The impact of newsroom changes and the rise of social media on the practice of media relations

Recent changes in American media have resulted in direct impacts on the work of PR professionals, from newsroom reductions in traditional media outlets to the rise of social media. This study examines changes in the media relations dynamic with qualitative, in-depth interviews from 12 PR professionals in a medium, eastern U.S. city. Findings include PR professionals doing less traditional media relations, mostly attributable to downsized newsrooms, and frustration with the resulting dearth of institutional knowledge, influx of young, inexperienced reporters, and shallow stories. While participants see opportunities to inject unfiltered messages in media, overall they value reporter relationships and using social media in communication with them and in their job. Although new media are seen as one more task on an already very full PR plate, participants acknowledge their importance and growing relevance. Overall, PR professionals see their and the industry's future including both traditional and new media.     

Extension of two-sided test to multiple treatment trials

In a two-treatment trial, a two-sided test is often used to reach a conclusion, Usually we are interested in doing a two-sided test because of no prior preference between the two treatments and we want a three-decision framework. When a standard control is just as good as the new experimental treatment (which has the same toxicity and cost), then we will accept both treatments. Only when the standard control is clearly worse or better than the new experimental treatment, then we choose only one treatment. In this paper, we extend the concept of a two-sided test to the multiple treatment trial where three or more treatments are involved. The procedure turns out to be a subset selection procedure; however, the theoretical framework and performance requirement are different from the existing subset selection procedures. Two procedures (exclusion or inclusion) are developed here for the case of normal data with equal known variance. If the sample size is large, they can be applied with unknown variance and with the binomial data or survival data with random censoring.     

Reinforcement,stereotypy, and rule discovery

The effects of reinforced pretraining on subsequent rule discovery were examined with college students as subjects. Levels of behavioral stereotypy observed during reinforced and non-contingent pretraining were compared. During pretraining subjects received reinforcement if they pressed two keys in a particular sequence. During the problem session pressing each key four times was a necessary condition for reinforcement, but each problem had additional different requirements for reinforcement. Subjects were asked to solve the problems by discovering the rule that determined whether or not they received reinforcement. Levels of stereotyped responding during pretraining were equivalent for contingently and non-contingently trained subjects. During the problem session contingently pretrained, non-contingently pretrained, and naive subjects required equal numbers of trials to solve problems and solved the same number of problems. The results suggest that behavioral stereotypy observed in this experimental preparation may be due to repeated exposure to the task. Differences between the results observed in this study and that of Schwartz (1982) and implications for the use of reinforcement procedures in applied settings are discussed.

     

Accounting for Everyday Incivility: an Australian study

The question of how we live among strangers in daily life is an established concern in contemporary social analysis. A key topic has been the achievements of the individual in rendering daily life among unknown others possible. Yet, questions of residual failure await full development. The study aims to describe the results of an Australian study that examined the significance and meaning of interactional breakdown with strangers in everyday life for the contemporary individual. Focus group methodology is used to describe common threads of understanding that ordinary people have developed around such events in terms of prevalence, reasons and remedies. Noteworthy findings are (i) the use of period and generational kinds of historical thinking in lay reflections on the state of everyday incivility (ii) the materialization of excessive individualism, runaway capitalist values and diminished community as key ideas within lay talk about the generators of everyday incivility, and (iii) the articulation of communitarianism as a preferred panacea to everyday incivility for lay actors.     

After the highwayman: Syntax and successful placement of press releases in newspapers

This study proves once again that too many press releases are poorly written and over-written, with long sentences and paragraphs, and poor syntax as well as weak and passive construction. In their use of press releases, journalists almost always have to make them simpler, shorter, easier to read, and less passive.The authors conclude that success in writing of press releases requires brevity and simplicity, shorter paragraphs, sentences, and words, and the elimination of the passive voice.Timothy Walters is an assistant professor of communication at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, TX. Lynne Walters is associate professor of journalism and Douglas Starr professor of journalism, both at Texas A&M University, College Station. Lynne Walters is currently a Fulbright professor at the American Journalism Center in Budapest, where her husband Timothy is also on a one-year appointment as a visiting professor.     

Trading coupons: completing the World Cup football sticker album

The agonies and the ecstasies of the World Cup are over for another four years. England supporters may not wish to be reminded of Ronaldo's spot-kick, and we are loath to add to pain. But one set of players who probably did very well from the competition was Panini, the company which produced the official 2006 World Cup football sticker album—and, more importantly, the collectable stickers which go inside it. Kevin Hayes and Ailish Hannigan tried to fill up their albums.     

Ego Development and Adolescent Academic Achievement

This study investigated ego developmental differences in adolescent academic orientations and academic achievement. A sample of 142 male and female high school students completed the Washington University Sentence Completion Test and self‐report measures assessing academic locus of control, learning orientation (LO), and grade orientation (GO). With increasing ego development, adolescents demonstrated increased internal academic locus of control, stronger LOs, diminished GOs, and higher class rank. Regression analysis indicated that ego level was a significant predictor of academic achievement after controlling for the effects of verbal intelligence and gender. Implications for fostering academic success through theoretically relevant interventions are discussed.     

Habitat equivalency in urban estuaries: An analytical hierarchy process for planning ecological restoration

Ecosystem restoration is critically important in urbanized landscapes because habitat degradation is severe and ubiquitous in such areas. Because successful restoration requires specification of desired environmental endpoints, a generally applicable method for valuing and comparing possible restoration endpoints is needed. One method available for comparative valuation is the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). AHP allows a suite of alternatives to be valued on a rank scale based on simple, tractable, paired comparisons among all alternatives. Given a sound technical foundation for the paired comparisons, the method yields an objective set of rank values. By incorporating the relative values of various restoration alternatives in a restoration scaling evaluation such as a Habitat Equivalency Analysis (HEA), restoration programs can be designed effectively both qualitatively (in terms of the kinds of resources or habitats desired) and quantitatively (in terms of the amounts or areas of each). In this study, we develop and apply AHP in the context of a specimen HEA for US Mid-Atlantic coast estuaries. By ranking various habitat types as potential restoration targets based on their value for a suite of key natural resources, a series of restoration ratios is produced, relating relative habitat areas of each type needed to offset specific impairment levels. These ratios provide a basic tool for restoration planning in urbanized estuaries, as these comprise nearly entirely built environments with little or no natural habitat. Under these conditions, restoration planners must specify desired states of the ecosystem, and the restoration ratios allow various permutations of presumed post-restoration environments to be valued and compared.     

Stress Hormone Changes and Marital Conflict: Spouses’ Relative Power Makes a Difference

We investigated the impact of relative marital power on 72 newlywed couples’ endocrinological responses to marital conflict. Marital power was determined by comparing spouses’ reports of dependent love for one another. Less powerful spouses displayed elevated adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) responses to a conflict discussion. Shared power appeared to have a beneficial effect on wives’ but not husbands’ ACTH responses. Spouses’ cortisol levels declined over time, except for wives who were less powerful and for husbands who shared power with their wives. Conflict behaviors did not differ as a function of this marital power index. These data suggest that relative levels of general emotional power in relationships may play an important role in spouses’ physiological responses to marital conflict.