Now Under New Management...
The Minnesota Journalism Center has been the professional outreach arm of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota for the past 30+ years. For more than a decade, it has been nurtured under the guidance of the amazing Kathleen Hansen. Under her watch the Center sponsored a vast array of professional training and networking opportunities. But she has been called to another area of need in the Journalism School - the direction of undergraduate studies.
Gone...but not forgotten...
The Institute for New Media Studies was started in 2000 as part of the SJMC's New Media Initiative. Over the past 10 years we conducted and sponsored research, created research collaboratives such as the Game Research and Virtual Environment Lab and the Digital Story Effects Lab, ran a monthly showcase of "Emerging Digerati" and "New Media Research", and held workshops on a range of topics. But the funding was drying up.
The Center is Dead - Long Live the Center
This past Fall the Minnesota Journalism Center and the Institute for New Media Studies were merged and I, the former director of the Institute, will be heading this new center. We will be keeping the core function of the MJC - to support and inspire the work of journalism and the business of news - but we will be adding more attention to other areas of mass communication work. We will continue the Institute's emphasis on cross-disciplinary collaboration and new media research - work not previously part of the Minnesota Journalism Center's charge.
This blog will be a place for me and the MJC's events coordinator, Ada Walton to update you about coming events and highlight the best of those events.
