Q: What courses are you teaching this semester?
RC: JRN 101 -- a team taught course writing/JRN history course with 75 students (and 10 undergraduate assistants)
Q: What has been your favorite course to teach?
RC: Honors section of Intro to Media -- with my textbook!
Q: What advice do you have for other instructors who teach this course?
RC: Let students lead the discussion on social media. They know more than I do...and I learn a few things. They are also more critically perceptive about the pluses and minuses of Facebook and Twitter when they are in charge of the conversation.
Q: What are some of your research interests?
RC: Most recent article was about the rise of partisanship in the media and how it's driven by the economic interests of news outlets.
Q: If you could create (and teach) a brand new course for your department, what would it be?
RC: In partnership with Dept. of Statistics, we are developing a new course, News & Numbers, that will count as a quantitative literacy requirement in our college.
Q: What do you think is one of the biggest challenges students face now when they enter college?
RC: Too many choices and too many distractions with social media.
Q: What motivates you to continue teaching?
RC: Keeps me young...and I really like being around smart young people.
On a personal note...
Q. How do you take your coffee?
RC: With a little cream.
Q. What newspaper(s) do you read? Print or digital?
RC: Mostly read in print -- get the NY Times daily and also Dayton Daily News. Occasionally read the Cincinnati Enquirer, although its small tabloid format (thanks, Gannett!) is a turnoff... and hard on my eyes.
Q: How do you spend your time when you're not teaching?
RC: Reading, watching TV, playing golf, walking our dogs, visiting our 2-year old grandson in Ann Arbor.
Q: If you hadn't pursued a career in higher education, what career path do you think you would have chosen?
RC: I started out as a high school English teacher and coach (basketball and track) in Milwaukee but I wanted to be a TV critic for a newspaper.
Q. What’s your favorite TV show or movie of the year so far?
RC: TV -- Catastrophe, a smart comedy on Amazon; Movies -- a tie between Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Spotlight (which really gave good journalism a shot in the arm).
Q: What was the last book you read?
RC: Louise Penny's A Fatal Grace.
Q: What book has influenced you most?
RC: To Kill a Mockingbird when I was young; Walker Percy's The Last Gentleman when I was an undergrad; and Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions as a grad student.
Q: When you sit down to listen to music, which artists or genres do you go to most?
RC: My Pandora rotation in the shuffle mode includes 50s rock and roll, Janice Joplin, The Band, Levon Helm, Fats Waller, Gene Krupa, Django Reinhardt, John Mellencamp, Simon & Garfunkel, Mumford & Sons, Adele, CCR, The Beatles, and the Rolling Stones, among others.
Q: Where is one place you want to travel to, but have never been?
RC: Scotland
Q: What is one thing people would be surprised to learn about you?
RC: Two things: that I once had the Fab Five all in the same class (of 400) at Michigan (and rightly predicted after that the downfall of U of M's men's basketball program)...and that I do a podcast called Stats+Stories with the dept. of statistics chair at Miami.
