AJE Updates

#AJE2020: POSTPONED Call for papers for our annual conference

AJE Annual Conference

June 18 & 19, 2020

Sheffield Hallam University

CALL FOR PAPERS

Engaged, collaborative, shared: How should we prepare students for a very different kind of journalism?

As large areas of traditional, corporate-owned, advertising-funded media find themselves in retreat, new independent publishers are emerging.

And they are often doing things differently. Corporate commercial and political interests have not always aligned with the wider public interest and the traditional business model in commercial media has depended on the packaging and commodification of audiences (communities) for advertisers.

While journalists might have striven to reflect and respect their communities, the business model determined to a significant degree whose voices found a hearing, and whose did not; which events and issues were reported; which were not; and how those issues and events were reported.

New organisations such as Tortoise and The Bristol Cable (UK), De Correspondent (Netherlands), Krautreporter (Germany), The Voice of San Diego (US) are changing the business model.

Co-operative projects, crowd-funded, membership models – rely on audiences to provide sustainability directly, and that means delivering in return a perceptible public benefit.

That involves doing journalism differently: adopting different values and practices; collaborating more closely with communities; sharing ownership of the process – of decisions about what should be reported and how it should be reported. If we are preparing students to enter the traditional newsroom, how can we as journalism educators prepare them for the world they are entering?

The AJE is calling for papers in areas which might address, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Learning about democratic processes
  • Social justice
  • Developing and maintaining trust
  • Diversifying, democratising, decolonising the curriculum
  • Understanding and engaging with wider communities
  • Community development
  • Journalism and advocacy
  • Emerging business models
  • Alternative media
  • Events and journalism
  • Solutions journalism
  • New pedagogical models of learning

Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be sent to david.baines@newcastle.ac.uk by February 28, 2020 at 4.30pm. You will be notified of the acceptance of your paper by mid-March 2020.

NEW FOR AJE ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2020 – STUDENT PRESENTATION SESSION

This year the AJE Annual Conference will feature a session on student-based research.

We welcome submissions from UG and PG* journalism students on any theme relevant to the study of the journalism and the news media. The papers should be based on research undertaken in academic session 2019/20.

Up to four students will be financially supported** by the AJE to attend the Annual Conference in Sheffield.

Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be sent to assjrned@gmail.com

by April 28, 2020 at 4.30pm. You will be notified of the acceptance of your paper by mid-May.

*=PhD/doctoral students should submit to the main conference call for papers.

**= costs covered will be standard train travel to/from Sheffield and hotel accommodation to an agreed rate for one evening.