Creating an Effective Internal Communication Environment

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of internal communication on employee morale and job satisfaction, identify the best methods of communication for information retention, and propose suggestions to improve the perception of internal communication within an office or organization. Effective internal communication has long been identified as a required component of effective and successful organizations; however, how organizations utilized communication channels and mediums varied greatly. Development of an efficient communication environment had positive impacts on an organization emotionally and financially (Sprague & Del Brocco, 2002). Media richness theory and media synchronicity theory were reviewed to determine the impact of communication comprehension in relation to specific mediums. A survey was completed at UNH Business Services to determine the current internal communication climate and preferred methods of communication. The survey results and reviewed literature were used to propose potential changes to the communication practices within the office

Crawford\u27s Last Stand? What Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts Means for the Confrontation Clause and for Criminal Trials

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts heralds a dramatic change for Confrontation Clause jurisprudence and for most criminal trials. Crawford v. Washington held that “testimonial” statements were admissible only if the accused had a prior opportunity to cross-examine the witness. Melendez-Diaz applied this rule to forensic evidence, holding that certificates of analysis – used in a drug trail to prove the nature and weight of the proscribed substances, and sworn to and signed by the analysts who performed the tests – are testimonial. This article analyzes Melendez-Diaz’s implications for the Court’s Confrontation Clause jurisprudence and for the criminal justice system. In Part II, Stevens focuses on doctrine, analyzing the decision and exploring what the dueling opinions tell us about the meaning of the Confrontation Clause and the future of Crawford. Stevens concludes her analysis by discussing the decision’s real-world impact, outlining its costs and benefits as predicted by the majority and dissent, and explaining why neither opinion gets its cost-benefit analysis quite right

Editor’s Note

Donald F. Johnson demonstrates in his article in this issue, residents who remained in Newport during the British occupation, whether loyal to the crown or partisans of the revolution, were profoundly changed by the experience. The journals Charles Hunter, assiduously kept while training to become a naval officer are now in the Newport Historical Society collections. In her meticulous scrutiny of a diary that Hunter wrote while aboard USS Potomac in 1831, Margaret Stack reveals that during a midshipman’s training at sea, education in other than navigational topics was woefully neglected

Editor’s Note

This issue, we are publishing two articles that reflect aspects of Newporters’ leisure time in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Robert Cvornyek’s robust account of black baseball, “Touching Base: Race, Sport, and Community in Newport,” uncovers a wealth of information about local African-American teams and players, the integration of baseball in Newport (long before Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947), and the visits to the city of elite Negro League teams. In her article, “From Virtuous Visions to Rubbish and Rats: A Natural History Society in Gilded Age Newport,” Kathrinne Duffy reminds us of a significant chapter in the history of Newport’s cultural organizations. When the Newport Natural History Society was formed in 1883, its founders hoped to attract a wide public following for their exhibits of stuffed animals, birds, and other flora and fauna

A Geographic Interpretation of the Agricultural Regions of Ohio

The purpose of this thesis is to divide the state of Ohio into agricultural regions, and, so delimited, to describe and interpret these regions in a geographic manner. The basis of division is the use of the land for varying agricultural purposes. These variables are expressed my means of isopleth maps showing acreage percentages of land use. Factors of the natural environment, such as soil, bedrock, climate, topography, and drainage, aid in the interpretation of these regions

Editor\u27s Note

Following Newport’s mercantile decline in the nineteenth century, Newporters were drawn to careers at sea in the U.S. Navy. In this issue, Dr. Evelyn Cherpak relates the narrative of one such Newport native, Charles Hunter, who was living in Newport and on the retired list from the U.S. Navy, when Lincoln’s call for volunteers went out in the spring of 1861. Cherry Fletcher Bamberg’s account of finding Ezra Stiles’s eighteenth-century “Bills of Mortality for 1765-1777,” and her analysis of its usefulness in describing and understanding Newport’s pre-Revolutionary war population is our second article of this issue

Editor’s Note

This issue, we go back to the eighteenth century to delve into two very different aspects of life in Newport. In his “Freedom for African Americans in British-Occupied Newport, 1776-1779, and ‘The Book of Negroes,’” Christian McBurney explores the experience of some African-Americans during the American Revolution. Gabriella Angeloni’s article, “Writing in Books: Lessons on New England Readers from the Ellery Library Collection,” gives us a window into eighteenth-century Newport readers through their private libraries