When Disciplinary Associations Move beyond the Status Quo

Abstract

I went to graduate school so I could be a teacher. Fresh from the advertising industry, I was thrilled to be liberated from the constraints of a micro-managed time sheet, and amazed that with just a word or two, students teetered on the edge of their seats hanging on my every word. They were enthralled that they had a teacher who had done and they were going to learn the secrets so they could do it, too. If I were only a moderately successful copywriter, working at an Atlanta agency that absolutely no one had ever heard of, it was all lost in the glory of war stories I could tell my eager students. All so they could become copywriters just like me. Only something funny happened on the way to getting my degree. I discovered the field of mass communication. I discovered the practicality of theory. I discovered the joys of data analysis. In short, I discovered that I wanted to be a professor. I also discovered that it was time to leave the war stories behind and figure out what this profession was all about. I learned by reading, writing, teaching, and talking to colleagues, of course. But, I learned the most by getting involved in the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. I embraced everything about AEJMC. I went to paper sessions, bought papers, attended business meetings, hit the socials, you name it-and now thirteen years out of graduate school, I find myself at the end of my run with the Council of Divisions. It's now time to reflect on how AEJMC has impacted not only me, but also the field of journalism and mass communication. First, our organization is large so change comes slowly. The relationship between membership growth and the divisions and interest group expansion is close. Rarely does a division or interest group disband. So, logically, the older divisions tend to be the largest and the most stable-and carry the most weight. For example, the Newspaper and Advertising divisions typically garner large numbers of convention paper submissions, and, therefore, have a strong presence at the convention. Given their strong presence, other divisions want to co-sponsor panels with them, which give them an even bigger presence. A few brave souls periodically talk about whether the divisions need to reorganize, but they are so stable and so normal, no one wants to make the leap. And, then, even as we create for study (business journalism, community journalism, entertainment studies, religion and media, to name a few), we do that in addition to all of the traditional of study. The new areas in search of a co-sponsor at the convention end up being fairly traditional because they have to be sponsored by the traditional divisions. And the problem is that many of these panels then lose some of the cutting edge and are responses to the structure of the organization rather than to the the things we're thinking about. Graduate education is important. One of the best benefits of AEJMC is how it exalts graduate education. Given that the submitted research papers are blind reviewed, professors and graduate students compete for acceptance on the same level. As a result, we are privy to the bright minds beginning to climb the academic ladder. The down side, however, is that these graduate students have to be prolific to compete in the job market. So, they submit papers to divisions that have a large enough presence to accept large numbers of papers-again, the more traditionally oriented divisions, which perpetuates the academic cycle again and again. I have been reviewing manuscripts for many divisions for more than a decade. Every single year, I can count on reviewing papers about attitudes toward ads; a new look on agenda setting; and, for the past ten years, at least one paper that investigates how people are using the Web. We contribute entry-level workers, but are we contributing deep-thinking citizens? A few years ago, the Accrediting Council of Education in Journalism and Mass Communications eased its inside/outside hours of journalism and mass communications courses from 90/30 to 80/40 (a maximum allowance of 40 hours of journalism and mass communication courses), which means students can take more classes in their field-if they can fit them into their schedules. …