Ryan Hurley and I were lucky enough to win Top Student Paper in Mass Communication at NCA in 2004. Originally, we wrote two papers: one that focused on the third person effect and another than examined the impact of reading news coverage about environmental threats, including dioxin (which, incidentally, won Top Student Paper in Environmental Communication at NCA). But during the review process, our reviewers encouraged us to collapse these two analyses into a single manuscript (which was a way better idea).

This was the first dataset I ever collected. I was taking a graduate seminar taught by Dale Brashers and he told us, “You have to collect data by the end of the semester.” That sounded intense, but it also sounded like a great challenge.

Dale was such a great teacher. He is missed.