Category Education

Entries 174 Total Description

Mostly outdated suggestions for journalism schools.

Redesign interrupted, actual content to follow

Mar 2, ’07 8:22 AM

As much as it pains me to do so, I’ll interrupt my ongoing monologue about this blog’s ongoing redesign (Almost done! IE6 sucks!) to bring you actual links to actual information that has nothing to do (as far as I know) with cute cats verbing ur nounz.

Bryan Murley interviews Rob Curley by IM over at ICM, and it’s worth a read if you happen to be in the news business, or a journalism student, or, really, in any business where innovation is a daily challenge.

Here’s a snippet:

“I think that if a student in a newspaper journalism program is only taught about print, then that student will likely think the only “real” newspaper journalism is print, or is never taught about other ways of telling stories and reaching readers, then that student will have that mindset.”

Go read the whole thing.

I’ve sounded off loudly and frequently about what I think J-School students should learn, so I won’t bore you with yet another long list, but if you’re a journalism student in a newspaper program, and no one is teaching you how to tell stories in a medium other than text, you need to start learning on your own.

Get a blog, look at its guts, get a Flickr account, get a Delicious account, use an RSS reader, start networking, start reading everything you can get your eyes on about what it is you want to do with your life.

Don’t wait for it to come up in class.

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The best thing about being on a team…

Jan 25, ’07 9:15 PM

…is that you don’t have to do everything yourself.

That’s what I’m finally learning after 3.5 months at my new job. Everyone has a specialty, and the best thing you can do is let everyone do what they do best, whether it’s design, code, manage, write, shoot, edit, record, or evangelize.

I spent my lunch hour today forgetting to eat while having a cup of coffee with Chris Jordan, a photographer and multimedia specialist out of Montana who’s in the Bay Area right now. (Hint: Hire him.)

We compared notes on what’s going on in online news, and it definitely reminded me that we all have our own skill sets, and newsrooms are looking for journalists who can do any one of the things we specialize in.

The task for j-schools, of course, is to teach every journalism student at least ONE of the following skills:

  • Multimedia: Video and audio recording and editing, plus any Flash skills at all. This gets you hired.
  • Interactivity: Know everything about blogs, and think about how to manage and moderate commenting systems, forums, and community sites. This gets you hired.
  • Data: Be a wizard with Excel at the least, maps mashups if possible, and Django if you want to go further down the rabbit hole. This gets you hired.

If you’re in school and you’re not taking a class where you’re learning at least one of these things, start teaching yourself now. Get a blog and start reading blogs about new media and the Web. Experiment. Learn.

Knowing how to do nothing but report and write gets you hired … as a freelancer.

Questions for student media advisers

Jan 14, ’07 2:12 PM

Bryan Murley posted his responses to what Rob Curley said a day ahead of schedule, having been scooped by his source — a common problem when using bloggers as sources, for those of you taking notes.

He brings up some crucial questions for student media advisers. Yes, this means you.

“When you critique the paper product, do you critique the online product as well? When you do, do you ask about Web ‘extras’?”

Ah, now there’s a good pair of questions.

I translate them as: Do you just talk the talk when it comes to developing online skills, or do you actually take the time to *look* at the Web site with students and *talk* about what it’s doing. “Hey you should really check out this thing that so-and-so did, kids” is not teaching. “Let’s all pull this project up on our browsers and talk about how so-and-so went about telling this story,” – now we’re cooking with some more powerful stuff.

So, advisers, ask yourselves: Are you cooking with powerful stuff, or just paying lip service to the two or three kids doing the heavy lifting?

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Must-read post for journalism school students and faculty members – YES, YOU.

Jan 13, ’07 11:46 AM

Mindy McAdams, online journalism prof at the University of Florida, writes this plea to J-Schools: Getting (and keeping) a job in journalism.

Highlight:

“If a student in a j-school today thinks it is okay NOT to learn how to make Web pages, NOT to shoot video, NOT to gather audio, NOT to read and write blogs — then that student is not getting a message that is very, very necessary.”

Read the whole thing. Now. Today. Before you go back to working on your syllabi for the Spring semester or back to shopping for textbooks for your gen-ed classes.

I’m too busy to think, so I’m letting these people do it for me

Dec 13, ’06 8:14 AM

I’m finding I barely have time to read, much less actually write anything original these days, so I highly recommend you go away:

SJSU:

The Future of Newspapers:
Len Witt says newspapers need to “dumb down or smarten up,” breaking open the pieces of Gannett’s mojo experiment in Fort Myers and analyzing hyperlocal content to check if it’s useful information or just coverage for the sake of covering something local:

“Why not send him into a Ft. Myers neighborhood for a week or a month and make him feel like a member of that neighborhood and meet the people, hear their triumphs and tragedies? I think of my own neighborhood. There is the guy who spends his days cutting other people’s lawns, but with the caveat that he will try to save your soul. The guy who painted his house pink, in a place where no one paints their house pink. And he had a reason. The gerrymandering that separates our white neighborhood from the surrounding black neighborhoods. These are real stories that would smarten up the paper and its website rather than dumb them down by asking some random driver what he thinks of the road repair work on a Ft. Myers highway.”(Len via Bryan and Mindy)

Design:

A while back, Dan Cederholm began a live redesign of his site with a swift kick in the ass, and several Web designers followed, stripping their pages down to style-less XHTML and then designing them in full view of their peers and readers. Check out Bryan Veloso’s reception of the kick, and the still-in-progress (as of today, I think) redesign of Avalonstar. Oh, and when you’re done with those two sites, buy Dan’s books.

That’s it for now:

I’ve got just a few days to get a whole mess of things done at work and home before our holiday trip around the Western Hemisphere starts for the year, so don’t expect much more from me.  If you’re loving the links that I’m spitting, get your ass onto Delicious and check out what’s up in my network. That is all.

Spartan Daily online redesign

Nov 20, ’06 10:57 PM

That said, the Spartan Daily just launched a redesign on its College Publisher site.

Daniel Sato and Neal Waters started this project over the summer, and from the sound of things, getting an original design implemented on top of a CP template was more difficult this time around, compared to the pretty conventional design I worked up about a year ago.

Here’s a quick tour of the site’s development from Summer 2005 through today

How it was when I found it, Summer 2005:

Sometime during development before Fall 2005 launch of the first redesign I did:

Hmm. I don’t seem to have a screenshot of how the site actually looked in Fall 2005. Or what it looked like until yesterday. I actually need those. Ah, wait, the Wayback Machine can help with the most recent iteration. This shot is from Spring 2006:

Check out more of the Daily’s facelift, and keep in mind that there’s more to building a successful online student news site than making it look pretty.

The Baltimore Sun paints a rosy picture of college newspaper advertising

Nov 20, ’06 9:04 PM

Student media has it all: A local focus, a microcosmic environment, and a captive audience.

Advertisers have noticed, says the Baltimore Sun:

“The health of campus papers is due also, in part, to the explosive growth of the Internet and of Web-based advertising, much of it aimed at the young. About 600 campus papers publish online editions, and advertisers have been quick to exploit their potential. Many campus newspaper Web sites now carry ads from national retail chains and other big-ticket companies.”

A quick fact-check, if you’ll humor me: The “national retail chains and other big ticket companies” pay College Publisher, the company featured in the story, to advertise across the CP network to the students, staff, faculty and alumni reading all those online college papers.

The student papers, as far as I know, don’t see a dime of that money.

It goes to pay for hosting their content. (Matter-of-fact, let’s make this into a reporting exercise: If you advise or work at a college newspaper hosted by College Publisher and you’ve ever been paid for national advertising, let me know.)

Narrative journalism conference at SJSU Saturday

Nov 10, ’06 11:26 AM

From the JMC Journal:

Host: AAJA SF Bay Area and SJSU
Location: SJSU – Dwight Bentel Hall,
100 Washington Square, San Jose, Calif.
When: Saturday, November 11, 9:30am
Phone: 650-906-7818
Cost: $10 for AAJA and SJSU members and students; $15 for non-members. Breakfast and lunch provided.

Hmm. With kickoff moved back to 3pm, you could hit a couple sessions and still have time to make the tailgate. Totally worth it.

If you’re not sure what narrative journalism is all about, browse the links at Gangrey.

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Still wondering which online journalism skills to learn first? Glad you asked.

Nov 2, ’06 9:36 PM

Wow.

A great study by Northwestern master’s student C. Max Magee surveys Online News Association members and other online journalists to find out which skills are most important for aspiring Web-native producers and managers.

Some of the findings are pretty standard: Attention to detail, multitasking ability, and communication skills are high on the list. That should go for any reporter or editor.

When it comes to technical skills, HTML, CMS use, and Photoshop are the big three, with Web usability in fourth place. I’m not sure if we’re talking about accessibility or UI, but I’m glad to see that folks think it’s important, either way.

At the bottom of the list? Javascript, database administration, and Flash.

Hmm. I’d like to see those last two a bit higher, but perhaps the majority of papers take a walk-then-run approach, which makes sense in many, many ways.

Skills that aren’t mentioned at all? RSS and blogs.

Interesting.

via pretty much every blog I read, but here’s a link out to online news squared, the source of this bonus link:

The video editor at the New York Times answers questions from readers:

“…we don’t consider video journalism to be a ‘cyber-fad,’ or ‘an after-thought.’ Nor would we concede that television stations’ journalism is better produced than our own; in fact we have an advantage in being able to create a new form without being constrained by time limits or Nielsen ratings.”

Take that, broadcasters. Note to self: Production values are crucial…

Advice for recent J-School grads

Oct 17, ’06 8:37 PM

Expecting a serious post about what I think journalism students should be learning in order to get a great job when they graduate?

Been there. Done that.

Instead, go check out what my all-time favorite Spartan Daily columnist has to say on the topic. Especially if you’re an SJSU student or alum – you’ll get a few more of the jokes. Long live SJSUCK.