Dr Cindy Carter is the longest serving lecturer at the School of Journalism, Media and Culture, dedicating years of her life to grooming and shaping the lives of students who would go out into the world to make an impact. She is the Founding Co-Editor of the Routledge Journal Feminist Media Studies, regarded internationally as the most important and influential journal of feminist media research in the world. We are elated to have such an influential person in our school and happy to share her years of experience and impact with you, as we keep filling our Memory Box. Enjoy!
OurButeMemories: Which course do you lead/ Which is your area of research?
Cindy: I teach Media and Gender (2ndyear undergrad) and Mediating Childhood (3rdyear undergrad). I also teach a workshop on focus groups as part of the Masters module “Putting Research into Practice
My principle areas of research centre on children, news and citizenship and on girls, women, news and journalism.
OurButeMemories: When did you join to JOMEC?
October 1, 1992
OurButeMemories: What is your best memory from that time? What has changed? (In terms of the industry)
Cindy: I was one of a very small team of academics teaching on the newly formed BA in Journalism, Film and Broadcasting as it was called at the time. I also taught Media and Gender to Masters students on the MA Journalism Studies which was situated in a separate section of the Department (JOMEC wasn’t yet a School – that didn’t happen until the late 1990s when we broke away from the School of English Studies, Journalism, and Philosophy. It was then, under the leadership of Prof John Harley, that we became the School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies.
A lot has changed since 1992 in terms of the teaching of the subject. Everything was done offline – there wasn’t even email until 1995. There was no internet to use as a research tool, no mobile telephones (at least ones that students could afford), and no social media. Teaching practical courses was done face to face and students using computers only to write stories and print them out. The media industry was still very much geared to print and broadcasting, so that’s what we taught. That said, colleagues like Daniel Meadows, for instance, saw how things were changing and becoming increasingly digital and the School became an early adopter and shaper of new digital realities of journalism in the early 21stcentury.
OurButeMemories: Do you recall any friendships from that time you still cherish?
Cindy: Yes, very many. Over the more than 25 years with JOMEC, I have been lucky to work with and become friends with many. I was hired by Prof Brian Winston in July 1992 for the brand-new BA degree which started a year earlier than the University planned. Aside from Brian, my first academic colleagues were Geoff Mungham and Kevin Williams, and on the Diplomas John Foscolo, Colin Larcombe, Mike Ungersma, Jean Silvan-Evans, Bob Atkins, and David English. I still keep in regular contact with many other colleagues over the years, including Maire Messenger Davies, Gill Branston, Roberta Pearson, John Tulloch and others through social media.
OurButeMemories: What impact do you feel the school has had on your career?
Cindy: Immeasurable. I wouldn’t have stayed for so many years if I didn’t feel completely at home in JOMEC. Whilst no workplace is perfect, one thing has been consistent in JOMEC is the commitment of colleagues to cutting-edge research and industry lead teaching of the highest calibre, along with our deep commitment to the intellectual and personal support for our students.
OurButeMemories: Who would you nominate to share a Bute memory?
Cindy: Tim Holmes – after me, he’s now the longest serving colleague in JOMEC still with the School.
OurButeMemories: What would be your one moment of excellence you experienced during your time at Bute?
Cindy: It is really difficult to single out one moment across more than 25 years. There have been so many examples of individual and collective successes in the School. Each highlights how special JOMEC has been in the research and teaching of journalism, media and culture, having individual, collective, national and international impact on the ways in which these subject areas are conceptualised, researched and practiced globally.
OurButeMemories: Would you like to talk a little bit about your current research and the Journal Feminist Media Studies?
Cindy: Over the past couple of decades I’ve been undertaking research on children’s relationship to the news and their growing sense of citizenship fostered by an engagement with the world. Most recently, I’ve been examining questions around girls, journalism and power. In this research, I’ve been exploring how girls are marginalised in news and journalism, as well as the ways in which girlhood studies research tends to overlook girls’ relationship to the public sphere. At the same time, in ever increasing numbers, girls are engaging with the news not only as audiences but also as journalists (citizen; community) and political bloggers.
I’m also currently beginning to research children’s news producers’ conception of the child audience and how this shapes the production of news for young audiences. In this research, I hope to be able to highlight how journalistic assumptions about the child audience demarcate limits to their participation in the public sphere as citizens in their own right, but, at the same time, such assumptions also encourage and legitimise news for children, thus acknowledging and supporting claims to children’s right to be informed, to communicate and to be taken seriously as young citizens.
I am Founding Co-Editor of the Routledge journal Feminist Media Studies. In 1998-1999 I helped to shape a proposal for the journal which was endorsed by over three dozen colleagues internationally. Our first issue came out in 2001 with three issues per year – in the early days we had to work very hard to ensure the journal received work of the highest quality and in sufficient numbers to establish it as a high impact, internationally focused journal representing a breadth and depth of feminist media scholarship (both academic and from professional practice). Seventeen years later, we are regarded, internationally, as the most important and influential journal of feminist media research in the world, and are about to move to eight issues per year to accommodate the volume of high quality research consistently sent to us. Throughout, I have remained as Co-Editor responsible those parts of the world other than the Americas. However, my Founding Co-Editor, Lisa McLaughlin, stepped down about 5 years ago, and my current Co-Editor, Radha Hegde, will be relinquishing her role at the end of 2018. I have already been working with a new Americas Co-Editor, Isabel Molina Guzman, who officially takes up as Co-Editor on 1 January 2019. Working on the journal has been a labour of love, and one of which I’m immensely proud. I’m proud of what we’ve been able to achieve and for the personal support I’ve had from JOMEC Heads of School over the years for this endeavour. For my part, I am proud that the journal has helped to raise the profile of JOMEC as a supporter of feminist media studies research. One almost full shelf in my Bute Office has box files from the early days of editing the journal when the reviewing and correspondence was done by hand. It is with a sense of much sadness that I won’t be able to take these files to our new building, as they are a visual reminder of the history of the journal in its home in Bute. Dropbox files don’t compare!
Thank you Dr Cindy Carter!