Columbia University in New York launched a new course for new media majors in September. If, like so many j-educators, you are looking for ideas about how to teach multimedia journalism, this blog post is a treasure chest worth digging into. Here you will find links to the course outline; handouts on such things as digital storytelling…
Many journalism educators and mid-career journalists are anxious these days about the aging state of their skills. They want to know more about audio, video and interactive tools, social networking and managing “citizen journalists”, etc. But there are no weekend spas for such makeovers. In this piece, Steve Buttry, director of tailored programming at the America…
The University of Missouri’s School of Journalism is experimenting with a new course in citizen journalism. Clyde Bently, an associate professor there, says its an attempt to get students to learn new skills and explore the community beyond the campus. They are required to take and share photos online using photo sharing sites; cover beats…
If you feel as though you have fallen behind and need to catch up quickly on all the new tools and practices being used by journalists online these days, you may find this introductory guide useful. It may also help those students who are not on the cutting edge and feel intimidated by those who are.…
There’s a growing chorus of voices criticizing journalism schools these days for failing to prepare students for the dramatic changes happening in newsrooms as they move to distributing their news online. But in this thoughtful blog post, Mindy McAdams, who teaches online journalism in Florida, explains why some of the criticism is unfair. It’s just too easy…
Journalism professors who insist on teaching traditional journalism practices and fail to teach about the changing new media practices in today’s newsrooms, took some heavy criticism at a recent conference. A convention of college media advisers in the U.S. heard a long list of complaints from students about very dated advice they had received from their j-profs. Paul Conley,…
The Toronto Star is looking at new ways to track errors and perhaps reduce them, as other papers, including the Hamilton Spectator, have done. In a recent column, the Star‘s Public Editor, Kathy English, explains why getting names right matters and how getting them wrong hurts a paper’s credibility. A former journalism educator at Ryerson, she…
An interesting post by Steve Yelvington, a journalist turned media strategist, who blogs about online journalism. He wonders why some of the creative new ways of information sharing online are not being developed by journalism students/faculty/schools. He asks whether they are all too focused on past practices rather than on invention and discovery. It’s good food…
George Orwell’s classic 1946 essay The Politics of the English Language provides timeless advice for writing clearly and powerfully. This is a short summary of his five basic rules.
Transom.org is a website whose stated purpose is to make public radio better. It provides a forum for people to submit audio stories that haven’t found their way onto public radio, which showcase new voices and new ways of storytelling. It also includes a wonderful section on tools with advice about all kinds of audio gear from recording…