruse Charitable Fund Rebekah H. Nagler & Adam B. Jeffers

FRIEND LEVEL Cynthia E. Adelson Evelyn H. Anderson Lynn C. & Daniel P. Barron Scott Bartholomew

Pearl TV Doug & Jane M. Pennington John A. Pribek Evelyn C. Raedler Pamela L. Ramsay John P. Richards

Dennis M. Behr

Noelle Rzeszutek

Roger W. Benjamin & Alison Stones

Debra R. & David R. Schuh Claire Segijn

Benjamin J. Bromley

David M. & Valerie M. Smith

CAF America

Cynthia L. Sowden

Anna E. Faust

Seth L. Normington & Alexandra J. Harkness

Matt Cikovic

Joanne Stellato

Richard A. Forschler & Kari Breen

Ari Conroy

Gregory C. Turosak

Anne M. Obst

Fox 9

Culver’s St. Anthony

Carol A. & Raymond L. Vickery

Joan E. Ostrin

Gene C. Frazer & Jackie D. Thompson

Andrew J. DiMeglio

Elizabeth M. Wegele

Mary B. & Joel C. Papa

Eileen M. Everett

Sarah M. Parsons & Dirk G. DeYoung

Elizabeth Fedor

Donna M. Weispfenning & Robert K. Groger

Dimitria T. Phill

Joan W. Frey

Katherine Friesz Watt & Jason Watt Darlene A. Gorrill Graduate Hotel Minneapolis Anne L. & Jon A. Greer James B. Gustafson Lillian P. Hall Jane H. Hardy HSJMC Alumni Board Mike & Pamela K. Jennings Mark A. & Jodi Jenson Harlan R. Johnson Rolf M. & Marcia L. Kemen Marilyn R. & Klaus J. Kemme Kick strategic creative agency

Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers Duane A. & Edith Rasmussen Barbara S. Reed

Fox Corporation Helen R. Friedlieb Andrew L. Garon

Rhona L. Williams London Tanya M. & Charles B. Wright *denotes deceased

Rise and Shine and Partners

Constance R. & Roger I. Grumdahl

Nancy L. Roberts

Elaine D. Hargrove

Conor Rzeszutek

Judy M. & Michael A. Hohmann

Tom Scheck

We made every effort

Andrew P. & Katherine K. Johnson

to ensure that this list

Karen E. Schultz & David Larson Lyall A. Schwarzkopf Securian Financial Ginger L. Sisco Sleep Number Corp Scott A. Stachowiak

Dean P. Joslin Sherri J. Katz Lara R. Kolberg Michael J. Kosik Jean M. Kucera Land O’Lakes Inc

NOTE:

is accurate and reflects contributions recorded between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2023.

REPORTER MURPHY

Hubbard School of Journalism & Mass Communication College of Liberal Arts University of Minnesota 111 Murphy Hall 206 Church St. SE Minneapolis, MN 55455

facebook.com/umnhsjmc twitter.com/umn_hsjmc instagram.com/umnhsjmc youtube.com/umnhsjmc U of MN Hubbard School of Journalism & Mass Communication Alumni

Northern Exposure Conference

April 12-14, 2024 Murphy Hall

Northern Exposure is an anything-but-the-same-old conference to talk photography, video and storytelling. For the last several years, photojournalists have shaped the way we receive news about the pandemic, unrest, social justice and more. It hasn’t always been easy, but it’s been important.

Gather to learn from each other and inspire one another.

For more information, early bird pricing and registration, visit

northernexposuremn.org