Instead of Convergence ...

A spanking new copy of Newspaper Research Journal arrived in today's mail and it includes a study about the c-word and how, instead of convergence, we're seeing something very different. The title and abstract give you a hint:

Web-centric Convergence Replaces Media Partnerships

This study of convergence journalism at TV news operations and newspapers in the top 200 markets found that cross-platform partnerships found in 2003 and 2005 had largely faded by 2011 to be replaced by a new model of web-centric convergence journalism or "Webvergence."

TV has been slower than newspapers to adopt a web-based presence of any significance, but of late TV is doing a better job of training folks with multimedia skills (which makes sense). Social media is also driving a lot of this, especially for TV, at least according to the longitudinal national data analyzed here.

Okay, why do I find this interesting? Because we're in the early stages of talking about a reshuffling of Grady College that, perhaps, will mean combining Journalism and what used to be called Broadcast News (it has some long name now with lots of poorly written modifiers, digital something-or-other). The point is, one way to "converge" the two programs is on a common platform. To me, that's web/mobile. We're very early in the process and I'm just one guy on a committee, so don't assume anything I suggest will matter, but in skimming this study it suggests the old c-word is dead. I agree. Indeed, I never felt it was alive in the first place.

  

Controlling J-Schools

How Eric Newton, j-school critic of the Knight Foundation, must envy China.

Here's the lede:

The Chinese Communist Party has decided to become directly involved in the management of the country's top journalism schools and strengthen the administration of those universities, it was learned Sunday from university and media sources.

It's gotta be killing him.

Voice

Can you say Medialization laryngoplasty with arytenoid adduction? I can.

Last March I lost my voice, we figured to a bout of laryngitis. That turned out to be thyroid cancer that had pushed against the nerve that controls my left vocal cord. Eventually I had the thyroid removed, cancer blasted, but they also had to remove the nerve. That left me with no voice.

I just got home moments ago from the long procedure listed above. By the way, that's a fancy way of saying they sewed my dead vocal cord closed and implanted Gor-Tex to hold it there.,

I have swelling. I have soreness. But dammit, I have a voice

Assessing the Assessors: J-School Standards

Most academic fields go through some kind accreditation. Journalism is no different. Schools don't have to be accredited, of course. It's optional, but most (but certainly not all) of the top j-school programs are accredited through ACEJMC.

An article in the latest Journalism and Mass Communication Educator, just in my mailbox today, gives those assessed a chance to assess the assessors. And yes, I had great fun writing that sentence. You can read the abstract here to get the gist of the survey of administrators asking them to critique the infamous nine standards for accreditation.

Before we go any further, let's lay out those nine standards. It's hard to argue with many of them. I'll lay them out below and provide simplified results from the article.

	Standard	% Good As Is
1	Mission, Governance, and Admin	86.2
2	Curriculum & Instruction	32.3
3	Diversity and Inclusiveness	47.7
4	Full-time & Part-Time Faculty	73.0
5	Scholarship & Pro Activity	67.7
6	Student Services	95.3
7	Resources, Facilities, & Equipment	82.8
8	Professional and Public Service	78.1
9	Assessment of Learning Outcomes	50.8

As you can see above, folks are not keen about Curriculum. Forty percent say it needs "major changes" (not in table). Also down on the list is assessment of learning outcomes (let's face it, this sucks to make work) and diversity (scary that it's so low). The curriculum complaint is mainly about the liberal arts requirement, but in general people find this standard to work against a more nimble, exploratory curriculum. As the authors note, "attempting to develop a one-size-fits-all academic standard is complex." When that happens, no one is truly happy.

Media Use and Perceptions of Science

It's no surprise that, in some instances, media use can moderate the public's perceptions of science, as was found in a new paper published in the latest issue of the Journal of Media and Religion. This is one of those odd pieces of research I want to break down a bit. First, here's an interesting finding:

A post-hoc inspection of the tables revealed that, in several cases, the introduction of media use as an independent factor rendered significant relationships between religion and views of science insignificant

I'm a bit surprised that media use toppled the predictive power of religiosity. In other words, media use explains the same variance as religiosity and explains it better. In even more other words, the negatively relationship between religious activities and what one thinks of science sometimes disappears when considering media use.

I mentioned above this is an odd study. It uses GSS data, which is terrific, but provides a long set of tables with very simple ANOVAs of "religious activity" and various media variables. Table 12, for example, is religious activity and Internet use. We get in the table a Mean Square -- unusual -- to the thousandth, as well as the F-score and p level (again, to the thousandth, unnecessary false precision). I'll fuss at the editor sometime about this. In full disclosure, I'm on the journal's Editorial Board but I don't believe I reviewed this manuscript, or if I did the authors did nothing I suggested. I read a lot of stuff for a lot of journals.

Anyway, the analysis strategy here should have been, given the survey data, an analysis of covariance to control for various socio-demographic factors that might better explain the results. And some of the results are just curious, such as an F-score of 1.021 (1.0 is fine) but significant at the .033 level. Here's what's more wrong. The authors report the p level of .033 (or others) and add asterisks for below to tell us -- shockingly -- that .033 is less than .05.

C'mon guys.

I'm being picky, I know, but the jillion or so hypotheses are without any real foundation in the literature. They almost seem written post-hoc, after the analyses. I've spent years doing this stuff and predicting interaction effects is tricky and, often, theoretically messy. And how can it be a hypothesis to predict a significant interaction without predicting the direction of the relationship? Additive? Moderating influence?

This is a paper with potential, but it unravels on a number of fronts. That said, there's something to be learned here and there's a reason it was published. I just wish there'd been more of a revise and resubmit.









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Fox & CNN

This morning I turned on CNN and it was covering, obviously, the Mandela memorial. I flipped to Fox and it was covering, in some ways obviously, Obamacare. That got me thinking, I wonder what would happen if I quickly compared web sites.

Below, the results of a word cloud from each org's site this morning. I'm only now getting to this after a long meeting. Check out the differences below.

What People Know About ... Auto Dashboard Lights?

In my never-ending mission to uncover the odd an downright screwy when it comes to what people know, I bring you this little gem to brighten up your Friday. People don't know much about those little lights in their cars. No kidding. Read it here.Or just follow me below. Here's the first couple of grafs:

When your car's dashboard lights start glowing, they're trying to tell you something, but many drivers aren't getting the message.

Drivers are most likely to be ignorant of what tire pressure, brake system and electrical warning lights mean, according to a new Insurance.com survey.  Almost 20 percent are unaware of what the low-fuel and temperature icons signify, results show.

Insurance.com commissioned a survey of 2,000 drivers, asking them to match the correct definition to 10 common warning light icons.

Lemme first say this is a cool idea for a survey. If you look at the percentages of who could not correctly identify a light, the worst was this one:

Do you know it? Go to the story to find out, but half had no clue, so don't feel too bad if you're also ... clueless.

The one most people know? To the left. It's easy and you have to wonder how the hell 7 percent could get it wrong. Kinda obvious, eh?


No surprise that men reported themselves to be more confident than women.