News

President of NPR stresses importance of international news

By Stephanie Orr - Assistant Editor

The United States needs to pay attention to foreign news because it is “a glorious nation of immigrants,” said Kevin Klose, president of National Public Radio, as he addressed the World Affairs Council on Friday, Feb. 25.
People should spend just as much time learning about international events as they do their local school board elections because most citizens of the United States are able to trace their heritage to another nation, according to Klose.
“We’re blessed with a kind of tranquility,” Klose said, citing that the United States is protected by two oceans and enjoys peaceful border situations. But that is no reason to ignore international events.

Kevin Klose, president of NPR, acknowledges the applause of the World Affairs Council after his speech

Klose told the crowd that international news reporting has been changing, but not necessarily for the best.
He said there was a time when all of the major news networks had correspondents living overseas. Citing Russia as an example, Klose described how these correspondents were Americans who had studied the country they were covering in depth. The reports they gave were comprehensive but simple.
However, with televised news becoming more visual, these kinds of reports no longer exist. Klose said that the programs of the past that delivered in-depth international news are slowly dying because they are not as profitable as other programs.
But Klose said that polls of the 23 million people who listen to NPR show that Americans want quality, in-depth reports on foreign affairs, a fact that he said most newspaper editors disagree with.
With sources of international news disappearing from the public, Klose questioned how Americans could get access to what is going on outside of the United States.
One way people are getting international news is through the Internet, Klose said. Technology allows people to quickly access the headlines from around the world, but doesn’t always present the news as completely as it could.
Public radio is another outlet for international news. Klose said public radio “brings us home and also takes us far away.”
NPR has offices all over the world and is dedicated to bringing comprehensive international news to the United States. “Our goal is to serve the civil democracy with information,” Klose said.
“We need to tell the story of millions of people caught in conflict not of their own devising.”
Klose continued, saying that the purpose of public broadcasting was to respond to the pre-Declaration of Independence writings of Thomas Jefferson, which he paraphrased as “people cannot be ignorant and free.”
Using Russia as an example again, Klose said that their government denied them information which in turn denied them freedom and made them retreat from their reality.
He said citizens have the right to demand information from newspapers, television stations and public radio stations and that understanding what is going on around the globe is vitally important.
According to Klose, being aware of and understanding what is going on in other nations can help the United States in many ways. By tracking international events and trends, the United States can better understand the world in which it exists.
The public’s desire for international news has benefited NPR in several ways, not just by increasing listenership.
“One of the great realities of knowing our listeners want high quality foreign reporting is we can recruit some of the best journalists in the country,” Klose said.

Administration, salaries among poorly rated items in faculty survey
Full report to be released after committee review

By Tom Cronin - Public Affairs Reporter

UIS faculty members reported feeling valued for their work and gave high ratings to the campus’ reputation and teaching quality when surveyed last spring, but they were less generous in their ratings for university and campus administration, salary levels and funding for scholarly activities.
To assess the “quality of life” among faculty, the Campus Planning and Budget Committee sent surveys to all full-time tenure-track faculty members last fall, said Patricia Byrnes, associate professor of public administration and the committee’s chairwoman. Sixty-eight surveys with “usable answers” were returned, she said, which amounted to a response rate of about 46 percent.
Byrnes disclosed some of the survey’s findings with The Journal on Friday, but said that she would need to finish her report on the survey and share it with committee members before disclosing the findings in full to Campus Senate and the campus as a whole. The report could be released as early as this week, she said, but the likelihood of it being released by today was small.
According to Byrnes, the survey focused on five “quality of life” areas: the quality of UIS, work environment, faculty voice, campus climate and resource allocation. Most of the survey’s items asked respondents to rate statements on a scale of one to five, in which one represented very poor and five represented very good. Byrnes said that the survey also gave faculty the option to submit open-ended responses.
Among the highest-rated items in the quality of UIS section were those dealing with quality of teaching and the local and regional reputation of the campus, Byrnes said. Among the items that were poorly rated were those about central administration and campus administration, she said.
Responses to the work environment section of the survey indicated that faculty members were dissatisfied with salary levels and funding for scholarly activities. When it comes to salaries, it is important to consider that the survey was conducted before Chancellor Richard Ringeisen announced that faculty would receive raises for this academic year, Byrnes said.
Other findings related to work environment suggested that over 60 percent of faculty were working more than 50 hours a week and that faculty would have generally preferred to devote more time to scholarship and less to service, Byrnes said.
In response to questions about campus climate, faculty reported that they felt valued for their teaching, service and research, Byrnes said. At the same time, they also reported feeling burned out from doing too much work.
Survey responses also indicated that faculty felt they had a strong voice in choosing which courses to teach and in making other departmental decisions, but a weaker voice in decisions about planning and the budget, Byrnes said.
“I do think you have to look at when the survey was done, the climate and certainly the budget uncertainties and problems that we’d faced for the year before and last year when this was done,” Byrnes said. “And I don’t think those have gotten better this year. Things were a little better in terms of getting raises and that, but … I think you would find that faculty feel some of the same things as far as having a voice about what goes on on campus at the campus level, and also about certain resource issues.”
One quality-of-life issue that the survey did not address was Banner, the software for the university’s $186 million integrated technology system. Some offices and departments were using Banner for payroll when the survey was conducted last spring, but the system had not been fully implemented by that point. According to Byrnes, Banner was mentioned “maybe once or twice” in the survey’s open-ended statements.
Even though Banner has affected faculty, it has been a much larger issue for staff, Byrnes said. The Campus Planning and Budget Committee has drafted a staff quality of life survey that includes questions about Banner, and committee members plan to distribute it next fall.

President of NPR stresses importance of international news

Administration, salaries among poorly rated items in faculty survey