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Dr Joy Jenkins

Research Associate

Dr. Joy Jenkins is Assistant Professor at the School of Journalism and Electronic Media at the University of Tennessee. She was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Her research involved using qualitative methods to study how local and regional newspapers in four European countries are adapting to changes facing the news industry. The project addressed the value, influence, and future of local journalism from the perspectives of staff members working in both the editorial and business sides of these newspapers. It also examined how they understand and respond to shifts in audience behavior and media markets and how both are influenced by the move toward an increasingly digital, mobile, and platform-dominated media environment.

Jenkins completed her doctorate in journalism at the University of Missouri in 2017. Her dissertation used an ethnographic case study of an award-winning U.S. city magazine to examine convergences between journalistic identity and organizational identity as well as how notions of the surrounding community shaped the organization and its members. Jenkins’ other research interests include the role of local media in facilitating civic engagement, gender and media, and magazine journalism. At the University of Missouri, she taught courses in news writing and reporting, magazine reporting, qualitative research methods in journalism and mass communication, and media literacy.

Prior to pursuing her doctorate, Jenkins received a Master of Science in media management from Oklahoma State University and a Bachelor of Arts in journalism from the University of Oklahoma. She also worked as a journalist in Oklahoma for eight years, serving as copy editor at Oklahoma Gazette, an alternative newsweekly in Oklahoma City, and senior editor at TulsaPeople Magazine, a city magazine in Tulsa.

For more information about Dr. Jenkins and her research, please visit her Google Scholar Profile or her personal website.