On Tuesday, May 12, 2026, I’m celebrating my retirement from UNK by hosting a 7 p.m. showing of the movie Casablanca at The World Theatre here in Kearney. Everyone is invited.
So, it’s been awhile…
Posts here over the last year have been rather erratic as I’ve had a busy time finishing up my 38-year career as a journalism and communication professor. For the last 18 years I’ve been a teacher and administrator here at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. Before that, I worked for 15 years at West Virginia University and five-and-a-half years at Northern Arizona University. But as of last Friday, I’m now retired, at least from teaching at the university.
But that doesn’t mean my career is over. I’m now going to finally have time to write again on a scheduled basis, so you can expect to start seeing posts here much more frequently. Here is some of what I have planned going forward:
- I will, as always, have details about the news in the mass communication industry. These posts will be the first drafts of the updates for the next edition of my textbook Mass Communication: Living in a Media World.
- Talk about what I’m watching, reading, listening to, and playing. (Yes, more time for video games is definitely on my agenda.)
- Back during the lockdown phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, I started a series discussing the more than 200 movies we watched at home while we were all cooped up. But life interfered with the series, and it never got very far. I want to restart and complete it.
- Examine some of the trends of how we interact with media.
- Write about current events that don’t necessarily connect to media (though they almost always do…)
- Write about my travels by motorcycle.
I already have a list of more than 20 blog posts I want to write about, ranging from examining whether your phone is listening to you to building a lightweight adventure touring motorcycle.
Feel free to comment to join in on the conversation!
Hope you all stick around.
Ralph