KU News Release

KU professor to receive award at national journalism convention

LAWRENCE — James K. Gentry, professor of journalism and former dean of the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas, will be presented with the Media Management and Economics Division’s Barry Sherman Teaching Award at this week’s Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication national convention in Chicago.

The award recognizes excellence and innovation in the teaching of media management and economics.

“I’m very pleased to receive the award,” said Gentry. “I think it recognizes the importance of what I am teaching and especially the need for students to understand how business works, both from a financial and a managerial perspective. We think Financial Fundamentals for Communicators gives our graduates essential skills and is a real competitive advantage in seeking a job.”

Gentry, who has been at KU since 1997, is nationally known for his ability to turn complicated financial and accounting information into understandable language for corporate communicators and journalists. Over the past 25 years, he has taught thousands of communicators and journalists how to understand the language of business. He teaches Financial Fundamentals for Communicators and Research, Metrics and Measurement for public relations, marketing and advertising professionals enrolled in KU’s graduate program in marketing communication at the Edwards Campus in Overland Park. He primarily teaches media management courses on the Lawrence campus. In fall 2006, he introduced a new course, Financial Basics for Communicators, for undergraduates in Lawrence.

Before joining KU in 1997, Gentry was dean at the University of Nevada-Reno for five years and was a member of the faculty at the University of Missouri’s journalism school for almost 15 years. He was a reporter and editor for several newspapers before joining the Missouri faculty. He received his doctorate in journalism with an emphasis on management and organizational behavior from Missouri in 1993.

Other KU journalism faculty activities at the national convention include:

— Barbara Barnett, assistant professor, will present “Justice Revisited: A Pilot Study of Print Media Coverage of the Andrea Yates Murder Trials.” She also will moderate a panel discussion titled “Gender and AEJMC: Past, Present, and Future.”
— Mugur Geana, assistant professor, will present “Dark vs. Light: Environmental Illumination Influence on Startle Reflex Amplitude Measured During Manipulation of the Affective State Using Pleasant and Unpleasant Picture Presentations.”
— Crystal Lumpkins, assistant professor, will present “An Examination of Religion and Spirituality in Information Processing of Breast Cancer Among African American Women.”
— Susan Novak, lecturer and coordinator of the Bremner Editing Center, will present “Framing the Death of Investigative Journalism: Anna Politkovskaya’s Murder in the New York Times and Izvestiya.”
— Max Utsler, associate professor, will present “Right Before Your Very Eyes: Photo Coverage of African Americans in Major College Newspapers.”
— Douglas Ward, assistant professor, will present “Turning Student Errors Into Lasting Lessons.” He also will be on a panel on the work of Maurine Beasley, this year’s recipient of the Eleanor Blum Distinguished Service to Research Award. Ward led the nomination, gathering letters of support from more than 20 communication scholars and former students of Beasley.
— Scott Reinardy, assistant professor, will present “Generational Divide: Young and old journalists grapple with newspaper online strategies and organizational transformation.” Reinardy co-authored papers “Satisfied: The Maslach Burnout Inventory measures job satisfaction and lack of burnout among high school journalism advisers”; “Expanding and validating of the willingness to self-censor scale: Self censorship and media advisers’ comfort level with controversial topics”; “An examination of high school media advisers’ reactions to controversial news topics: A developmental and confirmatory analysis.” Reinardy also will be a panelist on “Teaching Sports Communication Courses” at the AEJMC pre-convention.
— David Guth, associate dean and associate professor, will be a discussant for a high-density research session on crisis communications and a panelist on how to lead curriculum change in today’s challenging environment.
— David Perlmutter, professor, will be a presenter and discussant for the panel “Blogging Politics: Press, Policy and the Public.” His topic will be “Political Blogs: An agenda for research.”
— Carol Holstead, associate professor, will moderate a panel on magazine design and will present the awards in the student magazine competitions that she coordinated.

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