I’m a journalism professor at California State University – Northridge. I’ve also worked as a journalist at the Daily Press in Virginia and The Charlotte Observer in North Carolina. I’ve written for Real Change,
Seattle’s homeless newspaper, and worked with a student collective producing content for KPFK’s “Indymedia On Air.”
I teach international news, journalism skills classes and qualitative research methods. I’ve taught journalism in Ethiopia, studied township newspapers in Zimbabwe, and more recently produced a radio documentary about the media reform movement in Taiwan. I was selected for a Berglund Fellowship for internet studies and a Poynter fellowship at Indiana University for journalism professors.
My research focuses on international news/new media/social change. I’m interested in how media can be used to change the world and shape the way we see it. I’ve presented nearly 30 research papers at national and international conferences (including Barcelona, Toronto, Singapore, Acapulco and Vancouver) and published more than two dozen research articles/chapters/reports/reviews. Lately, I’ve been studying with my colleague, Douglas Bicket, the increased popularity of the British news media in the US, particularly as American media stop covering international news or do so from a narrow ideological perspective. I’m also focused on social media, especially blogs, and questions such as whether YouTube and other web phenomenon really change how non-Western people and places are presented, and whether warblogs and other social media have been “tamed” by commercial and U.S. military initiatives.
I have an MA and PhD from the University of Washington and my BA is from the University of Virginia founded by a guy named Thomas Jefferson who said, “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” (Um, he also said, “The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them.”) Go figure. Contact me: melissa.a.wall[at]csun.edu.
Many thanks to photographer Garen Cansler for allowing me to use this photo.
I am the coauthor of a book entitled “Moral Panics” & want to reproduce an image which I believe you own the copyright to. I found it at:
http://melissawall.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/wto.jpg
Please tell me how I might ontain the right to reproduce this image.
Thank you very much.
Best wishes, Erich Goode
I am sorry about what happened to Ehsa. However, unless you have been living in another planet in the past few years, you would have known that Iran is a police state. In light of the arrests made in the recent years, I can’t believe how you or Ehsa would not have anticipated this. A young girl going to streets of Tehran and asking about women’s rights!!! I hope she is released soon
Dear Melissa,
my name is Charlotte. I am a current intern for WTOP NEWS in Washington DC. We are doing a report on Esha’s arrestment.
Therefore we would love to do a short interview with you, as her professor, and with students she studied with. As you may know journalism is a fast business, especially radio journalism.
If you had time today for a short telephone interview would be great. I already contacted your secretary. I hope this reaches you first.
My boss’ number: 202-895-5278. Please call.
Thank you very much.
Charlotte
To Melissa Wall,
I am the producer and presenter of the program “Cooked Breakfast” on Australian radio station Radio Adelaide 101.5 FM. “Cooked Breakfast” is a program on which I introduce and then play radio documentaries. Is it possible for me to include your documentary about media reform in Taiwan on “Cooked Breakfast”?
That’s a very interesting study about the popularity of the British media in the U.S. I am definitely one who has turned to the BBC and the Guardian for what I believe to be trustworthy information while simultaneously dodging the (increasingly popular) World Wrestling Entertainment-esque partisan warfare talk shows over here. The only thing that separates the cable news analysts from WWE performers is that the stunt wrestlers tend to have deeper voices and actually look like they can do damage if they fought each other. But, the words are scripted and the content is all fake. Isn’t it? Sounds familiar. The ratings are high and the parent companies make a lot of money from this spectacle though. Sounds familiar.
You should check out “For Many, British is Better” in the British Journalism Review, Vol. 15, No. 3, 23-28 (2004).
Actually, you may have been the one to recommend that to me. If that’s the case, never mind.
-SK