I’m excited to launch this blog today and announce a variety of presentations and research activity this summer.
May 25-26, New York: I’ll teach at the Dow Jones News Fund Business Reporting training session for interns at New York University with Will Sutton, a News Fund director and a professor at Grambling State University. Follow us at #djnfBiz15
https://www.newsfund.org/uploads/2015interns503.htm
June 13, Graduate Liberal Studies Symposium 2015 – Stockton University, Galloway, N.J.: I’ll present a paper, “Ricoeur, Collective Memory and Journalism.”
Abstract: Paul Ricoeur’s Memory, History and Forgetting (2004) explores the origins of collective memory and its perils, a project that is vital to understanding the crisis in contemporary journalism, particularly business journalism. With few exceptions, the business press failed to explore some of the fundamental assumptions in the economy and business world that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis. What explains this failure? Some press critics assert journalists are captive to a type of group-think, or “conventional wisdom,” which artificially limits the types of stories they pursue. Ricoeur provides a theoretical framework to help understand the newsroom dynamic, one that suggests institutional memory and professional practice are shaped by the sociology of the newsroom and the culture at large.
August 8, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications, San Francisco. I will present my paper, “A Strong Sense of Outrage, Stan Strachan and the National Thrift News,” at the national Aejmc conference. This paper won first place, history division, for Top Paper Competition. I will present at the 5:15 p.m. panel, Top Research Papers.
During the summer, I will conduct research on my dissertation, supported by a University of Maryland Graduate School Summer Research Grant and a Professor Thomas J. Aylward Scholarship from the UMD Philip Merrill College of Journalism.
Stay tuned to this space as I post new papers, presentations and ideas throughout the summer. As always, email me at robwells@umd.edu or follow my Twitter feed @rwells1961
Thanks, Rob
Rob