New study by @shannonsindorf confirms: w/online news forums, handful of voices do all the talking

A study of the Greeley (Colo.) newspaper by our former grad student, Shannon Sindorf, confirms, when it comes to online news forums, most people like to watch (lurk) while a small minority comment.

A doctoral student at the University of Colorado, Shannon is co-authoring the study conducted for the Digital News Test Kitchen in response to the newspaper shutting down its comments section in 2011 after deciding the commenters were getting out of control.

Seems kinda extreme to me.

“Sounds of Beirut” scores a Gold Medal and other grad news

Our graduate student Seth Koury has won a “Gold Medal for Excellence” at the Park City Film Music Festival for his documentary “Sounds of Beirut.”  

Seth’s documentary has been raking in awards in the last couple of months:  Broadcast Education Association honorable mention and Thesis of the Year for the Journalism Department.

And there’s more good news.

Esha Momeni accepted a human rights award this weekend from the Visual Artists Guild, which is given in honor of the students killed at Tiananmen Square. Esha also accepted an award from the Feminist Majority Foundation last month for the women activists currently jailed in Iran.  She appeared on a panel with feminist icon Gloria Steinem, United Farmworkers co-founder Delores Huerta and Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner (bootleg video coming soon).  Esha will be entering the Women’s Studies doctoral program at UCLA this fall.

Anasa Sinegal has been accepted into the PhD program in Mass Comm at UNC-Chapel Hill and awarded one of their prestigious Park Fellowships.  She departs for the Land ‘o Grits this summer.  Shannon Sindorf was accepted into the PhD program at Colorado.

Sahar El Zahed presented her research on Western news coverage of the Gaza conflict at the “Ruptures of War” conference at the Claremont Colleges last month prompting a lively discussion.

Congratulations to our students.