Updates have been sparse lately due to my moving to Austin. Yes, it's true: I did officially quit teaching after a year, and I am presently enrolled in the graduate program at UT-Austin's School of Journalism. Go Longhorns. (Not really.)

My courses this semester are introductions to qualitative research methods, quantitative research methods, and mass communication theory. I'm taking three courses on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays only, but I already expect the workloads to drown me. I've been to each of my three classes once so far, and already I have a couple hundred pages to read before Tuesday. It's totally worth it, by the way.

Each class requires that I write a scholarly paper suitable for publication. I'm not sure what direction I'm headed in for my mass communication theory class, but I have been toying with ideas for my quantitative and qualitative classes. I'd like to throw some of this stuff out there, to see what others think.

Some possible topics, briefly sketched, for quantitative research:

• Desire for radical, labor, and progressive media. Do people seek this media? Would they prefer to read openly biased--albeit diverse--news from a variety of sources? Before the era of media consolidation and the drive towards professionalization and objectivity in journalism, it was generally expected that people read diverse content from several different presses. Would people like to see a return to this? (Or see it for a first time, rather.)
• Desire to participate in journalism/media. Do people feel that newspapers represent them? Would they like to participate in journalism? Would they like to see participatory institutions in general? If not, why?
• Whether radical media actually radicalizes people. To what extent do readers of radical media (Z Magazine, for instance, or SW, etc.) feel that this sort of media actually makes them radical? I'm actually not sure whether this falls more under the qualitative aspect of things.
• Reader ages. At what ages do people consume the most radical media? If they used to read it and stopped, at what point did they stop and why?
• Readership and MonkeyWrench Books. What sort of media are people reading who come into MonkeyWrench Books? What effect does it have, if any?
• The usual suspects. And of course, there are the usual questions I have about the death penalty, U.S. foreign policy, human rights abuses, and so on, and the ways these are treated in media.

Of these, the first four loosely defined topics deal with creating democratic media structures. The first one is the most interesting to me.

A couple possible topics, briefly sketched, for qualitative research:

• Media use in the Save Kenneth Foster Campaign. The effort to save the life of Kenneth Foster from his Aug. 30 execution date made extensive use of media. Why did this work? What lessons can abolitionists draw from this example?
• Anarchist news media. There are lots of things about anarchist news media and journals that interest me.

I had a couple others, but I've forgotten them already. (This is why I'm typing these.) For now, the first topic above is the one that interest me the most. This is probably because it's fairly recent, I know many of the participants in it, and its implications are still unfolding.

On that note, if anyone has copies of the Socialist Worker or any other lefty/progressive/independent newspapers or magazines that discuss the Kenneth Foster case, I would be much obliged if you would save them for me or send them my way. I would like to compare content in these publications to the more mainstream coverage. 

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