Organization site - Summer 2001
Issue: 2/20/01
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President's Message: Integration
By Carroll Ferguson Nardone
Integrate—v., 1. to bring together or incorporate (parts) into a whole 2. to makeup, combine, or complete to produce a whole or a larger unit, as parts do. 3. to unite or combine. 4. to give cause or give equal opportunity and consideration to. (Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary).
Perhaps it's a bit unusual to begin a column with a definition, particularly one as innocuous as "integrate." I see it as a reflection point, as a way of thinking about how simple this word seems, yet how truly complex it is. I find this word appropriately defines where CCJA is and where we are going.
First, CCJA has "integrated" with College Publisher so that we can bring our membership a useful, informative, and powerful website. College Publisher gives us the tools, but we are solely responsible for its content and use. With this site we are able to integrate the means of communication for this organization and we are able to do it interactively and more quickly, which ultimately benefits us all. Does the site replace the print communications we already have? Of course not. The Web converges traditional media and is used to meet needs in a different way than the print media does. Check out and use ccjaonline.org. Help us maintain the site and help us use it to shrink the geographic distances between us.
Next, I think about the integration our organization has with both AEJMC and CMA. In fact, the AEJMC national convention is upon us—August 58 in Washington, D.C. This year's theme, "Bringing in the Outs: Diversity and Democracy," promises some interesting panels and sessions (note the reference to integration). We're very excited about our Great Ideas for Teaching (GIFT) poster sessions, co-sponsored with the Small Programs Interest Group. This 2nd annual event will showcase the most innovative teaching tips from the world's best journalism and mass communications educators—an integration of ideas, if you will—just in time for the new academic year.
Let's not forget about our integration with College Media Advisers and their annual meeting October 26-28 in New Orleans. Media advisers from across the country share ideas, concerns, and participate in important networking opportunities. Many of our colleagues bring their student media staffs so that they can also learn innovative ideas and share information with many of their colleagues. This year, CCJA's Hall of Fame induction will be held during the convention. Join us for a truly inspiring convention.
This "integration" theme is also evident in this issue of The Journalist. Our media world has changed and that notion is certainly evident in the article about banner ad placements for on-line papers. David Thompson and Birgit Wassmuth's research gives us a new way to look at how advertising copy co-exists and enhances editorial content. Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver's article reporting the financial health of community college newspapers illustrates integration of a little different sort. As a former CCJA president, Kopenhaver is an outstanding example of how community colleges and universities co-exist and work one with the other to enhance both.
The media world today presents us with all sorts of new paradigms. For those of us who began our careers in the days before computers and video were commonplace in newspaper and broadcast newsrooms, we've lived the integration of technology on our field. We've also witnessed great strides in racial and gender integration in our profession; though we certainly have further to go.
Arguably, we've lived through what are the most important moments in press history. Rather than simply recognize this, take time to reflect on what integration truly means and how it has served our profession. Let's keep challenging ourselves to look at a simple word like "integrate" and remember that it's a verb—it denotes action.