Negotiating the Financial Aid Maze

Our group is made up of Brittany Ervin, Christina Gulla, and Whit Martin-Whitaker. The proposed media project will be a web site that will provide information on how college students and prospective college students can maximize their potential for financial aid (scholarships, grants, etc.).

This topic will be presented from information gathered by Whit during the two years before and four years of his daughter's (undergraduate) college education. It will borrow from an informative talk Whit gives (as a public service, free of charge) and speaks from experience: By the time Whit's daughter graduated with her 4-year degree, 84% of it (almost $51,000!) was paid for by grants and scholarships - and the total cost to her parents was a mere $2,800. Best of all, the strategy is simple and free - and employs good manners, as well!

Christina and Brittany will be providing b-roll footage, iMovie editing, and Flash work. Whit will provide content and links. All team members will be coding (in and out of Dreamweaver) and will collaborate for a professional, reusable product with broad appeal and applicability.

The best of Wurst.

So this group has Jordan Lloyd and Veronica... oh, Veronica. You know what's coming... another Asian-themed project! Pictured above are some of my Japanese friends who are leaving back for Japan in December. I thought it would be cool to coerce Jordan into documenting something about their stay here (^-^)b

Last spring, Texas State's Intensive English (TSIE) program for incoming international students was in jeopardy. The university was about to do away with the program; however, the student body spoke up about the issue and plans were changed. The President of the university issued a statement saying he would assign a task force to look into the matter. Our project will document the students who attend Texas State and benefit from the TSIE.

PICKLEBALL!!! "Keeping Austin's Sport Weird"

Get ready and lets learn about Pickleball! I love new obscure sports. Being a recreation graduate student, I was excited to have a chance to use my new skills, learned from my Mass Communication class, that work with my field and interests. Doug Seliger and I are going to do our multimedia reporting on the new sport of Pickleball.

I know the name Pickleball sounds funny. To keep the story short Pickleball is a sport crossed between tennis and pingpong. It is played on a 1/4^th the size playing area of Tennis a court and played with large paddles. This inclusive sport allows most people to be ability to play. Currently this sport is growing in senior population, middle schools, and at camps all across America.

The United States of America Pickleball Association (USAPA) is trying to grow this sport by offering grants for awareness and to start new places to play. I recently received a grant for this sport to help bring this sport to Austin. This report will be a great way to promote and educate people in the City of Austin on this great sport. Let’s keep Austin’s sports weird!

Animal Love in Austin

For our final project Monique Ramos and I are planning to create a website on pet adoption in Austin. We'd like to show how different Austinites interact with their adopted pets and uncover their stories on how they went about the adoption process and the reasons why they decided to go this route. Through this website we hope to reveal the strong interactions between animals and people.

We'd also like to capture the various pets up for adoption at the Austin Humane Society and the various ways the organization promotes it services.


Lastly, we'd like to include resources for different vet clinics in town, dog training, animal day care, etc.

We are looking forward to sharing this site!

Sights and Sounds of Christmas 2010

Every year, the city of San Marcos hosts a weekend-long event for adults and children of all ages in the spirit of Christmas. The first weekend of December is devoted to Sights and Sounds of Christmas in San Marcos, Texas in San Marcos Plaza Park. For Ryan and my final project, we will discuss this year's and past Sights and Sounds in detail. There is a website: sights-n-sounds.org, for the annual event, but we plan to discuss it further and go more in depth with the event. With the Christmas season at our fingertips, this event truly kicks it off in San Marcos like none other. It will be fun to attend for the sixth year in a row but more in depth.

For the love of Cupcakes!

Cute and creative cupcakes are popping up EVERYWHERE lately! It's like there is a phenomenon of cupcakes out there. So, for our final project Julie Ruff and myself have decided to create a site about the hype of cupcakes and different shops serving these cupcakes around Austin. We want to talk with different people working at these shops and also consumers of these delicious treats.

It will be interesting to find out the cupcake making and decorating process.

We also plan to take several pictures of the different cupcakes themselves and the different shops caring this delicious treats. We are going to try and catch people digging into these delicious treats also. We hope to find out more about these treats and why everyone is loving them so much! :)

Trailer Food Deliciousness

For our final project, Nicole Martinez and I decided to create a site that highlights the joys of trailer food in Austin. We were both intrigued by the subject and decided it would be a great opportunity to go more in depth into the world of trailer food. Our first search returned hundreds of trailer food locations. What will set our site apart from other food review blogs is that we will interview the owners, talk about their ingredients, their rise to fame, and basically go more in depth than just pictures and a brief description. We will also try to get their full menu so that someone going to our site will see what they have to offer before going . We're very excited to go deep into the world of trailer food! It's not only going to be a fun project to do but also delicious!!

Location Based Services - Social Media for the Future

Location Based Services (LBS) are quickly growing in popularity. The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life project recently reported that 4% of online adults use a location based services such as Foursquare or Gowalla. LBS allows users to share their location with friends and to find others who are nearby.

Texas State Mass Communication Week panel “Trends in Location-Based Social Networking” addressed current and future uses of LBS. The panel featured Jon Carroll, Gowalla founder; Aaron Strout of social media company Powered; Simon Salt of Incslingers; and Tony Avila, owner of One Taco.

Salt started off by discussing the basic purpose of LBS, networking. Asking the question “who might be worth connecting with [though these services]?” is a great starting point, he said. Carrol added on, describing the current social media model. He described the model as a two-way communication form based on incoming and outgoing messages--think Facebook status updates and comments or tweets, retweets and replys. He then went on to describe what LBS Gowalla has added to that model. Carrol described that by adding location, Gowalla brings an additional dimention to social media and adds more intrest.

Without context, he added, location alone would not be intresting, and vice-versa. For example, you could simply update your twitter status to say, “On a picnic with friends,” but on Gowalla you could make the same update would with two additional pieces of information-your exact location and who is with or near you. So your original status “On a picnic of with friends” becomes “On a picnic with friends” - at Mt. Bonnell with Sarge Smith. Plus, someone looking at this information will know if any of their friends are in the same location or have visited it recently.

The panel then went on to talk about how businesses can benefit from LBS. Avila, owner of One Taco, shared a story about his personal experience with LBS. During SXSW 2010, One Taco partnered with Gowalla on an experimental marketing project. A virtual good was created in the form of a taco and several were distributed throughout Austin. During the festival, Gowalla users who “found” a virtual taco could come to One Taco to redeem their virtual good for a real taco. According to Avila, this had several results. First, it brought in new customers in the form of people redeeming their virtual taco. Second, it increased sales; for every person brought in by Gowalla, Tony sold about 12 tacos to their friends. Finally, it created a buzz and helped build awareness. People were excited by this idea and were sharing the news with friends not only in passing but on their blogs and social networks. In time, more popular blogs started hearing about One Taco and even people began to pay attention. All of this because of one virtual good! For me, this story really solidified the idea of LBS as a free and powerful marketing tool.

I found this to panel on up-and-coming location-based social media tool to be informative and exciting. It inspired me to use LBS more frequently and encourage my friends and family who own businesses to take advantage of the powerful tools at their disposal. LBS has benefits for individuals, consumers and businesses of all sizes and is helping these groups connect on a more meaningful level then ever before.

MC Week 2010

Going Digital: Changes in the Advertising and PR Industry,

3:30-4:45pm, OM 320

Brad Mays, Mike Cearley, Miker Stovall, Fleishman-Hillard Digital

This panel was made up of all Texas State Alumni. The point of this panel was to talk about how the industry is changing and becoming more like “Jackalope.” The panel talks about how clients are expecting more from agencies, and want a “one stop shop” for all their marketing needs.

The panel stresses the importance of building relationships over everything else. They say that it is important for brands to build relationships with consumers, and that new media is the way to reach them. An important point is that most clients don’t know what they want. The goal is to work together to drive brands, and find out how to tell the story of the brands.

Be Entertaining. Be Useful. or Be Ignored.

They also stressed the point that you are communicator and your job is to be a storyteller, and now new media gives you a place to stories.

A great example used in the presentation was their “Plug in on Chevy” campaign they put together for SXSW. They used all new media tactics to drive the brand and create recognition. By developing a Chevy Gowalla program they placed Chevy as an innovative brand in the market and appealed to a whole new audience. They also gave people Chevy cars and documented their road trips to Austin. This created a lot of buzz for the brand was relatively cheap for the amount of people they were reaching. A great tip given by the panel was to understand how people want to be communicated to in an environment and try to reach them in that way.

What’s Next?

Understand what’s next in new technologies and how people use them. Another piece of advice was to not have the same solution for every problem. Each client needs a tailored new media plan. Its about building context for people to build relationships and the rest will take off on its own.

Social Graces: Understanding and communicating with clients, co-workers, audiences and the media, 9:30-10:50am, Hines 204

David Wyatt & Lauren Tuttle, WyattBrand; Nick Weynand, Trademark Media

The purpose of this panel was how to use platforms appropriately, and how to understand and communicate with different audiences. The speakers gave a lot of great advice on how to manage different clients and their expectations. The first tip given by Lauren was to understand how to get info to clients. She says that being able to read people is and important skill the masters from the beginning because different people are comfortable with different channels of communication i.e. phone calls, text messages, email etc. You may not be able to communicate effectively with all clients the same way.

Another topic discussed in the panel was the importance of identifying the goals of the project. The speakers suggested identifying the goals of the project from the beginning and to pinpoint the larger goal the client wants to accomplish. The goal is not just to have a ton of followers on facebook, or visits to the website, there has to be more meaning. An important tip given by Lauren is to “Remember that you are dealing with people that have a completely different expertise than you do, and they may have different expectations and/or goals for the project that you know are not possible.” She strongly stressed the importance of identifying goals from beginning and to communicate why certain goals may or may not be possible. Another important tip is to separate personal feeling from goals, just because you may not like something doesn’t mean that the client dislikes it as well. Most importantly the panel suggests finding solutions to problems- do not just put brands through the same process and expect to see results every time. If you can’t meet expectations then you are not a good fit for the client.

Tips from panel:

Most important quality- being able to think strategically and handle issues the come up

Bringing laptops to meeting- still think its kind of weird, some clients are old fashioned and you can’t go wrong with pen and paper.

Job-hunting tips- don’t txt or tweet in interview; give interviewer your respect

Texting- more of social thing, starting to see rules changing but still think it is weird to text about business issues.

Calling on weekends- Depends on company culture and how important the clients is to you

Research- different clients have different audiences and you are constantly having to research different media outlets, communicates, exciting about agency environment, always something new, have to get into their world; becoming an expert in whatever comes up.

Mass Comm Week Events

Mass Comm week featured a great number of panels that I found interesting yet I was only able to make it to one event in person. Thankfully, other panels were broadcast online and that allowed me to watch them without leaving the comfort of my apartment.

The panel that I watched online was the panel over the Trends in Location-Based Social Networking was very informative as well as enlightening. I enjoyed the guys talking about how they came up with Gowalla and how they came up with the idea of location based services. I thought their personal stories were pretty funny and it was very easy for me to connect with them and feel like I knew them from somewhere.

The panel that I was able to attend was The Voice of the Spurs with Bill Schoening. I have always enjoyed sports broadcasting and that was the field that I originally came to Texas State pursuing. Of course, things have now changed and I am now pushing to become a Sports Info Director. Bill offered a lot of insight into how difficult it is out there to land a job and what I found interesting was his advice to start off in a small market and then work your way up the ladder to get to where you want to be. He used his journey through the ladder as a guidance for those who wanted to follow in his footsteps. He had some pretty interesting stories as well and I think my favorite story was the fact that he knew Wilt Chamberlain and he grew up with Kobe Bryant's father.

Mass Comm Week

I got to go to the first session of the week, Starting a New and Sustainable Publication. There were three panelists from three different publications, and all three had some good things to say about print and their small publications. They didn't really talk much about how they utilized social media or how they worked with it, but they did talk about it a little bit when somebody posed the question in the audience. They talked about how each of their publications was small but very niche oriented. They were all focusing on very specific audiences that they felt the city of Austin really needed. That's how they make it, by focusing in on one specific target market. And it works. Each publication is surviving but running on quite a small staff. And many of the editors and photographers they use are freelance, which I thought was interesting. They don't have in-house staff to do any of that kind of stuff. Prospective interns and employees were told to have a knowledgeable background in social media as well as video production and editing, photography and creative suite programs. It wasn't a surprise to hear that, but I thought they were never going to talk about social media. I was glad when they did.
Overall, a pretty good panel.

Mass Communication Week 2010

Ever since my first Mass Communication Week at Texas State, I look forward to it every year. The panel discussion that I enjoyed most was “Some Assembly Required.” Thom Singer is a very inspirational speaker and I enjoyed his discussion a lot. "Position yourself as the Grande non-fat vanilla latte in your job," Singer says. Companies receive so many resumes at one time and it is essential that you find a way to separate yourself and stand out. One quote I thought was very true and thought provoking was, “all opportunities in life, come from people.” He explained why networking is important and how to create a personal brand. You need to “buy a little piece of real estate on people’s brains.” This means you need to make an impression on people and stand out from the masses. He explains that it is also important to make a difference and do something for a higher purpose other than money.

Singer discussed how the definition of “knowing” someone has changed with the emergence of social media. In the past, knowing someone meant you had a personal relationship with that person in real life. Today, people “know” other people by just following them on Twitter or Facebook. It is important that people see that you are an expert at what you do. If they notice what you do, you remain fresh on their mind and become the person they depend on for whatever it may be.

I found this panel relevant to my life in many ways but ultimately I was able to relate to the idea the social media changing the way we “know people” and how important it is to stand out amongst the crowd. There are so many people applying for all kinds of jobs right now and because I am a graduate student, I feel as though I have a leg up on competitors. This can be a tricky assumption though because I need to remember that just because I’m in graduate school, does not mean I am any more qualified for any particular job. I need to show my potential in all forms of social media.

Thom Singer did a great job in really keeping the attention of the audience. This was a very relevant panel, which was enjoyed by many. He had a lot of great insights.

Some Assembly Required is his book series and I am going to buy his real estate book as soon as possible. I could go on forever about this panel discussion by Thom Singer, but I am trying to make this short and sweet since it is a blog. I strongly recommend taking a look at the book series Some Assembly Required.

Trends in Location-Based Social Networking was another panel discussion that I watched online because I was not able to attend it live. These guys did a great job of really explaining the ins and outs of location-based applications. It gave me a deeper insight into how they work and what the purpose is. I enjoyed this panel a lot because it was neat to hear, in detail, the inner workings and opinions on this media outlet.

Mass Communication Week at Texas State is unlike any other and I’m so thankful to have the opportunity to learn from the many experts in the area. I will continue to attend Mass Communication Week at Texas State for as long as I can. What a great week!

Mass Comm Week 2010

Mass Communications Week (Mass Comm Week) at Texas State University is the perfect way for students to really see how the Mass Communication field actually works from real professionals from all over. This year, Mass Comm Week was during the week from Monday, October 25 through Friday, October 29, 2010. There were topics on everything from why one should go to grad school to social media and agency professionals to broadcast media professionals describing their personal experiences.

This year I was able to attend a few events. I can't really label a favorite, but wanting to go into an agency setting, I was very please with Brent Ladd from GSD&M. He is a Creative Director and Senior VP for GSD&M, one of the most popular agencies in this area, located in downtown Austin. He's been working with GSD&M for about 21 years, so he really knows the inns and outs of the agency. For a class project, I actually had to interview an account planner from GSD&M, and it was fun seeing the similarities in his presentation with the accounts from the man I interviewed. Some of the main points I took away from his presentation were: to go to a store and play with the product you're trying to sell, it's our job to play; be engaged and super competitive; if you don't have an idea, your work doesn't mean anything; have a well-rounded knowledge; and thank-yous are always nice. Which reminds me of a few thank you cards I need to send out.

I also went to see Jake Frick from Lopez Negrete in Houston. Interestingly enough, he graduated from Texas State the same semester as I. Now he is working in Houston as an Account Coordinator, working mainly on Wal-Mart right now. Lopez Negrete takes care of the Spanish-language advertising for their clients. He showed some commercial examples, and they were really good. His presentation was a little less informative to me because his presentation was focus primarily on those who aren't too sure what area in advertising or even if advertising is where they want to do. Obviously, being in grad school for mass communications, this is what I want to do, so I learned nothing new about an advertising agency. He did show us a cool video about social media, though, called Socialnomics. This video outlines a bunch of facts about social media that are totally awesome and make you think.

Finally, and actually the first presentation I went to was called Social Graces: Understanding and communicating with clients, co-workers, audiences and the media, with Nick Weynand from Trademark Media, and David Wyatt and Lauren Tuttle from Wyatt Brand. Lauren is also a Texas State Alum. They started off by showing a video also about social media. It's a news spoof in Dallas. Both videos are great. One of the things about this presentation that I found most interesting is that they encouraged us to tweet them our questions rather than ask them out loud at the end of the presentation. They were really informative on the topics they talked about and a couple of things I took away from their presentation were: don't text a potential employer about how an interview went (this really happened to one of them after an interview); sometimes, old-fashioned phone calls work best; communication format really depends on who you're communicating with, so be flexible; your clients will treat them how you let them treat you, for example, if you answer e-mails or phone calls during the weekend, they will assume it is OK all the time; texting is actually becoming a lot more popular in agency-client relationships; and as Mr. Weynand pointed out - "Don't be stupid."

I am very glad I was able to attend these presentations, and maybe sometime in the future if I work for a nearby agency, I will be leading one of these panels.

John Kelso: "Not a fan of Hitler"

I went and saw John Kelso's presentation during Mass Comm Week. As a humor columnist and writer for the Statesman for 35 years, Kelso had a lot to say about writing for the paper, and a lot of insight about the print media industry.

His advice about writing a column was pretty straightforward; keep up with current events, try to keep your articles locally relevant if possible, try not to get upset when an editor messes with your stuff, keep your writing clear and concise--good advice for the many freshmen and high schoolers present, but nothing I hadn't really heard before.

I found his musings on the future of print media a bit more interesting. It seems professionals and analysts have been predicting the death of print media for years, and Kelso is no exception. He believes columnists like himself will get the axe first as revenue declines, and other staff members' roles will be consolidated--even now, he says he's got to get the print column out as well as keeping up with the online version. Other writers update their Twitter accounts and link to tons of other sources online--print media is becoming more demanding in ways that have nothing to do with print.  Even the New York Times, he believes, will abandon its print edition altogether in a few years' time.

He also doesn't think pay-as-you-read models being adopted by some online news sites will last, simply because you can probably find whatever they've got to say for free at another site.

All in all, there wasn't very much useful technical information for me, but Kelso's session was entertaining nonetheless.

Mass Comm Week

The evolution of the communications industry into the digital world seemed to be a major theme of Mass Comm week and this was even reflected in the live streamed sessions, which I was extremely thankful for.

I watched a slew of live streamed sessions and found the Fleishman-Hillard's session on "Going Digital: Changes in the Advertising and PR Industry" to be extremely interesting. Providing PR support for a Fortune 500 company, the topic of storytelling in a digital era definitely hit home. As the panelists described, digital media has basically changed the entire communications industry and now the public relations, advertising and marketing disciplines are all connected and overlap. Just as public relations discipline focuses on the reputation of a brand and the advertising discipline focuses on the branding of the brand, social media is also becoming another branding component. In the end, as the FH's panelists spelled out and I have seen on a daily basis, it is all about building relationships, regardless of communications channel employed.

The FH panelists provided some interesting examples of the digital work they have done, especially with the Chevy brand. Through use of traditional and social media communication FH was able to successfully tell the Chevy story through the SXSW experience and definitely lived up to their mantra of "Be interesting, be useful or be ignored".


Another live streamed session I found of interest was Rich Oppel's discussion on "Dealing with the Media". As a veteran journalist and former editor of the Austin American-Statesman who has now gone to the so-called "dark side" of PR with Public Strategies, Rich definitely had some great perspective on how the two disciplines intertwine in the evolving communications industry. Whether you are a journalist or public relations professional, Rich is correct in that the ultimate expectation and goal is to make sure the truth is told. So many times PR practitioners get a bad rap of being spinsters and never giving all the facts. I like Rich pride myself in making sure all situations are represented honestly and fairly.

Finally, I thought the session on "Social Graces: Understanding and communicating with clients, co-workers, audiences and the media" provided some good tips and perspective as well. The reps of Wayatt Brand and Trademark Media spelled out some necessary client protocol that every communications professional should practice. I think the tip of utmost importance is setting clear expectations with clients before a project is started to make sure everyone is on the same page, marching in the same direction and going after the same goal. At the end of the day as a communications professional it is our job to find a solution to the client's problem and setting expectations upfront can save you in the long run. Nothing is better than surpassing the set expectations and receiving extra kudos from your clients.

Commercial media: Problems and solutions

The Texas Tribune turns 1 today, and I've been very interested in what they're doing and curious about where they're headed. It's pretty clear the mainstream commercial media system has failed and continues to fail us in a lot of ways, and I'm happy to see the Tribune going at it in a different way with an ideology based on the public good.

"We have to make public policy accessible and understandable to the average person," Tribune CEO and editor-in-chief Evan smith said during a Mass Comm Week session called "Why We Need Public-Supported Media."

The Tribune is a web-only product, but they share their content with major newspapers, including the Austin American-Statesman, the San Antonio Express-News and the Dallas Morning News. And it's completely free. Smith said collaboration is the key to survival in a free content distribution model.

The upcoming legislative session will be the first for the Tribune, and Smith said they have big plans, including live-streaming the House and Senate with searchable transcripts to follow. He said people will also be able to easily follow specific bills.

Beyond that, the questions during the session were mostly superficial. However, the student questions were pretty well-informed, and I wish they would have had more time to ask Smith what he really thinks of the current media climate.

Dr. Robert Jensen, a professor at The University of Texas at Austin who also spoke during Mass Comm Week, called the Texas Tribune an "interesting experiment" whose content doesn't look too different from what the mainstream commercial media produces. However, he said they have a great team of reporters and the potential to offer a different kind of journalism. But they need to step outside the system in order to critique it.


Jensen during his session, The Impact of Media Conglomeration on Global Issues.

Jensen said a possible solution to the failings of the current media system is diversification. There will always be commercial media, he said, but we need other types of journalism that aren't maximizing profit at the cost of the public interest.

"In a new system, I have some hope that journalism could do better," he said, though defining that new system will be difficult. Government grants, foundations and public support were discussed during the session.

Like many other media critiques (Bagdikian and McChesney come to mind), Jensen said journalism is a product but it's not like selling shoes.

"Journalism makes a claim to a special status in a democratic society," he said.

It is traditionally an independent and critical source of information, but commercial journalism hasn't provided the information citizens need, Jensen said, and that is one reason for the current crisis.

But in times of crisis, there is opportunity to attack the failures of the business and professional models of journalism. Jensen said it's important to remember that "even when journalism was riding high, there was a crisis in journalism." He used the mainstream media's long-held hostility toward the labor movement as an example. Working within a for-profit system doesn't allow journalists to critique it.

One of the most recent failures of the news media, Jensen and others have said, is the coverage of the Iraq invasion.

"The March 2003 invasion of Iraq was unlawful. It was illegal," he said. Without being hyperbolic, Jensen said the leaders who planned and executed the invasion are war criminals and should be tried in The Hague. Yet the mainstream media hardly ever discussed or explored this, he said.

"It's a failure not of individual journalists, but of the system."

Watch an interview with Jensen during Mass Comm Week.

After his session, Jensen played a documentary that he produced about friend and lifelong activist Abe Osheroff. Only about a dozen students stuck around to watch "Abe Osheroff: One Foot in the Grave, the Other Still Dancing."



It was a really moving film and I'm glad I stayed. Here are some Abe quotes from the movie that stuck with me:

"The courageous thing to do is to look into yourself and find what is most authentic and then act on it."

"Authenticity is finding a connection between what you think and what you say and do."

"This empire is falling apart."

"A better world is not only possible, it's necessary. Is it probable? At this moment, it is not."

"History is made by organized anger."

"There is a better way to live."

Activism is not a sacrifice. "If it becomes a sacrifice, get out of it."

"Fight the good fight not because you know you will win. Fight the good fight because it's the right thing to do."

"Solidarity is love in action."

My First MassComm Week

Since I transferred from the Communication Studies department this year and I went to UT Austin for my undergrad, I had never experienced Texas State's MassComm Week. Boy was I missing out! While I wasn't able to physically attend all of the presentations that I was interested in, I did make it to a couple, and thankfully there were some others posted to UStream that I was able to watch in my down time last week.

Rich Oppel's presentation on 'Dealing with the Media' was interesting because it addressed some of the themes we have been discussing since the summer concerning the shift towards new media.

Having worked as a journalist and then crossing over to the 'dark side' of business PR, it was interesting to hear the perspective of someone who has worked in both areas. He discussed how traditional newspapers are declining in favor of more mobile, instant-access news sites or applications, and provided some statistics about newspapers that I wasn't aware of. For example, he mentioned that the number of newspaper professionals have gone from 55,000 to 40,000 since 2009, and that newspaper consumption has also decreased 50% in the past year. He claimed that it is too strong to say that newspapers are 'dying', but that there is clearly a transition in place that is making them less relevant. The most interesting point he made, in my opinion, was that the lessening relevance of newspapers is leaving less room for advertising sales in these papers. He pointed out that when he worked at Austin American Statesman, they reserved anywhere from 20-45 pages for advertisements, where now they only use about 3.

My favorite presentation that I attended was definitely Greg Neal's 'Starting & Branding a TV

Network'. Neal runs a brand consulting company called Supertex Studios in San Marcos, and has worked for HGTV, Soap Net, Food Network, and OWN (Oprah's network). He talked about the main elements that go into creating a brand (Logo, Identity, and Product), examined a few brands that he considers particularly successful (such as Apple, Urban Outfitters/Anthropologie, and HBO), and explained why he eventually quit his job consulting for Oprah.

I thought it was refreshing how candidly he spoke about being fired or quitting something...usually people glaze over that information, or feed audiences a vague response such as "We mutually decided to part ways." Mr. Neal, however, walked us through his work with Oprah in detail, and talked about how her old production consultants were trying to push her old image onto the new one Neal was trying to create, which is what ultimately caused him to quit. I admired that he was willing to truly explain a job that didn't end up working out, especially because he could have left it out completely. I think it gave a more real-world picture to all of the students that will be working in the industry soon. I also appreciated how he directly addressed us at the end of his discussion, giving us advice and telling us what employers look for in job applicants (and encouraging us that past experience is NOT the most important thing!)

Overall, I was excited to hear from professionals working in our industry, and most of them had encouraging advice and outlooks for the students and our futures. I'm glad Texas State is willing to set aside resources to put on an event like this!

Mass Comm Week 2010

Before I even get started….

Many, many thanks to whoever thunk’d up livestreaming and archiving so many of the presentations! Had it not been for the availability of the presentations as archived recordings, I would only have been able to attend ONE panel during the entire week! Keep up the tech’!

Evan Smith (Texas Tribune) – “Why We Need Public-Supported Media”

I have watched Evan Smith’s Texas Monthly Talks, so I was already familiar with him, his work, and his style of interviewing/public speaking. (To me, his easy, conversational style is pleasant to watch - and wonderfully reminiscent of the style once used by Dick Cavett.) That The Texas Tribune was started as a groundbreaking, specific way of counteracting the decline of print journalism was something that I had apparently missed. The concept of journalism as a “public good” was refreshing. In contrast to much of the junk that is currently being passed off as news and printed/broadcast to the public, the Texas Tribune’s concept of news journalism as a “public good” represents a welcome real world refocus on Social Responsibility Theory of mass communication.

Evan Smith’s observation that formerly (in ‘old media’) “the act of publication ended with publication” and that now (with interactive, ‘new media’) “the act of publication begins with publication” was extremely well-stated. Journalistic output – because of its biases and perceived biases – has caused the profession to come under assault from all sides. The Texas Tribune’s stance that the medium’s job is not to further a particular worldview agenda, but to give its consumers something to think about is to be truly admired and emulated – not just news, but knowledge. I also appreciated Mr. Smith’s acknowledgement that Ted Nugent was a candid and informed interview – regardless of where one might stand in relation to “Uncle Ted’s” political views. (Ah! Objective, qualitative evaluation! So far, every interview I have ever seen of Ted Nugent seems to have provided the interviewer with a fun time.)

David Wayatt and Lauren Tuttle (Wayatt Brand) and Nick Weynand (Trademark Media) – “Social Graces: Understanding and communicating with clients, co-workers, audiences and the media”

The segment entitled "Social Graces" focused on the various social media that allow for (and actively promote) interactivity between media outlets and media consumers. The opening Fox4 segment featuring Clarice Tinsley (while funny) was wildly telling of what is occurring in the news world as it adjusts to the explosion in social media - the slapdash gathering of all sorts of related and unrelated information in the hopes of putting together something the public will swallow. (Furthermore, it was off-topic!) While watching this segment and listening to the panel discussion, it occurred to me that the panel format that had been chosen for this presentation (vis-à-vis not having chosen a single-presenter format) and the fact that the panelists were seated (legs crossed, leaning back) as they were speaking to the audience (more often, speaking to each other) was perhaps a bit too casual for my tastes. Though these individuals are certainly successful professionals in their field, their presentation almost seemed to be “ad libbed” most of the time. For me, this “talking off the top of their heads” tended to undermine the credibility of the content they were presenting.

As their topic was "Social Graces: Understanding and communicating with clients, co-workers, audiences, and the media," it seemed to me that they would have better served this specific topic with a presentation style that appealed to a wider range of listeners ("audiences") - not just those who showed up in shorts or pajamas. The topic was declared to be "understanding and communicating" - even within the wider environment of "Mass Comm Week," for Pete's sake! Shouldn't mass communication practitioners be concerned with the qualitative aspects of presentation? The panelists' lax demeanor worked at cross-purposes to the actual information they were conveying, and I felt as if I was eavesdropping on a chatty conversation in the employees' lounge rather than taking advantage of the knowledge and experience of professionals who are successfully making their mark in the industry.

[Perhaps this is generational – that people my age expect professionals to conduct themselves with a certain level of professional decorum. Or, maybe it’s just my expectation. Intentional, goal-oriented communication shouldn’t be a slouched affair. These days, most media consumers seem to believe that sports shows revolving around four grown men arguing with (often shouting at) one another constitute informative programming, when – in reality – these types of shows use up a great deal of airtime, but actually present very little solid information. CNN and FoxNews even use this format to present so-called “news,” where multiple windows of talking heads debate one another – again using up a great deal of airtime, but conveying few empirical facts. While unstructured panel discussions may be easy to throw together, they generally lack logical progressions of thought and content, and usually seem driven by an “oh-yeah-we-can-talk-about-this-too” motivation to fill the time allotted, which – for me, anyway – tends to undermine the validity of what the speaker is presenting, particularly when the declared topic is communication itself!]

Thom Singer (business development consultant/author) – “Some Assembly Required”

In contrast to the conversational presentation by Wayatt, Tuttle, and Waynand, Thom Singer’s presentation of information on how to “brand” or “market” one’s self was structured and clear, and used understandable, logical examples and metaphors to make his point(s). He was knowledgeable, articulate, and well-prepared – which are the very reasons he was sought out by employers each time he stood at the brink of unemployment. I appreciated his observation that the definition of the word "know" has changed in our society within the last two years - that we "know" people without actually "getting to know" people as a result of how social media have changed interpersonal relationships. As a result, "like" and "trust" have become (1) superficial and (2) (in their truest forms) rare.

Mr. Singer posits that intentional branding of one's self and consistency in all aspects of one's social interaction are the keys to self-promotion in the job market. For one to do what s/he says s/he will do is important. Building diverse friendships across the spectrum of humanity is also important, but clarifies that "the one place where there is no room for diversity is when it comes to character." (Well said!)

Rich Oppel (Public Strategies) - "Dealing with the Media"

Rich Oppel spoke on several topics, one of which was the state of media in Texas: The reduction in press corps staffing (and the accompanying demise of the media's "watchdog" activities); the decline of corporate ownership (and the rise in individual ownership) of news media; the encroachment/domination of interactive media over what had traditionally been a print media news world; and the need for journalistic adeptness at using (and adapting to) new and interactive technologies.

Though the advertised topic of Mr. Oppel’s speech was “Dealing with the Media,” he barely seemed to touch on it, instead spending a significant amount of time talking about (and showing comic video segments from) the current election. Such confusion and wandering from the topic was unexpected from such a well-respected media professional.

Mr. Oppel states, “The real core the newspaper – of journalism - is great reporting.” I believe that - as we witness a significant “dumbing down” of American society as a whole - his advice to students that, “you need to know how to write” clearly, concisely, correctly, and with passion should be taken to heart by everyone, not just aspiring journalists. Furthermore, journalists should establish personal relationships with their sources and should develop good listening skills.

Michael Vivio (Austin American-Statesman) – “How We Survived Economic Uncertainty”

Having (so far) successfully guided the Austin American-Statesman through difficult times for the newspaper industry, Michael Vivio said that as market conditions became more severe his “most gratifying experience” at the Statesman was the intentional “valuing” of and retention of employees (combined with listening to the employees’ creative ideas), and that he realizes that the paper’s editorial content is its strong suit. A reduction in the number of pages in the paper has had no effect on its journalism; it has merely reduced the “fluff” (Mr. Vivio’s terminology).

Promoting a caring work environment, creativity, flexibility, and the willingness to be open to new ideas have been key to the Stateman’s success. Mr. Vivio embraces social media for the Statesman and even indicated interest in utilizing location-based Waze (http://www.waze.com/) as a way for the Statesman to reach out to, interact with, and establish a unique community of participatory readers. Plans for the future? Among others, the Statesman’s goal is to become the “ESPN of entertainment in Austin” – reaching young people through special events, publications, and Austin 360. The Statesman even plans to launch Internet radio station in December.

The subtext of what I saw …

A continuing, interlocking theme running throughout the different panels seemed to be that media and mass communication are in rapid flux – and that these changes are difficult to keep up with for professionals and the institutions they represent. (As a subtext to his main topic of personal branding, even Thom Singer’s refreshing presentation referenced how the technologically-based changes in social networking have altered the way in which people interact and how they perceive relationships with other people.)

Existing media institutions (1) are having difficulty keeping up with emerging technological innovations, and (2) are having difficulty continuing to derive an income stream from producing news content. Michael Vivio eloquently echoed the realization that journalism is being reinvented, largely as a result of new technologies, and that today’s Mass Communication students are on the cusp of great changes – many of which will be driven and directed by those very students. Rich Oppel’s references to Facebook’s takeover of interactive news dissemination between individuals served to further drive this point home.

Consumers have (thanks to media practices!) become accustomed to free, immediate news content The media have created their own, self-defeating crisis of news content that the consumers is “‘free and now’ versus ‘pay and later’” (as Evan Smith put it). As the Texas Tribune’s PBS-style membership system is innovative, interesting, and effective, it may catalyze a restructuring of the way media earn income from producing news content.

…and in Conclusion…

With the rapid advances in social media and tech applications, it is my hope that my introductory paragraph from this year’s post will be anachronistic by the time next year’s Mass Comm Week rolls around. Though I was able to follow many of the forums via video recording, career obligations prevented me from actually being present at any of them, and golden networking opportunities were lost. Perhaps by next year, though, there will be a social networking innovation that will allow even more active participation from those of us stuck at remote locations! I’m already looking forward to it.