Volume 14, Number 2, 2024
EDITOR’S NOTE
Welcome to the Winter edition of TJMC. We’re coming to you a bit later than normal, but it’s still winter. A college friend of mine who lives in Bemidji, Minnesota posted a photo of him on his back deck in a thick snow suit, big mittens, face covered – but smiling (he said). He loves this time of year. So do I, and I love the research that came our way for this edition.
It’s my first go-around, an attempt to somehow attain to what Cathy Strong set up for us as editor for so many years. Thank you to all the scholars who served as reviewers. I’m serving also as research chair for another AEJMC interest group this year and we’re being told to remind all our reviewers to be kind, to be detailed in what errors or weaknesses they saw in the research submitted. No need for that in the TJMC reviewers Cathy sent my way. The comments were insightful, pointed, but constructive. Authors thanked me (and, by extension, them) for help in making their research and writing better.
The beauty of this journal is that it’s aimed at people who care about teaching. The research you see in this edition is grounded in important theory: it has scholarly merit. But its focus is on helping students learn.
The best teaching – instruction that sticks and has lifelong impact, is exhausting. And it’s getting more complicated because of who comes into our classrooms and labs. The generations we face each day are carrying loads so complicated that our universities are investing huge funding in care for their emotional and psychological health. Are they smarter despite the struggle? We don’t know. As I write this, a study published in BigThink over the past week showed that while IQ scores for undergrads have been steadily dropping for a century (and IQ isn’t the only measure of intelligence), exposure to media has made our students problem-solvers in ways that surpass earlier generations. Their prowess with that can be truly stunning. And some of the research in this journal points at that.
Thanks for reading this edition. And as you plow
through another school year, take notes on the interfaces and surprising outcomes in your pedagogy. Follow the bigger implications of what you see. Collaborate with each other on research (quantitative people with qualitative). And let’s celebrate the implications of what learning about journalism, media and communication means in an era of explosive advances in artificial intelligence.
Please know that we who collect your research
and review it are applauding the sacrifices it takes to do deep-thinking research at teaching-centered colleges and universities. Larger universities make research easier. But most of us are at smaller schools because of the rewards we find there. May this journal, and the scholarly connections it brings, be part of that reward for you.
— Michael A. Longinow, TJMC Editor
Professor of Journalism & Integrated Media
Biola University