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When it’s OK to say “I don’t know”
“Leading your company with decisiveness can seem like the way to go,” Amy Sowder of The Packer observed in a recent article. “It’s strong. Firm answers can encourage employees to feel confident and secure in their company. Employees need assurance, especially in these uncertain times.”
However, speakers in a COVID-19 Environment session of the 2020 United Fresh Washington Conference also emphasized that sometimes it’s better to tell your employees that you don’t know. For example:
- Remaining silent until you have an answer for your next step during a crisis can cause employees even more stress.
- Silence may make employees think their leaders don’t care.
- Have a plan for when you don’t know.
- Make space for employees to talk, to ask questions, and to hear updates from you.
You can read this brief and ever-timely article here.
“Reinforcing the rural status quo” in a river system
Media coverage of health and politics involving Australia’s largest river system came under review in a recent article in the journal, Environmental Communication. Researchers conducted a critical discourse analysis of rural radio coverage of issues in the Murray-Darling River system. In particular, they analyzed national coverage in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) “Country Hour” program. Findings prompted them to note a “constrained range of discourses…largely due to journalists assigning framing power to a limited group of elite agricultural and political sources and legitimating their ideological positions especially through the program presenters’ contextualizing commentary.” They also noted “some significant absences – the voices of people who live in the Basin, including First Nations and others with environmental concerns.”
“As scholars who desire to be actively participating subjects in a global environment, we take up (Arjun) Appadurai’s invitation to imagine a time soon when the Murray-Darling will be heard on its own terms, not only on Australia’s rural airwaves, but throughout the land.”
This article is available for purchase from the publisher. You can read the abstract and get details about how to purchase the article from the publisher here. Feel free to check with us at acdc@library.illinois.edu for help.
Where the produce industry is missing the boat on consumption
How is consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables not increasing at record margins each year? Alex DiNovo, president of DNO Produce group of companies, Columbus, Ohio, asked that question in a recent issue of The Packer.
“We need a concise, unapologetic, and perhaps even edgy approach to marketing ourselves as an industry,” he suggested, perhaps along the line of what the milk industry did. It began the Dairy Checkoff program nearly 40 years ago, forming an organization to grow consumption and trust through promotion, research, and nutrition education. “…as an entire industry, we are far more powerful than on a commodity-by-commodity basis.”
You can read the commentary here.
Small-town newspapers and heinous crimes
We recently added a journal article that examined the role of small newspapers when bizarre and shocking crimes are committed locally. The study by Kristy Hess and Lisa Waller focused on three towns in regional Australia “that have been represented in metropolitan and international news media as ‘dead zones’ after shocking crimes.”
Findings indicated that while small newspapers lack the power to overturn negative media representations of their communities they do have the authority to instruct their readership in how to respond to the events themselves and the negative representations by big media.
You can read this article, “The Snowtown we know and love,” in Rural Society here.
Scholars need to address rural health care ethics more rigorously
We recently added a 2006 research report about this subject in the American Journal of Bioethics. The research team members based that conclusion on their review of health care literature focused on rural America between 1966 and 2004. They identified 55 publications that specifically and substantively addressed rural health care ethics. Only seven (13%) were original research articles; most were descriptive summaries of research and general commentaries.
This article is available for purchase from the publisher. You can read the abstract and get details for full access here. Feel free to check with us at acdc@library.illinois.edu for help.
Communicator events approaching
Uncertainties of the COVID-19 health issue continue to prompt flexible event planning. Here are plans of which we are aware, with contact information you can use for details.
January 28, 2022
Deadline for research papers to be presented at the annual conference of the Association for Communication Excellence in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Life and Human Sciences (ACE) in Kansas City, Missouri, June 12-14, 2022,
Information: Shannon Norris at norriss@nmsu.edu
February 13-14, 2022
National Agricultural Communications Symposium in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Southern Association of Agricultural Scientists in New Orleans, Louisiana. Information: https://www.saasinc.org
February 18, 2022
Deadline for posters to be presented at the ACE annual conference in Kansas City, Missouri, June 12-14, 2022.
Information: Cara Lawson at cara.lawson@oregonstate.edu
February 18, 2022
Deadline for outstanding theses and dissertations to be recognized at the ACE annual conference in Kansas City, Missouri, June 12-14, 2022.
Information: Garrett Steede at gsteede@umn.edu
June 12-14, 2022
Annual Conference of the Association for Communication Excellence in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Life and Human Sciences (ACE) in Kansas City, Missouri. Information: https://aceweb.org
July 16-20, 2022
“On the point.” Ag Media Summit in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Information: https://agcommnetwork.com/unveiling-the-theme-and-logo-for-ag-media-summit-2022
A year-end toast
We close this year-farewell issue of ACDC News with an Irish toast:
“May the roof above us never fall in,
And may we friends gathered below
Never fall out.”
Offering information and best regards
ACDC is a resource for you, so please feel free to invite our help as you search for information. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @ACDCUIUC. And please suggest (or send) agricultural communications documents we might add to this unique and valued international collection. We welcome them in hard copy (sent to Ag Comm Documentation Center, Room 510, 1101 S. Goodwin Avenue, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801) – or in electronic format sent to acdc@library.illinois.edu