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ACE Update – April 2017

Message from the President: A Busy Spring for ACE
ACE New Orleans: The city is part of the conference!
Volunteers needed to get ACE website redesign ready to go
Upcoming Webinars

Message from the President

A Busy Spring for ACE

Board members are entering an exciting time as the association rolls into the summer conference in New Orleans. The association sent out an RFP for management, and a committee consisting of Suzanne Steel, Elizabeth Gregory North, Doug Edlund, Mary Wirth, Beth Forbes, Becky Koch, and LaRochelle Smith are reviewing replies and will recommend to the board those that deem further consideration. The board will select finalists for interviews during the summer meeting and make its selection at the fall board meeting. Contact board members if you have comments or opinions about management models.

Professional Development Director-elect Craig Woods either has or will seek member interest in developing a leadership program. The ACE Leadership Institute was a two-year program in which participants met between and during national conferences.

Technological innovations and budget restraints would no doubt converge to create a much different program, if members show an interest. Not everyone wants to be in leadership, and that’s just fine. Others, though, find professional fulfillment in exercising leadership and, if there is an interest, ACE should try to meet member needs. Contact Craig if you have a comment.

Hope you are able to attend the summer conference! The New Orleans planning committee continues to dazzle. I’ve already told them to prepare: I plan to brag about these talented people and their efforts to the point of embarrassment.

A repeating message from me, but no other agricultural communication association has the breadth and depth of ACE. I’m proud to be a member.

 - Steve Miller, ACE President

ACE New Orleans: The City is Part of the Conference!

The Hotel Monteleone is a beautiful and historic hotel that is quintessential New Orleans, but we don’t want you to spend the entire conference staring at meeting room walls. This year’s conference will get you out of the hotel and into the city with professional development tours built into the conference schedule.

Wednesday afternoon, June 14, you can take one of four tours designed to enhance your conference experience. Visit some of New Orleans’ beautiful and productive gardens, and learn about urban extension connections. You can opt to tour communications firms in the city, and see how their teams meet the needs of their clients. Spend the afternoon among insects and fish at Audubon’s Insectarium and Aquarium. Or step into Mardi Gras World, which is the stuff of graphic designers’ dreams.

Register now to make sure you get the tour you want. Early registration ends May 19 so register soon for the best conference price. Don’t forget, the conference also has a dynamic line-up of speakers and breakout sessions!

- Tobie Blanchard and Jennifer Alexander, conference co-chairs

Volunteers Needed to Get New ACE Website Redesign Ready

The redesign of the ACE web site has begun! Because the Wild Apricot web-hosting system does not allow for a testing environment, all changes are live as soon as they are made. So we are proceeding gradually to make sure nothing breaks!

One of the most important things still to be done is to rearrange our existing content into our new navigation scheme. If you are willing to help with this phase of the redesign, please let me know at elizabethgregorynorth@gmail.com

I want to thank the members of our ACE Web User Experience Task Force for their valuable guidance on this redesign. The Task Force members were: Ibuomi Abibo, Sean Corp, Tanya Engel, Stacy Herrick, Tunyalee Martin, Donna Sheffield, Suzanne Steel, Mary Wirth, in addition to Art Shirley and Beth Barron here at Mississippi State University Extension Service. Thanks so much to all of them for their excellent service!

 - Elizabeth Gregory North, ACE Vice President

Professional development opportunities online

The following are recent professional development resources:

ACE Professional Development Director, Victor Villegas, produced a Facebook Live video tour of the Oregon State University Extension & Experiment Station Communications (EESC). Watch the video to see colleagues in their native work environment and what they do to get the story of Extension out to the public.

ACE webinar recordings:

learn.extension.org webinar recordings:

 - Victor Villegas, ACE Professional Development Director

Journal of Applied Communications:  2017 Vol. 101, No. 1

Below are a couple articles from the latest issue:

Poultry Production Messaging in Two National-Circulation Newspapers
Leslie D. Edgar, Donald M. Johnson, and Stuart Estes

Understanding how our food is grown is an increasing area of concern for the public, specifically regarding the use of antibiotics and hormones in food animal production. In this study, content in two newspapers – the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal – was analyzed to explore how the use of antibiotics and hormones in poultry production has been presented from 1994-2014. The analysis of 265 articles found the number of articles about this topic area increased over the 10-year period. The most prevalent frame used in the articles assessed was the human interest frame for NYT and the economic consequences frame for WSJ. Based on the findings, the authors recommend those in the poultry industry communicate to encourage increased transparency regarding the purpose of antibiotic and hormone use in poultry production, especially because hormones have not been used for decades.

Poultry Production Messaging: Frames and Emergent Themes in Three National Newspapers, 1994 to 2014
Stuart Estes, Leslie D. Edgar, and Donald M. Johnson

Newspapers play an important role in informing the public about agriculture in that the way journalists and editors interpret and view a story influences how it is presented to the public. This framing of newspaper articles tells readers what the salient issues are and how to think about those issues. In this content analysis of news articles in the USA Today, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal, the researchers sought to determine how content related to poultry production was framed. Five emergent themes were identified and the majority of articles contained at least one, if not more, of these themes: 1) consumer awareness of and concern for antibiotic/ hormone use in poultry production; 2) the role of antibiotic use in poultry production in increased levels of antibiotic- resistant bacteria; 3) regulation of antibiotic use in poultry production; 4) purpose of antibiotic/hormone use in poultry production; and 5) transparency of antibiotic use poultry production practices. The authors provide recommendations for future research and for agricultural communications practitioners.

- Courtney Meyers, ACE Research Director

Send submissions, upcoming webinars and ideas to forbes@purdue.edu.

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