Two links for future discussion

An article about Michelle Obama's speech:
http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=149495

An article about (non)diversity and the NY advertising establishment:
http://adage.com/bigtent/post?article_id=128219

A link about summer movies

It would be great to meet for a movie this semester, so be thinking of fall releases and be ready to recommend something. We'll talk about popular entertainment more at the semester's end, but for now, here's PBS commentary for you:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93995425

Welcome to the course

I'm looking forward to thinking about news media, strategic and digital communications, and entertainment media in our class this fall. We'll be following the presidential election and media coverage of the major candidates, through the lenses of race, gender, sexualities and other issues. We'll start that conversation with discussion of editorial cartoonists and their strategies for representing the candidates.

Throughout the semester, please check here at least once a week for helpful links and assignments. Also, we'll have additional discussion here, too, about issues that were introduced in class.

And at the end of the semester, we'll have our usual media smorgasbord, where you bring your media favorites for fun
and scrutiny.

Deadline and Goodbye

For those of you who didn't turn in your papers on Friday, Dec. 7, your final deadline is at 5 p.m. Monday, Dec. 10. Just turn in a paper to my mailbox in the journalism office, GAB 102, or slide it under my office door, GAB 101B. I need a hard copy, so you don't need to post it to your blog.

Have a nice winter break and take care. Best to all of you.

Tips to help you with your final project

For those still having trouble locating a study or studies, think about using Google Scholar. Go to the main Google home page, and click on "more" at the top. You'll see a menu of other Google search services, and one is called "Scholar." It's a search engine for academic sources.

Once you find an article that might be useful, you might then click and find that you are in a database that sells articles. Don't buy an article--you can get almost everything free through our library at www.library.unt.edu. Go to e-journals, type in the name of the journal using your EUID, and you're set.

I've asked you to use APA or MLA style for your references. Have you ever tried a service called citation machine? Go to www.citationmachine.net or type in "citation machine" into a search engine, and you'll enter a site that generates your citations automatically.

Once you get to that web site, you'll click on the left hand menu, either MLA or APA. That will take you to a page with fields--you just enter the author's names, name of publication, year, etc., and then the citation machine generates a complete citation that you can copy and paste into your paper.

Please email me with your questions this final week. Take care.

Writing your final project

You are going to focus more on method and findings, and less on reviews of literature, since we've spent the semester talking about that literature. That's why you need only a study to shadow, and this can be more for its methods than for its subject. You can look at patterns of fathers in TV sitcoms, using the music video chapter for its pattern- or theme-seeking methods. We will talk more in class, if you still have questions.

Some last links for our consideration

We'll wrap up a lot of things this Friday, and I'll look forward to seeing you then for a kind of roundup of ideas and methods that we've talked about this semester. If you like, bring a favorite web link or DVD and we'll make time to show and/or to talk about as many as we can. I'm bringing popcorn for the crowd.

If you get a chance to go to YouTube, here are some key words to use:
"A Girl Like Me," "Unilever," "Dove Onslaught" (we've already looked at this one in class), "Slob Evolution," and "Dove Evolution." Some of these will make you laugh, although the first is a sobering look at the effects of media? society? history? racism?

Interested in or concerned about stereotypes of white males? Click here:
http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/matthew-sheffield/2007/09/06/balancing-medias-anti-male-stereotypes

and here, for stereotypes of fathers in general:
http://diyfather.com/content/the-21st-century-dad-no-time-for-old-stereotypes

In class, we've spoken a bit about smart dads from past decades, including Cliff Huxtable, Ward Cleaver and others, compared to less-than-bright Homer Simpson, Ray Barone, a few WB dads and others. This could make a good study, if you are still casting about for a topic.

bell hooks, a philosophy prof at City College in New York, has interviews up at YouTube and essays on the web, to discuss Spike Lee's work and other issues. You may find her discussions at YouTube by just typing her name, and you may also read her work about depictions of men in film at:

www.allaboutbell.com/On-Death-and-Patriarchy-in-Crooklyn.htm
www.allaboutbell.com/when_men.htm