“Journalism isn’t about printing newspapers or broadcasting television programmes. It’s about stories — and finding the best way to tell them. So I have no idea where this romantic attachment to the printed word comes from.”
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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?
More advice from Rob Curley
Jan 14, ’07
12:54 PM
If you’re an aspiring young (or not) journalist and you don’t have the good sense to pay attention to what Rob Curley says, I sort of feel sorry for you. That’s the truth, harsh as it may seem. Whenever guys like Curley or Holovaty or anyone else speaks up who has taken online journalism and developed it an extra step to create something new or different or compelling — whether it’s a way to better tell a story or a way to better build a community — I tune right in, ears on strong.
So listen up:
Curley writes to Innovation in College Media’s Bryan Murley in “What sort of things should an aspiring journalist be thinking about?”:
“And my biggest advice would be to have at least one portfolio piece that shows you understand the importance of the things I’ve listed above. If you want to impress an editor who is hiring, show him/her that you aren’t just willing to do these sorts of things, but that you can’t wait to do these sorts of things. All things being equal, who do you think gets the job: the person who hands over a bunch of photocopied newspaper clips, or someone who also sends a link to a well-done multimedia project?”
Hey Spartan Daily kids (and all J-School students everywhere). Those of you just writing stories for the print edition, not participating in the blogs, not asking your faculty advisers when they’re going to get you one of those great audio recorders, not asking where you can borrow a video camera from, not asking the online editor to show you how the content management system works… WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?
Good luck at the internship with the weekly paper, but seriously, if you want more than that out of a journalism career, it’s time to either start learning on your own, or asking for more from your school.
If you ask them to teach you more, maybe they’ll get the idea that they should be teaching you more.
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 dreamt I was in a social media class…
Jan 2, ’07
6:54 AM
…and the textbook was the Henry Jenkins book which has been sitting relatively uncracked on my bedside shelf for a couple months now.
Does that mean I’m supposed to read it, or that the Mass Communications program at school should have a social media class?
Luckily, I don’t have time to think about that. I have a new job title starting today, so I should try to get to work on time. Wish me luck.
(Jenkins’ blog is here. )
The Emperor’s New Tags « New Media in Journalism
Dec 14, ’06
11:31 AM
SJSU J-School student Andrew Venegas refines his manifesto/plea for, more or less, an online journalism major. Looks like I don’t have to post one this semester.
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:
- SJSU journalism student Andrew Venegas is trying to build some community by opening up his blog to other authors, and he’s getting a little video-happy, too. Somebody get that kid some server space and a WordPress install already…
- Another SJSU j-schooler, Kyle Hansen, got Scobleized and started using Google Reader and a Reader-driven linkblog. Check out his thoughts on how to build a blogging/online journalism group at the university.
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.
Teach blogging at UNC j-school
Nov 29, ’06
2:54 PM
While SJSU is discussing watering down its only undergrad New Media class, UNC is hiring a prof who “should be highly skilled in writing and editing online news, in blogging and in developing news content for the web.”
Erasing Divide, College Leaders Take to Blogging – New York Times
Nov 22, ’06
11:44 AM
“At Towson University, outside Baltimore, the president, Robert L. Caret, who writes Bob’s Blog, appears online in sunglasses, casually unshaven and smiling gamely alongside the Towson Tiger mascot.” Don Kassing, are you jealous?
Erasing Divide, College Leaders Take to Blogging – New York Times
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.