J-Schools Adapt to New Media Reality

These days, journalists must be as knowledgeable about social networking and Web streaming as crafting an effective lede and nut graf.

A story in the New York Times sums up how many journalism colleges are adapting to change, not only teaching students electronic media skills but also entrepreneurship, which they can put to use creating their own jobs in the next era of journalism.

Surprising to many, the article notes, a number of college journalism programs are seeing an increase in enrollment even as media companies are consolidating and laying off reporters, editors and others.

The attraction? Many young people continue to view journalism as an enterprising career in which they can share their ideas and tell stories through various media to make a difference in their communities. This growth trend includes the number of students taking journalism classes at LBCC as well as Oregon State University.

Meanwhile, journalism faculty are challenged to keep up with students who often are ahead of their instructors in using social networking and other technology. As the article notes:

“New media” doesn’t mean transplanting old media to a new medium; it requires a new vocabulary, a new relationship with the audience — a massive social network that now talks back — and, sometimes, a new set of expectations about objectivity and timeliness.

At stake is a generation of reporters, and the continued role of journalists as the eyes, ears and questioners for the public.

The changes are forcing colleges and universities to rethink what a journalism education should look like.

The days are past when journalism programs can be content to turn out new reporters, editors and photographers, notes Times media reporter Brian Stelter. The new media demands "all-platform journalists" adept at not only gathering information and crafting compelling stories, but also shooting and editing audio and video pieces.

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(Photo credit: "Online newswire" by noodlepie, courtesy of Flickr.com)

Jarvis to Newspapers: You Blew It!

New media advocate and journalism professor Jeff Jarvis has three words for the newspaper industry: You blew it.

In one of the better rants laying out the ineptitude of the industry to adapt in the new millennium, Jarvis comments on the state of newspapers in this BuzzMachine missive in connection with the Newspaper Association of America meeting in San Diego last week:

You’ve had 20 years since the start of the web, 15 years since the creation of the commercial browser and craigslist, a decade since the birth of blogs and Google to understand the changes in the media economy and the new behaviors of the next generation of - as you call them, Mr. Murdoch - net natives. You’ve had all that time to reinvent your products, services, and organizations for this new world, to take advantage of new opportunities and efficiencies, to retrain not only your staff but your readers and advertisers, to use the power of your megaphones while you still had it to build what would come next. But you didn’t.

You blew it.

Jarvis, author of the book "What Would Google Do?" and a professor at City University of New York, chronicles all the opportunities missed by the newspaper industry, which was too busy protecting its own turf, ignoring customers and resisting change while Google and others recognized the digital revolution and ate their lunch.

Jarvis has little sympathy for newspaper publishers who have only themselves to blame for their industry's demise. He concludes:

So now, for many of you, there isn’t time. It’s simply too late. The best thing some of you can do is get out of the way and make room for the next generation of net natives who understand this new economy and society and care about news and will reinvent it, building what comes after you from the ground up. There’s huge opportunity there, for them.

Take that!

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(Photo credit: "Jeff Jarvis" by eirikso, courtesy of Flickr.com)

The Twouble with Twitter

Today in Media & Society we explored social networking. Students agreed that Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace can be great tools for staying in touch with friends, planning activities, publicizing events and making business and professional contacts.

Of course, they have their downsides as well, especially the incredible "time suck" that "just keeping in touch" can become. As part of our discussion, we enjoyed this parody of Twitter users on Current-SuperNews.

We got off to a happy start with "The Twitter Song" and the older ones among us, myself included, took heart that we are the fastest-growing demographic on Facebook. Yea for us!

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The Right Way to Do a Slide Show

Storyboard And Photography

View more presentations from Vadim Isakov.

In the continuing quest to do photojournalism well...

Check out this simple, yet effective tutorial on slide shows and storyboarding. You'll find the original on SlideShare, courtesy of Vadim Isakof, who has several well-done "how-to" slide shows at the site.

Mindy McAdams supplies some additional do's and don'ts in a post on her Teaching Online Journalism site.

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Photo Critique: Oregon Country Fair

Tara in my photojournalism class knows the person who shot this photo, and constructed this way-cool structure at the Oregon Country Fair last summer. The photo is by Michael Holden. What I like best about this is ... the spectacular color of the sky and the framing of this image. This is a fine example of what I would like my students to blog about in their weekly "photojournalism critique."

Photo credit: "The Pole Star at Sunset" by Michael Holden, courtesy of Filckr.com.

Seattle Times Publisher Speaks at OSU

Frank Blethen, publisher of the Seattle Times, will deliver the annual Tom McCall Lecture Thursday, April 2, in OSU's LaSells Stewart Center, Southwest 26th Street and Western Boulevard in Corvallis. The talk begins at 7:30 p.m.

The topic of his talk is "Reclaiming America's Independent Press and Saving Democracy." With the newspaper industry reeling, it should be interesting to get Blethen's perspective on newspapers and the media in the new millennium.

(Photo credit: Lillian Love, LBCC)

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