 And then we are live. Okay, so finally 15 minutes late, but better late than never. This is our MassCom 101 video chat for students of Vivian Medina Messner and Jeff South and Chung Hong's students are also either online or we'll be watching this later on. Our guest is Dr. Ralph Hansen, the author of our textbook, Mass Communication, Living in a Media Age, or a Media World, rather. And so we wanted to pepper Ralph with some questions. We can just maybe start off just with a little bio, Ralph. If you could tell us a little bit about yourself, how you became a media scholar and just what your interest in this field. Okay. Now, Ralph, how are you? I'm getting a beard echo and I'm not going to be up on video. Okay. When you talk, you'll appear on video. I'm going to mute my microphone. And that's always good for the other folks to do too, so that there's no feedback, so that your voice, Ralph, doesn't come into our computer and then go back out through our microphone. So I'm gonna mute my microphone and let you talk. So Ralph, your microphone should not be muted, of course, because you'll be talking. Okay, that sounds great. Well, hello and welcome to the chat. I'm always glad to do this. I think this is the second or third time we've done this. I like to say that I am a Watergate baby. I came of age in the 1970s. I can tell you exactly where I was when Nixon stepped down from the White House. I was 14 years old and I had been riding my bike in the Des Moines Registers Great Bike right across Iowa. And I got to Cedar Falls that evening and we sat and watched on the news, watched Nixon Resign. And I just became enthralled with journalism during that time period. And I went to Iowa State and studied science writing there, which is a little bit different from political communication and got my bachelor's in journalism and anthropology. And then I went on and I worked a little bit in public relations and then I worked for a newspaper for a couple of years. And I went back to graduate school and I didn't really have any big intention at that point except that I had applied for a job and they wanted me to have a master's degree and I didn't have it. And so I went back and while I was doing that, I got interested in possibly becoming an academic. I came from an academic family. My father was a physics professor and I started doing that and I got my master's and then I started on a doctorate in sociology and almost on a lark I applied for a job in Flagstaff, Arizona, Northern Arizona University and wonder of wonders, I got the job and with about a week's notice, moved from Iowa to Arizona and started working as a journalism professor. And while I was working full-time as a journalism professor there, I also commuted from there to Phoenix to, well to Tempe to Arizona State University where I completed my doctorate in sociology. And I've moved around a little bit since then. I lived in West Virginia for 15 years and then an opportunity came to move to Kearney, Nebraska which my wife somewhat mockingly refers to as my dream town, but the simple fact is is that I long thought actually back to when we lived in Arizona some day I would like to live in Kearney, Nebraska. Don't ask me to explain, I can't. But anyway, we've now lived in central Nebraska now for 10 years. When I was at West Virginia University, I had been writing reviews of textbooks and the like for publishers and I had a publisher contact me and say, gee, we'd love to meet with you at a journalism conference and I hadn't been planning on going to the conference but it wasn't far away. So I drove for the day and met with the editor and they said, we'd like you to write an intro to MassCom textbook for us. And that didn't really seem like something that I'd ever thought that I would do and I didn't end up coming to terms with that publisher but McGraw Hill, which is one of the giants of publishing decided that they wanted me to write one and so I did and it took a very long time. It was a lot of work, it was about five years and anybody who ever tells you, oh, we'll just have some people cooperatively put together a textbook and it'll be great. A textbook is an incredible amount of work to do and I wrote it for them and the book wasn't an ideal match for the publisher. They weren't quite sure what to do with it. They had five other competing texts on their line about a year, year and a half after they published it, they said, we're not going to do a second edition. And I go, oh, and that turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me because McGraw Hill is a fabulous publisher. They do a lot of great books but we were not a good fit with each other and they were very helpful to me. They were very good about returning the rights to my book to me. I have nothing bad to say about them other than that we were a bad fit for each other. And then a publisher by the name of CQ Press, Congressional Quarterway Press, found out that I had the manuscript and asked to see it and within two weeks I had a contract with CQ Press and working with them has been phenomenal. And then several years ago, I started getting word that CQ Press was up for sale and I was terrified that it was going to be bought by one of these giant publishers and my life would be miserable and it turned out that it got bought by Sage Publications. And quite frankly, when my book was returned to me by McGraw Hill, my first thought was, hmm, maybe I can go to Sage. And when CQ Press got acquired by Sage, that was fabulous. So there's probably more inside baseball on publishing than you really wanted but I've just now finished, I'm working on finishing the last details on the seventh edition of your textbook. We've been making final, final edits to the manuscript. I've been trying, I have three PowerPoints left to do, they supposedly do tonight. I'm not sure that I'm going to get the last, I'm going to get all of them done tonight and then I have a teacher's manual to finish and the book goes to press in roughly a month. Oh, that's great. Actually, I believe Professor Medina Messner's publisher, Riving, you've got a book coming out from Sage too, as well. Right, absolutely. That I will talk about eventually, but Ralph, I wanted to ask you a little bit, can you share with the students a little bit about how is that process to do research because you of course do a fabulous job with our book and all the multimedia components. Can you talk about how you combine your blog, the multimedia and all those great elements so that professors like us and students can take advantage of all the great things. Okay, well, the book, could we get your microphone? Oh, sorry. When I work on an edition, the book comes out every two years and there's roughly a year of just doing general light duty research and then a year of almost round the clock work on the book. I use a database called Evernote and with Evernote, I can clip articles off the web and from databases and what have you and throw them in there and by the time I am done with the book, I will have collected somewhere in the vicinity of 1100 articles for each edition. I won't reference every one of them, but I'll use a lot of them and then I write a blog, whatever I find an article that I think is interesting, I throw it into my Evernote database and then when I find some that sort of go together on a topic, I write a blog post and you can think of the blog post as being the pre-rough draft of things that I'm going to write. I was supposed to have gotten a blog post written last night and I just didn't have the heart to do it. Today, about the two journalists who look like they've been murdered. There was a woman in Hungary, I believe, who was raped and murdered who was covering the totalitarian regime there and it looks very likely that a Saudi journalist who wrote columns for the Washington Post, he went to the Saudi Embassy in Turkey and to get some wedding documents that he never came out, there are some very, very scary reports coming out that he was tortured, murdered, and cut into little pieces to take out of the embassy. We don't know what happened to him yet, but I just don't want to write that blog post. I have a couple sections where I talk about dangers journalists face and unfortunately these two people are going to likely be featured in the eighth edition about dangers journalists face. I write blog posts about a range of things. I also post videos when I find them. I have a tumbler that I use, it's RalphieHanson.tumbler.com where I put up videos, but a lot of the videos that you're giving me credit for are researched by some other people. My publisher hires some people to help find some of the illustrated videos that go in there. I write a lot of things from my book that not every author does. I write the test bank for it. It's a spam question that you guys get, like them or hate them, I'm responsible for them if your teacher is using the test bank. I write the PowerPoint slides and I write an instructor's manual. Each of those take a fair amount of time and then right as I'm finishing things up I start working on the next edition. I write about a dozen, twenty articles in the database for the eighth edition, even though the seventh edition has yet to be published. I guess that speaks to how dynamic the field is and things are constantly changing. I guess the fact that you've got your blog is a great way for people using the book to stay up on current issues as well as for you to archive things that will go into the next hardback edition or the paperback edition. Wendian, do you have a question you'd like to throw out to Dr. Hansen? You need to turn on your microphone. Yes, I just did. Can you hear me? I don't hear you. Yes, I can hear you. Same here. Fine. Yes, that's fine. Good, good. Actually, I'm a Saudi journalist and I'm a doctoral student here in mathematics. So, I'm going to hit the academia side in my country or some neighboring countries. So, do you prefer or do you think that your book will work there? Because actually we have here five parts. Only the part five talks about the institutions and the states here. So, the first four, I guess, they are general. But what do you think? It certainly has been used in other countries. It clearly is primarily focused on the American media industry and then other media around the world as a comparison point to that. The global media chapter is not the only... There is a big focus on global media there, but I do talk about media from other world or from other countries in other chapters. But clearly, this starts with a... with at least a North American point of view. Do it. I think that would be fair to say. There's a lot of books, and I couldn't name one off the top of my head, but there are a range of books that I use to look at global media issues that would do that somewhat more completely than mine. But I do know that mine is used I know it's been used in Hong Kong. It's been used in Canada. It's been used in Britain. Good. Right. Ralph, I think it's interesting that your doctorate is in sociology. You teach MassCom. How do you see the relationship between those two disciplines? Does one especially inform the other? Well, actually, I would add a third one there, which is anthropology. Specifically, I studied archaeology. And I think they all fit together beautifully. First of all, I think that journalism and archaeology are amazingly closely connected. Now, granted, you don't go out in the field and work with trowels and dig in the dirt and run the dirt through sieves and find artifacts. But you are digging through and trying to tell a story. And you are trying to collect information and figure out what information does that story tell. And you do that with anthropology and you do that with journalism. With sociology, do you have a doctoral program in journalism, MassCom? We do not. We've got a task force that's looking at developing one. And what we do have is an interdisciplinary program that Wedgen referred to called MATX, Media, Art and Text. And it is a collaboration among the School of MassCom, Robertson School, the School of the Arts and the English Department. Okay, interesting. Because one of the things I say that sometimes gets me in trouble is that I think that there's a lot of mass communication that's very much a sub-branch of sociology. I think and I take a very strong sociological approach to my study of mass communication. I'm not supposed to say that around places that have that's why I asked about the doctorate. Places that have doctorates in MassCom they don't like me to say that it's kind of like a sub-area of sociology. I started at it honestly for pragmatic reasons. I was at Iowa State University for my masters and bachelors. And when I started working on a start work on a PhD there and the sociology was the closest thing there. When I went to Arizona State at the time, Arizona State now has a fabulous MassCom doctorate at the Cronkite School and in all honesty, if I were going there at the point where had that been available to me I would have looked into it. However, I studied with two fabulous, fabulous media sociologists Robert Snow and David Altidie at Arizona State and so I mean I studied media sociology there and was absolutely thrilled with the education that I got there. Now, would sociology have been as good for me other places? Perhaps, but I had two great media sociologists to work with so it was a good call for me. But one of the things I've noticed in journalism is that you see people with a range of degrees at a big journalism program you will typically see one or two people who have law degrees you will see one or two people who have history degrees it is possible you will see somebody with a political science degree or a sociology degree and a lot of people with calm or mass calm degrees and one of the things I like about the field is that not everybody has the same education. Vivian? Oh yes Ralph, you were talking a little bit about telling stories before well actually this week we're going to be talking about movies and television in my class can you talk a little bit about the need to have more diverse stories and diversity and television and movies can you also talk about maybe some opportunities for our students who will be future producers writers directors yes, if you can talk a little bit about that Okay, let me I'm just real quickly opening up the table of contents for the seventh edition of the textbook we made a huge push for increasing diversity within the new edition simply because and it wasn't even I don't even know if it was deliberate it was just it kept happening and so for example we open the the media effects chapter with the Me Too movement and looking at that in terms of critical theory and we open the audio chapter with Lin-Manuel Miranda and his bringing of hip hop into Broadway and into new audiences also taking a little bit of a look at Kendrick Lamar there as well and then when we get to the chapter on movies in your edition we open the book chapter with looking at Ta-Nehisi Coates and his work on the Black Panther comics comic books the Ta-Nehisi he Mr. Coates gets a one of the genius what's the name of the genius grants the MacArthur Foundation genius grants and what does he use the money for to give him time to go write comic books for Marvel and then this time around I'm opening the movie chapter with is it Ryan Coogler who did the Black Panther movie directed and wrote and and the cast of Black Panther Black Panther was a stunningly diverse movie not just from having a black writer and director and almost all black cast I don't use the term African-American because it was not necessarily an African-American cast there were a number of of black actors from literally all over the world as a part of it so I open with that movie it was also interesting because it had a particularly diverse cast in that it had a large number of women working on it much larger than typical and you know it's now the number three movie of all time in terms of absolute dollars not in terms of adjusted for inflation that will always be some older movies from higher attendance times but it's the number three movie of all time and you know part of part of it was just an incredible movie but part of it was not just that it was a movie telling an African story but it was because it was telling a different story than the story that we keep getting told again and again we keep getting told white male stories and they're great and there's nothing wrong with telling white male stories but that's pretty much all we get and so one of the reasons that I think that Black Panther was so successful is that it told us a different kind of story it told from different perspectives different goals different different things I mean you know instead of being rescued from Arab terrorists in the United States you have his ex-fiance Black Panther's ex-fiance rescuing girls from Bokeh Haram or it wasn't Bokeh Haram but it was that at the beginning of Black Panther and so again you're dealing with different stories and I think that that's one of the critical things is that we have a variety of stories a range of stories and that's part of why we're getting such excitement right now I mean if you look at Hamilton Alexander Hamilton is a fabulous figure and he was long past due for some sort of dramatic interpretation but having a Puerto Rican kid who grew up on hip-hop and went to an arts high school in Manhattan and say how do I combine my status as someone of an outsider who loves hip-hop and tell the story of an outsider and how can I create a new kind of show that wasn't even Miranda wasn't even trying to write a Broadway musical he was just trying to write a concept album and then it turned into the biggest hit on Broadway in decades really interesting because you can see the interest and appeal in diverse content in so many different forms and Wedyin wrote a Facebook post for my class Rich Crazy Asians and how that movie took off and it was perhaps not as exciting maybe as Black Panther but in its own way told a story with diverse content with a cultural angle that is usually not you know that you're not going to see in Sleepless in Seattle or whatever you know rom-com hit you might point to exactly and romantic comedies are never as financially successful as action movies are but Crazy Rich Asians was the most successful rom-com since the 90s so telling a different story with different actors different writers different characters when the movie came out my Twitter feed just absolutely exploded with people saying oh my god I never thought I would see such and such and I can't remember the details but there were all these cultural aspects that were saying oh yeah they never do that they never get that right in movies and this just nailed it and so it was one of the things that was you had a great cast you had a fun story you had you know and it's I mean my wife used to write my wife and my mother-in-law used to write romantic comedy for Harlequin and you know wrote a bunch of books for them and you know Crazy Rich Asians is cultural touchstones that make for a fabulous story and one of the things that is so neat about it is the importance of families and how these families interact and you you have this friend of hers of the woman the heroine from high from college and that she comes and stays with them and it's sort of she's outside that and you think at first that her dad sort of this buffoon but her dad is this incredibly engaged loving father who is completely involved with them and that loyalty a family there I don't know I do not like romantic I do not like comedies period because usually they make people look stupid and I hate movies where people look stupid and this was a wonderful romantic comedy where people do bad dumb things but they're not dumb people and I thought it was a tremendous tremendous movie and just boy you know if it had come out earlier I probably would have talked about that one as well um Wedyen would you like to ask another question yes actually I have a question regarding the Saudi journalist you mentioned before Jamal Khashoggi regarding this story there are many news organizations said that he was killed first later on they changed their mind that it's not he's not killed so these shifts or if I can say political ideologies frames are these related to media literacy boy this is this is a difficult um we have a story here that we know that this person has disappeared and we don't really know what has happened yet and there is there was a story that came out from a Turkish news site that had the he has been murdered tortured murdered and hauled away story which is where that story first saw I did not pass that story along on twitter because I didn't know anything about the news source I'm not saying that it was incredible it's that I don't I don't know anything about it um and I don't I know that you know most Americans in dealing with international journalism know that free speech in the Saudis don't go together well I don't know that they have had a reputation like some countries do of murdering critics Russia's got a pretty strong reputation for journalists who start being critical of them wind up dead there's been something you know a really long string of them and so I think you know if there was a media frame it was what's been happening to Russian journalists over the last 10 years that frame sort of got applied there some places have been far more cautious in how they're reporting it the Washington Post did which was they pulled something that came out of South Africa back when during the apartheid era when the newspapers were being censored in South Africa when they had stories being censored they would leave blank spaces in the paper to show that a story has been censored and eventually the South African government said that it was illegal to publish blank spaces to show that a story had been censored and the Post printed a blank space where the gentleman's column was supposed to have been he's been gone a week now I personally do not hold up much hope that he's going to show back up there were cameras all around that area that would have shown if he had come out on his own but it's a it's a difficult one and then there are frames about telling stories about how the American political administration is responding to this they've had a very very cautious response to that there have been people who have been who are very very critical of the current administration who have been quite harsh on things and there was one journalist who talked about some of the things that the Saudi journalist had done that a lot of people were saying you know if this guy's not dead now with what you've revealed you might end up but it's difficult because I don't think one of the hardest things to research for this book is Middle Eastern media and until Northwestern started doing their annual surveys about 5 years ago about 8 countries Middle East and North Africa there was nothing available there it was the hardest research I had to do was what are the media like in these countries and there was just nothing there and then Northwestern set up a cooperative project with the university in Qatar and there started to be some regular survey research being done in the area and all of a sudden there started to be a lot more detail in the 5th and 6th editions and now the 7th but before that study got started boy it was it was tough there was not much so we were a little bit over half hour and so I thought we might want to wrap it up with one more question and Vivian I'll leave that one to you if that's okay if you've got something. Yes I would love to hear Ralph can you give some tips to our students in terms of future jobs that of course in mass comm we talk about so many different angles of the media and so can you give them some tips some things to look forward to with everything that they're learning in their classes. I'm going to tell my youngest son was a sports management major but he also had two minors essentially a major in journalism and mass comm and he works in sports communication when he was an incoming freshman they were getting ready to hire a new athletic director here at University of Nebraska at Carney and as an incoming freshman he went to each of the public presentations given by the new the candidates for the athletic director and he went and I don't know if he asked questions there but he was there he introduced himself to each of the athletic directors and when he showed up to be a student here he was the sports editor of the student newspaper his first semester here he had a radio show at our student radio station for about two and a half, three years he volunteered and worked at sports information at games he even did field announcing for wrestling matches and so the thing is I'm not supposed to say this but employers don't care that much about your grades don't tell they care about what you've done and if you are not doing all the time in school you're not going to get to where you want to be yes you need to do well in school but you also need to be working at the student paper working at the radio station working at the student TV programming working for the campus PR working for sports information when there is an opportunity to do something go do it one of the most successful people I went to school with at Iowa State as a photographer by the name of John Jay Gaps the third and there was a freezing cold night it was 20 and fraternity house a big old school brick fraternity house one of the fancy ones out of animal house was on fire and he went out and shot pictures of it all that night and it turned into an ice palace you know from the firefighting and then he went out at sunrise and shot it in color this is back in the film days ask your parents and he shot it in color and he was on the front page of every newspaper in the country the next day with those photos shipped them out through the Associated Press and the day after that fire every photo editor in the country knew who John Jay Gaps the third was now did he have a great opportunity because there was this dramatic fire when it was freezing cold and there was dramatic photos yes of course but the thing that made the difference was not that there was this big fire it was 20 below at night and he went out and spent the night taking pictures and so what you have to do is that when there are opportunities you have to go out and be doing them and that's what will get you success I mean that's really really good advice for students who want to start their career regardless whether it's in mass comm or any other field to combine that practical application with what they learn in the classroom so that's great I think that should do so thank you so much for visiting with us Ralph and for writing the textbook and for updating it for the next time we teach the class so I guess the new book will be out you said before the end of the year mid-November okay cool great well thanks again and like I said we'll put this or this video automatically archives on YouTube the same link that I sent out before but I'll make sure that everybody gets it so that if you didn't catch this the first time around you'll be able to watch the entire episode and thanks again for joining us Ralph and Vivian and Wedyen so great thanks everybody all right take care if you have any questions send them to me on Twitter just Ralphie Hansen okay good good thank you all right thanks so I'm going to click the stop broadcast button the same one I could not find earlier which threw us off but thanks again everybody for especially for putting up with the technological problems no problem take care bye bye