In less than a month, we’ll gather in San Francisco for another exciting convention. This year, we have a great lineup of research presentations and panels:

Wed., August 2nd (8:15 am): “Making” News: Historical & Theoretical Research in Journalism
Thurs., August 3rd (8:15 am): Cutting Edge Issues in News Content
Thurs., August 3rd (1:30 pm): Scholar-to-Scholar Research Paper Session
Fri., August 4th (8:15 am): News Content Production & Delivery
Sat., August 5th (11:45 am): News: Health & Well Being

(See the "RTVJ Convention Programming Schedule San Francisco 2006" for details.)

This year, 30 papers were submitted for consideration to our division. Ultimately, we accepted 16 (53%). Here’s how that compares to previous years:

While the overall quality of submitted research was good, this is the smallest number of papers our division has received in five years. Are scholars submitting to other divisions instead? If so, why? Anecdotal evidence suggests other divisions did get a huge boost in their numbers this year. For example, the SciGroup, one of AEJMC’s interest groups, received 38 submissions. Mass Comm & Society received 203. Perhaps this is a point worth discussing at this year’s members meeting.

Author Demographics

Among our 30 submissions this year, we had 49 authors represented. They were almost evenly split in terms of gender: 47% male, 53% female.  The majority (71%) was Caucasian/non-Hispanic, followed by 18% Asian/Indian/Southeast Asian; and 6% African American or Black. We had 1 Hispanic/Latino author and 1 Arab/Arab-American author.

Faculty penned 57% of the papers submitted this year. 27% were faculty/student papers and 17% were authored by students alone. Three of the student papers were accepted for presentation at this year’s convention (a 60% acceptance rate, well above last year’s percentage of 41%).

Electronic Submissions

For the first time ever, the RTVJ division accepted submissions electronically. This process required a fair amount of coordination but went quite smoothly. We did not use an “official” submission program (such as that used by Comm Tech & Policy or the Mass Comm Division). Instead, we did ours strictly through e-mail. With the exception of a few minor glitches, the process went very smoothly. We had all our papers out to judges by April 7th. The majority of judges got them back to me by April 28th. Final decisions were made by May 8th… well before the AEJMC deadline. Next year, AEJMC says the entire process will be handled electronically through a central system. I think this will be even better!

Judges

This year, three judges reviewed each paper. We had 32 judges in all. One of our missions this year was to increase diversity among women and minority judges involved in the review process. Despite repeated requests for more women and minorities to participate in the process, judges were still overwhelmingly white and mostly male. However, 35% were female AND we had a wide variety of judges when faculty status is taken into consideration (9% adjuncts/instructors, 40% assistant professors, 31% associate, and 19% full professors). We also had judges representing wide variety of institutions, from teaching colleges, to mid-level state schools, to R1s.

The Ethics of Judging

As many of you saw on the RTVJ listserv, a healthy debate took place this year regarding the ethics of paper judging. AEJMC policy suggests that that judges should not be allowed to review for our division if they submitted research to the division.  Not that anyone would purposefully sabotage the work of their peers, but it is not inconceivable that someone could judge another writers work more harshly in hopes of boosting their own chances of getting in. Simply put, this is a “Caesar’s Wife” issue. This year, we did not run short of judges so there was no need to recruit from the ranks of those who had submitted. Many contributors to the listserve debate took issue with that policy. Again, perhaps another issue for discussion at the members meeting!

Diversity of Topics

Finally, our last mission this year was to increase the number of papers that address diversity and pedagogical issues. Despite making a special request to our division’s “Call for Papers.” we received very few entries addressing these topics. Only 2 of 30 papers focused on pedagogical concerns/issues. And only 1 of 30 addressed a diversity topic.  It is likely that authors chose instead to send their work to “Courses and Curricula” or “Multicultural Studies.”  Despite that shortcoming, the range of topics and research methods, was quite diverse this year. From new media, to politics and policy, to broadcast production values, to health & risk research… we had an interesting range.

Top Paper Winners

This year, we had a very close finish between two faculty papers. The were both so good, and so very different, we awarded Top Faculty Paper status both of them. Hearty congratulations go out to:

A Pathfinding Radio Documentary Series: Norman Corwin's One World Flight
Matthew C. Ehrlich, Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Shovelcasting, talk radio and the weather: A content analysis of news podcasts
Vincent F. Filak, Ph.D., Ball State University

We would also like to congratulate two graduate students from Missouri for their Top Student Paper Award:

The Relationships among Audience Loyalty, Perceived Quality,
and Media Credibility of CableNews Networks
Tayo Oyedeji (Graduate Student) & Felicity Duncan (Graduate Student), Missouri-Columbia

You can see these and 13 other wonderful research papers presented this year at AEJMC. Meantime, it has been a pleasure serving as your Research Chair this year! I’ve learned a lot through the experience.  While its been a lot of work, I simply could NOT have done it without the invaluable help from those who volunteered to judge and guidance of our incredible RTVJ leadership.  Please, consider judging next year!