Team effort results in award from Society of Professional Journalists

Staff, faculty and students from the IU School of Journalism are being nationally recognized for their contribution to an award-winning book.\n“The American Journalist in the 21st Century” received the prestigious 2006 Sigma Delta Chi Award for excellence in journalism by the Society of Professional Journalists.\nThe book’s lead author is David Weaver, the Roy W. Howard professor in the IU School of Journalism.\nHowever, this was a collaborative work of research – particularly in part with former IU professor Cleveland Wilhoit, who retired in the summer of 2004, Weaver said. Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies in the School of Journalism Bonnie Brownlee, former associate professors Randy Beam and Paul Voakes and numerous graduate students have all been contributors to the research. \n“It is a special honor for the most recent book to win the SPJ award because it recognizes a team effort,” Wilhoit said.\nThe third in its series, the book surveys and interviews 1,464 U.S. journalists over a span of 10 years to gauge the changes occurring in journalism careers.\n“This really is such an important study to track over time the characteristics of American journalists,” Brownlee said.\nOne of the main characteristics that sets this book apart is the technique in which this research was obtained.\n“People will typically change the questions around and then pass the surveys around again every few years, so people will then change their answer because the question is worded differently or the environment is different,” Weaver said. \nHowever, for this book the authors continually asked the same questions and were consistent in their research, so it allows readers to see the real changes that occurred 10 years later, he said.\nWith each study taking around four to five years, funding was needed. The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation funded the studies and research for the book. Weaver said the hardest part of this book would have been drawing the sample.\n“It is hard because there is no up-to-date list of U.S. journalists, so you have to draw random samples and keep going back and getting lists from different news organizations,” he said. \nThis is the third time Weaver and Wilhoit have received the Sigma Delta Chi Award. \n“SPJ is the largest organization of journalists in the country, so that is really gratifying because I like to do research that has interest to others,” Weaver said. “I’m glad to know it is useful to a lot of different people. It’s a lot of detailed work and it’s not easy reading, but it is something people will use when they want to know information about the average journalist.” \nThe book is available at the Journalism Library, on Amazon.com and from the

publisher’s Web site.