Journalism Literacy

University of Missouri football fans now have the opportunity to win money by watching football and sharing their SEC season game day experience via a social game.

Traditional media, such as newspapers and television news, require readers and viewers to intentionally seek out news by picking up a newspaper or turning on the television. The Internet and new technologies now are changing the way readers consume online news. New research shows that Internet users often do not make the conscious decision to read news online, but they come across news when they are searching for other information or doing non-news related activities online, such as shopping or visiting social networking sites.

"Media and Money: Worldwide economic upheaval changes the shape of news," this year's annual IPI Report, brought together top journalists from around the world to address the international upheavals in economics and journalism. Edited, produced and published by the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI) for the International Press Institute, several industry leaders associated with RJI contributed to the work. The annual IPI Report was released Monday during the IPI World Congress in Taipei, co-edited by Marty Steffens, the Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW) Endowed Chair in Business and Financial Journalism, and Randy Smith, Donald W. Reynolds Endowed Chair in Business Journalism, both at the Missouri School of Journalism.

Other contributors to the Report from the Missouri School of Journalism and RJI include the Lee Hills Chair in Free Press Studies Amy McCombs, the Houston Harte Chair in Innovation Mike Jenner, 2010-2011 Reynolds Fellow David Cohn, recently retired and former Lee Hills Chair Stuart Loory, and Director of Pictures of the Year International (POYi) Rick Shaw.

By understanding how news readers unconsciously process news, Paul Bolls expects to come up with smarter ways to deliver both news and advertising. Bolls, co-director of the Psychological Research on Information and Media Effects, or PRIME, lab at the Missouri School of Journalism, has spent more than a decade making the connections between the human brain and how we're programmed to process media.

Since radio first hit the airwaves, the amount of change is nearly unquantifiable. Everything from technologically advanced switchboards, to digital transmission, to satellites, to podcasts has moved the industry a long way from where it began.