This morning I responded to papers at the Southern States Communication Association. I listened to people talk about their work and then, having read their work, I asked them questions about it. You try to make a good point, share something interesting, maybe make a suggestion if something wise comes to mind. (Something wise always comes to mind.) And then, of course, you say nice things. It is important to be nice. But it is also easy, because I was responding to the top papers panel, which means that these were scored higher than all of the other academic submissions.

One paper was on the true crime niche of podcasts. Another paper was a content analysis of photos published after airplane crashes and the third paper had to do with co-parenting in the age of social media. It makes sense if you read the paper.

So I heard the 15-minutes each presentations and then responded in kind, because that’s the task of the respondent. And then I took a selfie, because that’s just du rigueur.

I was also on two panels today. The first was a media literacy panel. Spoiler: We still haven’t solved that problem, though we’d like to do so. And we seem to think that college courses on media literacy would do the trick. Hammer — nail, and all of that.

I think they would be helpful, but not everyone is going to college, or is going to come back to college for your new media literacy course. So it doesn’t completely solve the problem. No one has figured that out, yet, so we were only mildly disappointed that we didn’t resolve the problem during that 75 minute panel session.

But I did coin two phrases and drop some big names in media research!

Also, we had another panel about the midterm elections. I didn’t coin any phrases, but I talked about the unprecedented number of women who are running for congressional seats this time around. This is all taking place in Nashville, so I tried to mention one of the women in that race. A Republican congresswoman is vying for the retiring senator’s position. In a normal year in Tennessee this would seem to be an easy leap. Literally moments after the conclusion of that panel, however, new polling data was released that the leading Democrat has the upper hand in the fall vote. This is not a normal year. And maybe there will be fewer easy leaps.

This evening we got to see Bill Monroe’s statue. There’s a sign nearby noting that in 1945 the Father of Bluegrass took the stage at the Ryman with Lester Platt and Earl Scruggs and created the genre. There’s only so much you can put on a historical sign, I get that, and maybe that’s enough. Hey, there’s a statue, and you should take a picture of it on your way down to the more touristy areas.

We were in the pursuit of good barbecue and I do miss good barbecue. I mean, sure, you can get ice cream with your conference friends in any city that is big enough to hold a small conference:

But you have to be in the South to get barbecue that a group of Southerners from all parts of the South can agree is worthwhile.

Tomorrow: More conferencing! And probably more selfies. Maybe there will be more good food, too.