J-school - Cynthia McCune on Diigo

27 Oct 09

Shameful Illinois prosecutors go after student investigators | Salon

What happens when those in power get mad.

The prosecutors are uncomfortable with the idea of shielding journalists who investigate and publicize "inadequacies" in the criminal justice system. But having an additional "check" on the government is one of the strongest justifications for vigorously protecting the work of journalists.
The outcome of this matter could turn on whether a judge treats the students as "journalists" under Illinois law. If the students are journalists, their work is protected from disclosure.
2 more annotations...
- During interviews the students conducted, several key witnesses recanted their testimony. The students have already turned over videotapes of these interviews to prosecutors. Prosecutors should question these witnesses rather than fishing for the students' personal materials.
- the subpoena demands "the grades, grading criteria, class syllabus, expense reports and e-mail messages of the journalism students themselves."

29 Aug 09

Poynter Online - Where are J-Schools in Great Debate over Journalism's Future?

J-Schools: missing the boat.

"...journalism schools too face a crisis of competence and confidence. We have to agree that while much remains that is good, some of what we do is outmoded and badly needs to be fixed. To survive, journalism schools have to become much more intellectually and professionally ambitious."

www.poynter.org/...content_view.asp - Preview

J-school journalism future of news

Finally, our profession needs to raise its sights much higher and link our teaching and research to broad issues of media, democracy and societal changes, and eschew the self-referential, inward-looking focus that marks too many academic exercises.
The schools especially need to end the shocking economic illiteracy that marks too much of journalism education today, which makes it harder to get high quality economic reporting, while reinforcing the fire wall between the business and content sides of the profession
10 more annotations...
- Third, the academy must begin to produce more high-quality, relevant research that draws on rigorous traditions in the social sciences. These tough times demand big questions and big smart answers -- not puny answers to unimportant questions.
- Second, what we teach and how we teach needs to be deeply informed by more regular conversations with practitioners. Journalism professors need to reach out more systematically to media professionals in the new and the legacy media. We need to go to professionals in their newsrooms and business offices, and to the garages and new media incubators of media entrepreneurs.
- First, the teaching profession needs to admit the extraordinary urgency of our situation. Simply put, we adapt our we die.
- The relations between professors and the profession seem curiously stunted
- journalism schools too face a crisis of competence and confidence. We have to agree that while much remains that is good, some of what we do is outmoded and badly needs to be fixed. To survive, journalism schools have to become much more intellectually and professionally ambitious.
- journalism schools obviously have a huge stake in the survival and future of the media. These are the institutions that hire most of our graduates. If the media markets don't recover somehow, someway, then we may lose half our students, half our revenues and half our faculty positions.
- In a moment of root and branch radical changes throughout the media, where are the open, public debates over radical options coming out of the top journalism schools? Where are the suggestions on how to change our teaching, research and public service practice to contribute to the rehabilitation of American media? After all, the stakes are high –- arguably, democracy itself.
- I find it curious that there hasn't been greater attention to the performance of the nation's leading journalism schools in the midst of the media meltdown occurring all around us every day.
- Yet arguably, the performance of journalism schools has something to do with the current sub-par performance of the profession. And the performance of journalists working in independent, high quality media has a lot to do with the fate of our American democracy.
- journalism schools are not adequately engaged with the great public debates over the future of their core sector.

20 Jun 09

10 Ways Journalism Schools Are Teaching Social Media

mashable.com/...teaching-social-media - Preview

J-school social media socialmedia social networking teaching journalism

professors are delving into how these tools can be applied to enrich the craft of reporting and producing the news and ultimately telling the story in the best possible way.
Social media tools are bringing readers to news sites and in many cases are increasing their Web-traffic.
10 more annotations...
- email interviews have become regularly used by news reporters. But the same concept can be achieved through a Facebook message or chat, Google Talk, a short exchange via Seesmic (), or one of the most useful apps in a journalist’s arsenal: Skype
- it’s important for students to know how to use real-time searches to gather information and keep up on what is breaking.
- Sreenivasan said searches on social media sites can point journalists to supplementary information for their reporting. These sites can also help in the process of crowdsourced news gathering.
- Social media tools are becoming vital in building source lists. One can track now fairly easily down a source on Facebook or Twitter and send them a message.
- Paul Bradshaw, senior lecturer of online journalism and magazines at Birmingham City University, said the most basic tools that students should know how to use are Wordpress () for blogging and site building, Twitter for live updates, Facebook for posting articles or videos, Delicious () for bookmarking, Flickr () for photos or videos, and YouTube () for video.
- Tools like CoveritLive also include integration with Twitter, Qik for live video, or YouTube pre-recorded videos.
- social media should help journalists do their job and be integrated into their reporting, but not take it over. Content is still king.
- Social networks can be used to build a personal brand that can help students land a reporting gig after college.
- we are all still learning the best practices of social media. Journalism students experimenting with these tools can learn how to apply them once they join the workforce.
- Here are a few tips from Bradshaw for how teachers can encourage social media experimentation:
  
  - Use the tools themselves to teach the class. Use them in any setting possible.
  
  - Do it publicly and socially. For example, Bradshaw paired students up with “Twentors” to help students that were new to Twitter.
  
  - Less talk, more action. Put the students out there and get them using the tools one by one.

10 May 09

Detecting Bull: How to Identify Bias and Junk Journalism in Print, Broadcast and on the Wild Web

The chapter on objectivity sounds interesting.

www.detectingbull.com/index.htm - Preview

book J-school journalism education teaching

The author, a former journalist and professor, rejects objectivity as impossible for humans and undesirable for journalists. In its place, the book provides a set of rules for judging journalism based on a more accurate, honest and rigorous standard -- empiricism -- the logical assembly of reliable evidence.

09 May 09

Teaching Online Journalism » Multimedia journalism teaching: 10 things I learned

So we're not the only J-school with IT problems that get in the way of teaching.

mindymcadams.com/...m-teaching-10-things-i-learned - Preview

teaching journalism J-school multimedia

One thing spans all our classes, early and late — students often do inadequate reporting. They do one stinking interview and then turn in a story. The good students learn fast that more reporting results in a better story (and a better grade). But the lazy ones keep on whining about their bad grades, when it’s clear as day that they did very little legwork.
But I think also they are confused by learning the straight news formats and then trying to adapt to visual storytelling, which is more of a narrative style. Inverted pyramid is not the same “shape” as beginning-middle-end.
13 more annotations...
- What I really wish is that reporting classes would integrate audio and video from the earlier stages
- Re: Box.net - They say we can:
  
  “Create hundreds of accounts instantly by importing a list of users from Excel. Assign variable user privileges from ‘view only’ to full editing rights.” (View PDF for info.)
  
  I don’t know about your IT folks there, but I could not get this kind of support or flexibility here.
- I’ve been toying with the idea of using Box.net to get around the poor technology issues within the university.
- The syllabus, including all assignments, is here.
  The students’ Soundslides are here.
  The students’ videos are here.
- Showing examples that are truly journalistic — and explaining why they are journalistic — makes a big difference.
- Providing printable PDFs instead of printed paper handouts works well.
- What worked poorly was file saving on our college’s network drives, file naming, and also handing in CDs
- File management is a huge challenge in this course. What worked well was requiring them to hand in preliminary work (e.g., raw audio files) each and every week — this forces them not to wait until the last minute.
- Students have tremendous difficulty understanding what a story is, and what stories are not journalistic.
- The structure of the course is very simple and direct: Learn audio gathering and editing, then photo composition and ethics, produce a photo slideshow with audio, and finally, produce a video story.
- The idea is that we don’t need to teach them reporting techniques, such as interviewing, in the 1-credit tools course (because they are getting that in the 3-credit course), but the students do complete journalistic reporting assignments, using audio recorders and cameras. They are required to own their equipment
- Students enrolled in the regular 3-credit reporting course could take an additional 1-credit course in multimedia reporting.
- Students enrolled in the regular 3-credit reporting course could take an additional 1-credit course in multimedia reporting.

06 May 09

The Maneater – J school to require iPod touch or iPhone

www.themaneater.com/...-requires-ipod-touch-or-iphone - Preview

iPhone Mac J-school reqs

All incoming freshman journalism majors will be required to have either an iPod touch or an iPhone upon entering the School of Journalism this fall.
Some lectures, such as those for the Career Explorations in Journalism class, will be recorded. Students will then be able to download the recorded lectures to their iPods or iPhones.
3 more annotations...
- For the past two years, the journalism school has strongly suggested students purchase a MacBook or MacBook Pro computer. Students who do not have Apple computers can still take all the same courses, but Brooks believes the journalism school has had great success with all students having the same computer. He said he hopes the iPod touch or iPhone requirement will have similar results.
- McKean said journalism students have to be taught how to use mobile communication, and the number of applications available on the iPod makes it ideal for students.
  
  "Truly, the mobile phone is going to be one of the key components for not only students communicating with each other, that's the obvious thing, but in terms of trying to reach audiences," McKean said. "It's probably one of the most ubiquitous means of reaching people with news and information if you know how to do it."
- 85 percent of music players on campus are iPods," Brooks said.

20 Apr 09

J-Schools Play Catchup - NYTimes.com

As macloo notes, "NYT story on teaching new media in J-Schools is big on problems, short on solutions."

www.nytimes.com/...journ-t.html - Preview

J-school journalism teaching new media nytimes

today’s journalism students don’t enroll to hear, in Mr. McGuire’s words, “old newspaper farts telling them that the business is doomed.”
“They know the model is broken,” he says. “They think, We’ll just have to fix it.” And so he started this semester by outlining an intimidating theme for the course: “How do we pay for journalism?”
7 more annotations...
- The American Journalism Review estimates that 15 percent of the nation’s newspaper newsroom jobs were lost in 2008
- The changes are forcing colleges and universities to rethink what a journalism education should look like. The perennial debate about journalism programs — theoretical teaching versus professional skill building — has been displaced by more urgent questions: How can you help students find sustainable business models, while introducing the formerly verboten subject of the business side? What are the implications for the craft of journalism in the shift to digital? And how do you position students for an uncertain future in the media?
- “Newsrooms have tended to be highly inflexible; innovation was not encouraged,”
- The required-reading list in Mr. McGuire’s senior-level class is telling. It includes Romenesko, a blog that many reporters and editors start and end the day with, and, more notably, Mashable, a blog about social networking that is equally influential in technology circles.
- Public relations students take many of the same classes as broadcast and print journalists, which inspires some gallows humor in the hallways. Ms. Aalmo recently printed out a poster and hung it in her apartment. It says: “Want stability in journalism? Get a job in P.R.”
- It is instilled in students like Ms. Riel that the decline in mainstream media provides an opportunity. Talking about the gaps in local coverage that suddenly exist in Phoenix and elsewhere, Mr. McGuire imparts, “Your opportunity is going to be to find those holes and fill them.”
- Fundamentally, J-schools are about teaching students how to be storytellers, says Tom Fiedler, the dean of the College of Communication at Boston University. He subscribes to the philosophy that “it’s the soup and not the bowl that provides the nourishment we need.” He adds: “We want to teach our students to make a great soup. What they serve it in matters little.”

16 Apr 09

5 Things Bloggers Can Learn From Journalism School

www.bloggingtips.com/...n-learn-from-journalism-school - Preview

J-school bloggers blogging news writing journalism

The premise is to not write so that you can be understood, but write so that you can’t be misunderstood. It’s about writing so that people, no matter what biases they bring to reading your story, will get your exact message.
The premise is to not write so that you can be understood, but write so that you can’t be misunderstood. It’s about writing so that people, no matter what biases they bring to reading your story, will get your exact message.

11 Apr 09

Rob Fishman: Old Dogs, New Media: Why J-School Apps Are Up

www.huffingtonpost.com/...-new-media-why-j_b_185177.html - Preview

J-school future of news

As has been painfully evident over the past year, no new model for journalism yet exists. Where one can fault the J-School -- and by extension, journalism as a whole -- is in its superficial embrace of "new media," understood at 116th Street as a crash-course in web design as an addendum to the regular curriculum.
Instead of paying for news, readers paid for advertisements; in this way, said Lippmann, the payment was, until now, "concealed." Yet in today's world, the classifieds have gone to Craig's List, and online advertising accounts for only 10 percent of what print once garnered. Stripped finally of its profitable veneer by the Internet, the news has been reduced to unsellable truth.
1 more annotations...
- The question remains: if you can't monetize the news online, then how do you pay for costly reporting? For now, old media has the content, but it's losing the advertising. New media has the advertising, but not enough to foot the bill for content.

09 Apr 09

Why is ‘blog’ still a four-letter word? | New Media Bytes | Online journalism, web production and promotion

Too lazy to blog?

www.newmediabytes.com/...dents-journalists-need-to-blog - Preview

blogging future of news J-school students

I get the impression that most journalism students still haven’t heard the rumor that blogging will help them find a job.
For the sheer logistics of job hunting, blogging is a must for journalism students! Says Neil McIntosh, London-based head of editorial development for Guardian Unlimited (via BuzzMachine):

I tell all the journalism students I meet this: blogs are the minimum. There’s no excuse for a student journalist who wants to work online not to have one.
3 more annotations...
- I’ll say one better. Blogs are the minimum for all journalists. Regardless of whether a student wants to work on the web, in print, on TV or milk cartons, blogging shows that you have a passion for creating content, gives employers something to look at and also gets you on the same level as the rest of the industry.
- students. You need to blog to find a job.
- the bottom line is this: If you’re a journalism student (or anyone looking to succeed in mass comm), you need a blog. You need to learn how to cover a beat and write for a niche. You need to learn how to write for an audience and tap them for information. You need to be able to understand the web, or at least show a willingness to learn.

07 Apr 09

Are J-Schools Today Taking the Wrong Approach?

www.editorandpublisher.com/...article_display.jsp - Preview

J-school education teaching future of news

many journalism schools seem to be missing the point of the digital revolution and, as a result, are short-changing their students.
while the recent recession has not been kind to print media, Web news organizations haven't fared much better
4 more annotations...
- Journalism schools seem to be under the impression that Web savviness is synonymous with a technical mastery, and are top-loading course loads with classes on coding and production.
- Web platforms come and go, and no coding language stays in vogue more than a few of years. Basic reporting, writing, and editing skills will never be obsolete.
- If I were hiring a Web editor, my first interview questions would not be what programming languages they know, but what their strategies are for reaching out to blogs, improving SEO, and getting stories on Digg.
- If I was a J-school dean, I'd offer classes on social media and blog outreach (something that is severely lacking from most J-schools), and teach students how to expand and adapt existing print stories for the Web.

30 Mar 09

journalism / 25 / 03 / 2009 / News / Home - Inside Higher Ed

www.insidehighered.com/...journalism - Preview

journalism education future of news J-school

officials at the school hope to substantively change this "bread-and-butter" program by better integrating new media and business skills within its traditional reporting curriculum
"multimedia storytelling is integrated through all reporting classes, and quantitative skills and ethics are woven throughout the curriculum."
5 more annotations...
- As journalism has moved predominantly online, he noted, legal discussions surrounding it have shifted in a way that demands students be aware of how copyright and other laws apply in this new environment.
- the course would bridge the longstanding gap between the business and editorial sides of the journalism world
- “Most journalism schools have a historical aversion to teaching the business of journalism,” Grueskin said. “It, however, is incumbent upon us to show our students the [changing business] model.
- “It’s important for the school and for our students that Web training not be segregated from the core journalism curriculum,” Grueskin said.
- To survive, tomorrow's journalists will have to know how to run a business, because they'll increasingly have to sell themselves.

20 Mar 09

Poynter Online - E-Media Tidbits

www.poynter.org/column.asp - Preview

journalism poynter education J-school

an imaginary college program in civic media.

06 Mar 09

Why majoring in journalism is still a good idea « Kristin Markway Shaw

kamshaw.com/...ournalism-is-still-a-good-idea - Preview

J-school skills journalism

Journalism is a practical skill, along the same lines as business, engineering and computer programming. However, it often gets lumped into liberal arts or humanities
Asking questions and being curious is a great skill to have in any job.
5 more annotations...
- “j-schools teach how to organize and present info to the maximum effect and comprehension.”
- That ability is also an asset when writing proposals, making pitches or presentations and generally communicating with other people.
- Although constant deadline pressure makes some of us procrastinators (guilty!), the ability to meet a deadline is crucial in almost any job. What comes hand-in-hand is the ability to multitask.
- Journalism, for the most part, teaches you how to write concise, uncomplicated and clear copy. This style is perfect for business communications. You might have to learn some new lingo, but all the bones are there.
- These skills can be just as useful as a lawyer, a PR rep or a salesperson.

25 Feb 09

Duluth News Tribune awarded training grant | Duluth News Tribune | Duluth, Minnesota

www.duluthnewstribune.com/...113134 - Preview

future of news newspapers J-school business model

For the first time in Minnesota — and perhaps in the nation — a journalism school has received a grant to help two daily newspapers adapt their products to an increasingly Internet-based industry.
The Minnesota Job Skills Partnership program has given the Duluth News Tribune, the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the University of Minnesota’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication a total of $238,000 to help retrain the newspaper staffs.
1 more annotations...
- “All over the nation, newspaper staff members, advertising and everyone else have heard about this, and are looking closely at this as a potential model [for training],”

23 Feb 09

More Life, Less Trade - TIME

www.time.com/...0,9171,844392-1,00.html - Preview

J-school journalism teaching

As they have received a better, broader education, many journalism
students now set their sights on careers in other fields. Enrollment at
118 major U.S. journalism schools has more than doubled over the past
nine years to 24,445; yet a declining percentage of graduates go into
journalism—less than 45% last year. Careers in business, government,
public relations or advertising offer better salaries as a rule and
more promising future prospects.
As journalism schools have expanded, they have grown uneasy with even
the name journalism. Many now call themselves schools of
"communications" and try to deal with the broad spectrum of human
dialogue. Stanford's Department of Communication, for example, has
added courses called "Government and the Mass Media" and "Ethics in the
Mass Media" to stimulate students' thinking about their work in the
wider context of society.
1 more annotations...
- U.S. journalism schools are improving these
  days because they are teaching less journalism. At both graduate and
  undergraduate levels, the schools are stressing the liberal arts and
  down playing the techniques of the trade.

19 Feb 09

Skills training is not enough for the digital journalist

www.ojr.org/...print.htm - Preview

J-school journalists skills web2.0

it's not the skills that you get that will save your job, or repurpose you for the future, it's whether you can learn how to think like a journalist in the Web 2.0
skills, though, aren't the answer. As one news executive said, "We need to take staff to Web 2.0 and beyond – to make learning more nimble and flexible."
6 more annotations...
- multimedia literacy and a basic understanding of what it meant to work in a Web environment was what people needed – before they could go about learning the hardware.
- Silos, departmental rivalries, and departments that don't communicate with each other cannot exist if multimedia initiatives are to succeed.
- Web journalism means a journalism of conversation.
- The idea is to take the best parts of the civic journalism and public journalism movements and sync these up with the possibilities of the Web. Through networked journalism, Beckett urges legacy journalists to think of themselves as participating in somewhat of a pro-am kind of relationship, where mainstream journalists share the process of production with everyday citizens.
- Training that is based solely on techonology would be like teaching a police trainee how to shoot a gun, but not explaining the rules of engagement.
- Yes, we want our students to have Web skills (in part because we suspect that's going to help them a lot in job interviews) but the thinking is really the key part. The best way to develop the thinking is - yes, play with all of these different tools and develop some basic level of familiarity with them, then think critically about how you can use these tools to better realize core journalism values e.g. accuracy, watchdog, etc.

CollegeJourn: How j-schools can better prepare students for the real world

www.collegejourn.com/...ted----student-journalist.html - Preview

J-school future of news students education journalism collegejourn

25 Jan 09

Don’t you think it’s time to for J-schools to change their names?: SteveOuting.com

steveouting.com/...-schools-to-change-their-names - Preview

future of news J-school

Don’t you think it’s about time that they all get rid of the unneeded and outdated word “Mass”?
After all, it’s the “mass” part — the old news industry model of one-to-many — that is fast being usurped by the many-to-many and social model that is so much a part of the digital world that journalism is transitioning to.

10 Sep 08

MediaShift | PBS

Studeent wanting blogging and new media in her journalism classes.

www.pbs.org/mediashift - Preview

J-school students new media technology pbs blog digital journalism media

“Nowadays it’s essential for journalists to blog,”
it’s one of the few NYU undergrad journalism classes that focuses on new media
3 more annotations...
- surprisingly, NYU does not offer the kinds of classes I want. It continues to focus its core requirements around learning how to work your way up the traditional journalism ladder. Here is the thinking I find here:
  
  1. Get an internship at a magazine or newspaper. “This is good for your resume.”
  
  2. Bring the New York Times to class. The hard copy. “It’s the only way to get the news.”
  
  3. Learn how to write for a magazine or newspaper. “Writing for blogs or websites is not journalism.”
  
  4. Become an editor at a magazine or newspaper. “This is the only respectable position.”
- by the time my generation, Gen Y, gets into the real world there will be a much higher demand for web-savvy writers and thinkers than traditional Woodwards and Bernsteins.
- None of the other students in the class have a blog. It comes as a shock to me that the students in a class about “how our generation is very much invested in the Internet” are not actually as involved.

Cynthia McCune's Library tagged J-school → View Popular