I begin this President’s Corner by sharing some difficult news. Traci Bailey, BEA’s office manager who worked on BEA membership and convention registration, and answered email upon email, is no longer with BEA.  Due to financial implications caused from COVID-19, the BEA Board and staff have decided that reorganizing the workload is beneficial to BEA’s future. Please join me in thanking Traci for her 15 years of service to BEA and the friendship many of us had with her. We wish her well in her future endeavors. JD Boyle will be handling membership for now, and BEA Executive Director Heather Birks and the BEA Board will be working on ways to redistribute the work done by the staff.

In this President’s Corner, I want to start something I will carry through for all the coming year: recognition of some of our members. An important benefit of doing this is to remind us it’s the individual members who make BEA great. I’ll start with recognizing Kim Fox for her leadership on the BEA Board in setting up a special Pop-Up session BEA hosted online last week: Racial Injustice: A Necessary Conversation. Read More…

Welcome to BEA’s latest endeavor “BEA Pop-Ups.”  BEA Pop-Ups are a series of seminars and events, typically one-hour in length, to help members navigate the uncertainties in the changing academic world.  Visit the BEA Pop-Up page for more information and a schedule of upcoming seminars. Learn More…

The Leibner Cooper Grant for Creative Productions on the History of Media has been awarded to Francesca Soans, University of Northern Iowa for her latest project, The History of KBBG.Francesca Soans is an Associate Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Northern Iowa. Her last film Sons of Jacob Synagogue, a recording of the stories of the Jewish community in Waterloo, won the Loren Horton Community History Award from the State Historical Society of Iowa (SHSI) and gained national recognition by winning a Silver Remi at the Worldfest-Houston International Film Festival. Read More…

The 2020 BEA Textbook Award has been awarded to Yumi Wilson, Gina Baleria & Grace Provenzano for Writing & Reporting the News for the 21st Century: The Speed at Which We Travel (Cognella, 2019).In Writing & Reporting the News for the 21st Century, the authors take an innovative approach to teaching the fast-paced world of digital journalism. The text encourages students to embrace technology and social media while holding true to the ethical and professional standards of journalists. Read More…

This is a difficult President’s Corner to write. First, I fully expected to now be past-president. Second, it can be difficult to explain a complex issue in just a few paragraphs. I do, however, know it’s important to add some context to the message sent out from the Board of Directors on Friday. Our discussion began around a recognition that it didn’t make sense to move forward like everything was normal while the world around us was pausing. However, I can say without a doubt that if by some chance the abnormal social functions remain or return, there would be no effort to allow this freeze to go beyond the current year.

I want to note that I did not initiate the action to freeze Board positions and pause elections for one year. The suggestion to do so came from the Executive Committee and was supported by the Executive Director. When asked if I would be willing to continue to serve, I said I would. The Executive Committee discussed the advantages and disadvantages to the organization and deliberated at length about whether or not the action was necessary. Read More…

The 2020 BEA Book Award has been awarded to Philip M. Napoli, Duke University, for his latest book Social Media and the Public Interest: Media Regulation in the Disinformation Age (Columbia University Press, 2019). Philip M. Napoli (Ph.D., Northwestern University) is the James R. Shepley Professor of Public Policy in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University and a Faculty Affiliate with the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy. Professor Napoli’s research focuses on media institutions and policy. He is the author of over 50 journal articles and several books including: Foundations of Communications Policy: Principles and Process in the Regulation of Electronic Media (Hampton Press, 2001); Audience Economics: Media Institutions and the Audience Marketplace (Columbia University Press, 2003); Audience Evolution: New Technologies and the Transformation of Media Audiences (Columbia University Press, 2011). Read More…