The word “networks” gets thrown around a lot. In terms of journalism, one could argue that journalists have always been about networking. We network with sources, subjects and readers and use that networking to our advantage when finding and writing stories. “Social” networking in this age, however, means something different. A recent post on the [...]
Does “community engagement” belong in the j-school curriculum? Robert Niles, writing in the Online Journalism Review, Doing journalism in 2010 is an act of community organizing, says absolutely, yes: The journalists who succeed online are the ones who understand that they are no longer simply reporters… they’ve become community organizers. Consider these examples: Jonathan Weber, [...]
Google Labs, The New York Times and the Washington Post are experimenting (together, itself a noteworty point) on creating “Living Story” pages that aggregate information about a topic with a timeline, pictures, summary and links to major stories. Readers can read stories without navigating away from the main page, getting deep information on a single [...]
As educators struggle to cram more into the journalism curriculum, journalism history courses are easy targets for elimination or reduction. Yet Carlin Romano argues journalism history should be required of all journalism students, along with comparative journalism and philosophy of journalism courses. Despite the sure disagreement with this recommendation, I think he’s right. Here’s why:
Creativity in journalism is an uncomfortable process. It involves twisting your brain into odd shapes, looking in strange places, talking to people others don’t talk to. Then you have to find ways to relate that story through complicated methods, such as writing, photographing, graphing, networking, videoing and hundreds of other new methods.
One lesson we learned from Poynter, then, is that it’s okay to be uncomfortable. Get used to being uncomfortable and spending time on the line between absolute failure and glorious success. More than that, it’s important to be creative and critically think about everything you do. Media is not a safe, happy place. If you’re satisfied with what you’re doing and comfortable, you’re not learning or working hard enough.
Jay Rosen just twittered an interesting post from the Silicon Valley Watcher: 25 ideas: Creating An Open-Source Business Model For Newspapers. What I like about this list of very smart ideas is that if implemented, they would create some fundamental changes in the way news organizations operate. If a group of reporters and editors actually [...]
Stanley Fish, a distinguished professor who writes for The New York Times (and whose opinions I love to read but generally disagree with) has a recent blog post about a book called “The Last Professor.” The author argues that utilitarian education has completely eclipsed the model of humanist education centered around wise and tenured professors [...]
I am teaching an online reporting class that starts in exactly 13 days. What should students know by the time they complete the course?
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but what you can do for SND