SPJ members win fellowships
The American Press Institute has awarded 10 fellowships to journalism educators and newspaper employees to use in attending API seminars in 2006.
Each year, thousands of dollars in fellowships are available to applicants from the United States and Canada to attend API seminars. All fellowships pay for tuition, and some also include a travel allowance.
SPJ members who earned a fellowship for 2005 are:
* George L. Daniels, assistant professor, Department of Journalism, The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Ala., to attend Management of the Weekly Newspaper.
* Jae-won Lee, professor director, Journalism Division, School of Communication, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio, to attend Compelling Storytelling Innovations.
* Elizabeth Birge, assistant professor, William Paterson University, Wayne, N.J., to attend Compelling Storytelling Innovations.
LSU creates media literacy position
Kevin Reilly Sr. and Dee Dee Reilly, through the Reilly Family Foundation, will fund a double endowed chair in media literacy in LSU’s Manship School of Mass Communication. This chair is the first of its kind in the country.
The chair will be named for Dee Dee Reilly’s brother, Wendell Gray Switzer Jr., lieutenant in the U.S. Navy who lost his life while on active duty.
In addition to teaching journalism students, the chair will enable LSU to become a leader in teaching nonjournalism students on college campuses to become knowledgeable and analytical consumers of the news.
National leadership in this area will include distribution of course materials, research that explores why citizens turn off the television or choose not to read a newspaper, and ideas on how to improve citizens’ ability to retrieve information in order to make well-informed decisions.
The Manship School offers degree programs at the bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral levels focused specifically on media and public affairs. The Reilly Center for Media & Public Affairs, established in 2000, is an integral component of the school’s dedication to help advance public participation in governance. With this purpose in mind, the Chair will work with the Reilly Center to conduct workshops, surveys and symposia that will bring new ideas to journalists and mass communication educators.
Rapp book released in paperback
SPJ member Lea Bayers Rapp’s book The Complete Book of Jewish Weddings has been released in trade paperback. It provides the upbeat lowdown on everything one needs to know to plan a perfect wedding and honeymoon. Published by the Citadel Books imprint of Kensington Publishing Corp, it was formerly published in hardcover under the name of Mazel Tov! The Complete Book of Jewish Weddings. The book has garnered critical acclaim from media and readers throughout the country and Canada and was awarded a first-place designation by the National Federation of Press Women.
Edgell joins University of Missouri
Holly Edgell has joined the faculty of the University of Missouri School of Journalism. She is an assistant professor and the executive producer at KOMU-TV, the NBC affliate owned by the University of Missouri.
She will be teaching and working in the KOMU-TV newsroom with a team of professionals and student journalists. Previously, Holly spent four years as an assistant professor at Florida A&M University’s School of Journalism and Graphic Communication. She also served as adviser to FAMU chapter of SPJ. Holly also has worked as a television news producer in Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Youngstown (OH).
Holly has been a member of SPJ since 2002 and serves on the national membership committee. In 2005 she was named an SPJ Diversity Leadership Fellow.
