Bob Stepno

Department of Journalism and Public Information
Emerson College
100 Beacon Street
Boston, MA 02116
Phone: 617/824-8925

Internet: bob_stepno@emerson.edu

Goal:

Assignment as writer, editor, teacher or evangelist with an organization interested in the future of communication, publishing and education. Value diversity, opportunities to continue learning and to help others do the same.

Skills:

Making new communication tools and technologies clear to general audiences, using common sense, a sense of humor and an ever-changing variety of computers and software. (Listed below.)

Professional Experience

Emerson College, Boston, Mass.: Sept. 1999-
Assistant professor, department of journalism and public information, School of Communication, Management and Public Policy, teaching news writing, editing, and courses about online journalism.

Nando.net/McClatchy New Media: 1994-1998
Part-time editor for the Nando Times, an electronic newspaper that has grown to be much more than an online edition of the News and Observer, Raleigh, N.C. (My third experience working for a company at the time of a takeover by a larger firm from California.)

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1994-1998.
  • January-May, 1999, part-time staff in the Graduate School dean's office, revising the school's Web pages and working on various public information projects. Primary responsibility for student-funding Web site, http://research.unc.edu/grad/funding/
  • Instructor, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, teaching introductory course on the World Wide Web and other electronic information sources, July-August, 1998. Syllabus is online as http://www.unc.edu/courses/jomc050/july98bob
  • Research and teaching assistant, School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
    • In 1995-96, worked closely with Prof. Debashis Aikat, to create the school's first required course on electronic information sources, from searching library databases to building Web pages. Used HTML to do our first online syllabus with linked lab exercises. Conducted classes on Macintosh basics, electronic publishing, Usenet and the Internet.
    • In 1996-97 assisted Prof. Phil Meyer with courses in news writing and media analysis, and built web pages for him and for his students' reference. Also helped Prof. Richard Elam with broadcast journalism courses, creating and grading quizzes used with a multimedia CD-ROM course text.
    • Spring 1995, working for Prof. Carol Reuss, managed file conversion and technical editing to help team of four authors deliver a 700-page media ethics textbook manuscript on deadline.
    • Fall 1994, helped Prof. Frank Biocca and Prof. Jane Brown set up subject pool and materials for experimental testing of a cable TV industry anti-violence campaign.
 

Freelance writer, consultant: off and on since 1986
News, feature and technical writing; software reviews, public relations, marketing research and computer training assignments on topics ranging from word processing and databases to bulletin board systems, computer vision, security, virtual yacht clubs and hypertext. Articles in BYTE, InfoWorld Direct, Computer Buying World, Soundings and PC World.

Soundings Publications, Essex, CT: 1989-1993
Staff writer for three Macintosh-based monthly trade newspapers, Soundings, Waterfront, and Soundings Trade Only. News and feature articles on people, issues and technology in recreational boating, boat industry, real estate. Assisted with network troubleshooting, software selection, training, telecommunications and file conversion.

Ashton-Tate/Multimate, East Hartford, CT: 1984-1987
Senior writer and editor for a then-major software company. Wrote user manuals for standalone and network software (word processing, database, graphics) as well as press releases, newsletter articles, new product specifications, marketing materials, and legal paperwork to sell company so founder could buy a very large boat. Created databases of media contacts, Multimate users.

The Hartford Courant , Hartford, CT.: 1969-1980
Reporter, editor, bureau chief and columnist for the second-largest newspaper in New England. Specialized in higher education for five years, covering the University of Connecticut, Yale, and other campuses. Managed five-town Storrs area bureau for three years. Part of first editorial team to use ATEX computer editing system, my start in writing with computers.

Education

Ph.D. Candidate in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I am working on a dissertation concerning electronic news publishing on the Web and its relationship to conventional ideas of news decision making or "gatekeeping." As course projects, I've created (with classmates) The New Republic Sampler, an experiment in low-budget, short-deadline online magazine design, and discussion papers on Java and Information Quality.

My first research paper presented at academic meetings was "Staged, faked and mostly naked: Photographic innovations at the Evening Graphic," a study of pre-digital photo manipulation and other tricks used by a scandalous 1920s tabloid. It was chosen the best student paper both by the 1997 Western Journalism Historians Conference in Berkeley, Calif. and (with revisions) by the Visual Communication Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication at the AEJMC 1997 national conference. (While I'm revising the paper for journal publication it's not appropriate to put put the full text online, so I've written a shorter Web page about The Evening Graphic's Tabloid Reality, online as http://www.unc.edu/~rbstepno/graphic)

M.A.L.S., Wesleyan University, 1988, interfield liberal studies degree; courses in computer science, cognitive psychology (artificial intelligence applied to instruction, user-centered design), communication and writing. Thesis, Approaching Hypertext: Cognitive models and usability of an electronic book technology. (There is a large plain text version of that document online.)

M.A., Wesleyan University, 1983, anthropology, with courses in ethnomusicology, thesis on group membership and ethnicity, fieldwork in Ireland, 1981, and teaching assistant to Prof. Mark Slobin for a course on ethnicity and popular culture. Extracurricular: early experience in computer industry realities (and need for a sense of humor about them) as owner of a "state of the art" Osborne 1 and editor of an Osborne 1 microcomputer users' newsletter. Also staff for campus AV/Media center.

B.A., University of Connecticut, 1969, English. Extracurricular: editor of student newspaper, student assistant to head of journalism department, coffeehouse concert organizer.

Computer Background

 

Homepage online at: http://www.unc.edu/~rbstepno

(last revision: 24 Oct., 1999)