Graduate Studies
New journalism faculty members ramp up the research
Research productivity in the Journalism Department of the College of Journalism and Communications has increased at a rapid pace over the past five years with the addition of several new faculty members. Each of these professors combines professional experience with his or her research specializations and they encourage graduate students to contact them about potential collaboration. Here is a snapshot of their scholarly productivity:
Recent work by Dr. Cory L. Armstrong has included a content analysis of women in news stories about obesity and dieting, which is slated for publication in the inaugural issue of Journal of Health and Mass Communication. A former public affairs reporter, she has also developed manuscripts on the perceived credibility of men and women as news sources and on the availability of public records on local government web sites. Her current research is attempting to isolate messages on child health and nutrition in parenting magazines. She teaches graduate classes, including Race, Class, Gender and Media and Issues in the Press and has had more than 15 journal publications.
Dr. Norman P. Lewis, a former newspaper editor and publisher, researches newsroom culture and plagiarism. His research is featured in the current editions of two academic publications. A study of how editors lagged behind society in how they viewed women was published in American Journalism and an examination of professional plagiarism over a 10-year period is in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly. He teaches undergraduate courses in editing and ethics, and a doctoral class in mass communication theory and the philosophy of science.
Dr. Renee Martin-Kratzer joined the faculty in 2005 as an assistant professor. She has worked as a newspaper design editor and helped launch Missouri Life magazine, serving as the founding managing editor. Her research interests focus on news routines, media effects, visual communication and magazines. Three recent projects include examining the prevalence of anonymous sources in international news stories, in news magazines and in television newscasts. She is also investigating the effect that these sources have on perceptions of story credibility. Other projects include examining the use and effect of disturbing images in print and online. At the graduate level, she has taught Research Methods and Mass Communication and Society.
Dr. Judy Robinson has been developing digital multimedia for storytelling and for distance education for more than 15 years. She has recently developed a new course for online journalists and is studying user satisfaction in online journalism education. While she has researched scholastic journalism and media literacy she has recently written on "Where are the Millennials in journalism?" and is involved in gathering data on crowdsourcing and using UGC (user generated content) strategies to develop online communities. She also may be found researching strategies for teaching at a distance in virtual worlds. At the graduate level she teaches Survey of Electronic Publishing and Developing Digital Online Learning.
Dr. Ronald R. Rodgers has more than 20 years of experience in newspapers as a reporter, editor, and designer working both in Asia and in five Western states. His research agenda is driven by his professional experience, and his research interests revolve around media history, especially the formation of normative standards and the historical and contemporary agents of influence on journalistic conduct and media content. Recent work includes three papers that analyze the effects on journalistic ethics of religion in the early twentieth century and two papers analyzing the effects on notions of journalistic independence by the growing new field of public relations in the early twentieth century. He has also recently written two papers – one published and the other in press – on digital media’s effect on journalistic content. He teaches classes in Basic Editing, Advanced Editing, and Literary Journalism.
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