Director's Note

The new school year is in full swing in SJMC. We kicked off the year with a welcome event for new students and our annual school picnic for all SJMC students, faculty, and staff. This year, we included the student org fair as part of the picnic. We had great turnouts and look forward to continuing to connect throughout the year.

                                                                         SJMC New Majors Event

                                                                        Fall Picnic and Org Fair

We’re also proud that Iowa continues to shine in “Writing in the Disciplines.” The University of Iowa remained the only public institution on the list in 2023, tied for no. 5 with Yale University.

We’re also excited about our new Sport Media and Culture program, which officially started this semester. Coinciding with the new program, SJMC professors Travis Vogan and Tom Oates co-directed the Obermann Arts and Humanities Symposium “Sports, Power, and Resistance: Legacies and Futures,” which brought leading scholars of sport to campus.

                                 Sports, Power, and Resistance: Legacies and Futures Symposium

We hope you received a copy of our Iowa Journalist annual newsletter. If not, please update your mailing address and check out the PDF of the newsletter on our site. In it, you’ll find two featured stories and news and notes about SJMC students, alumni, and faculty.

If you have a story to share, please send it to sjmc@uiowa.edu.

Melissa Tully, Director

Faculty News

Gigi Durham published “Napalm Girl at 50: On photojournalism and the ethics of care” in the International Journal of Communication. Her article examines the ethical complexities of the photograph.

David Dowling was featured on the podcast Vagabond Science discussing communication and storytelling. Among the topics discussed were: Why are stories such a powerful tool for communicating ideas? What creates a powerful narrative? And what forms does it take in modern society?

Sang Jung Kim published “Going Beyond Affective Polarization: How Emotions and Identities are Used in Anti-Vaccination Conspiracies on TikTok," in Political Communication. This piece investigates sociopolitical identity cues beyond partisan identities, expanding the current terrain of political communication. She published "Fighting fire or fighting war: Examining the framing effects of COVID-19 metaphors," in Health Communication as well. 

Graduate Student News

Lei Chen published "Augmented, Mixed and Virtual Reality" in The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies (2nd Edition).

Abubakar Ibrahim successfully defended his MA thesis, “A Broth of Ballots and Falsehoods: A Study of Information Disorder in the 2023 Nigerian Presidential Elections.”

David Oh, associate professor, Ramapo College of New Jersey, visited SJMC to present “Navigating White News: Asian American Journalists at Work,” as part of our Seminar Scholars program.

                                                                                    David Oh

Undergraduate News

The UI Unity Chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists published the fall/winter edition of NURU. This issue featured stories on critical race theory, creating diverse spaces to train young black artists, and profiles on black faculty members on campus.

Kate Perez was selected as a member of the New York Times Corps. For the next two years, a New York Times reporter will mentor her and help her navigate the world of journalism as she prepares to enter the workforce..

SJMC sponsored The Changing Heartland, a documentary photo workshop led by photographer and filmmaker Danny Wilcox Frazier. Danny is also the director of The Daily Iowan documentary workshop. Students in the workshop created visual stories that explored complexities of the Midwest.

                                              The Changing Heartland Documentary Workshop

We’re hiring!

We’re hiring a faculty member with professional experience in journalism. We are seeking applicants with substantial professional experience. Potential areas of specialization include, but are not limited to: in-depth or investigative reporting; public affairs and government reporting; data journalism; rural and community journalism; and health, environment or science reporting. Review of applications will begin on December 1, 2023.