refrigerator journalism
“Refrigerator Journalism” is the title of my second master’s thesis. My advisor writes, “it was a joy to read this, Christine. You have expressed extraordinary well the aura surrounding community newspapers. I dislike thinking the paper might just collect dust on a shelf in your house and our department. It should be read by journalism students. It especially would be beneficial to staffers of community newspapers. Your understanding of, and sensitivity to, their routines and goals would be a terrific morale booster. WELL DONE!!!!”
My original graduate thesis was to put my college newspaper online.
At the time, the internet had just gone graphic — meaning, we had the internet, albeit dial-up (don’t ask) but we only had text. This possibility of publishing images AND text online was revolutionary. I was so excited. Because of my job as editor-in-chief, I had a million-dollar advertising budget to work with and 100 student employees under me — I had the resources and the knowledge to build an online newspaper. And I had my advisor’s support. So I rolled up my sleeves and got to work.
Many months into the project, far too late for me to turn back, my advisor got cancer and had to go to the Mayo Clinic. I landed in front of the department head, who had taken over my advisor’s academic duties, to explain my thesis. I was positively bursting with ideas and possibilities, telling him all about learning to write HTML, the graphical interface, interactive reader polls, contributions in the comments, journalism forever changed.
He leaned back and then said to me, deadpan: “Christine, the internet is a fad. Find a topic and write a paper.”
I am not making this up.
I wrote the paper. It’s titled, “Refrigerator Journalism” (get it? You know, the kind of newspaper articles that Moms cut with scissors and hang on the fridge), an exploration of community journalism in small towns and how such newspapers affect the local residents and economy. It was illustrated by clippings of me in a homemade costume in Kindergarten all the way through my sports team photos in high school.
“Refrigerator Journalism” was never published in academic circles, although the praise it earned from my esteemed faculty advisor, Philip Mangelsdorf (1923-1998), made the effort totally worthwhile.
The Daily Wildcat Online was one of the first of its kind, and it still gets recognition for that.
