Maybe I’ll even throw in some of the ol’ tips.

As would be expected, I posed a question on Twitter about what I should discuss.

• ckanal: @greglinch Awesome, congrats! Twitter, personal branding + networking.
• AAdamGlenn: @greglinch Def’nly social media (see: http://bit.ly/socmediaskills). But also participatory jurno, curation, entrepreneurship
• lavrusik: @greglinch The importance of understanding the fundamental shift to social news and the need for them to innovate. Sounds flowery, I know.
• MikeHigdon: @greglinch why they should start their own start ups…

(Tweets curated and published with ease courtesy of this and this.)

Thanks to Craig Kanalley, Adam Glenn, Vadim Lavrusik, Mike Higdon and Yuri Victor for their advice. These are all great topics and I hope to touch on as many as possible.

As I read the responses, I thought more about the best approach for the visit. Here’s what I’m thinking now:

• Introduce myself
• Ask students to introduce themselves
• Discuss their interests and goals
• Ask what they want to discuss
• Maybe show some things on the screen
• Challenge assumptions, if warranted

The last point bounced around my head as I asked the question and read the answers, most likely because it was the topic of my Skype video chat with Dave Stanton’s senior-level journalism class earlier this month.

Then I saw this and laughed:

• danielbachhuber: Questioning the assumptions will always produce mind-blowing results.

Daniel and are often on the same wavelength, but this was just a funny coincidence. He sent that tweet via text message and wasn’t responding to me (I doubt he even saw the question).

I will qualify and say I don’t think you will always get mind-blowing results, but we could all use a little more challenging of assumptions now and then. Particularly when it comes to journalism education and how we deal with related conversations.

So let me know what you think of this approach and what would you discuss if you were speaking to a graduate-level online journalism class.

The site was created by 13 undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Miami as part of Rich Beckman’s spring 2009 Seminar in Visual Storytelling class. It’s built on WordPress using a heavily modified Branford Magazine theme. The main feature is an interactive grid, which includes audio clips from the interviews with an awesome group of multimedia professionals, built with PHP, JavaScript and Flash (for the audio player).

A clean and simple home page, with The Grid front and center.

We began the project in late March and launched in private beta in May. Thanks to everyone for their feedback!

Here’s a slightly tweaked description of the site that I wrote for the School of Communication:

There are plenty of Web sites and blogs devoted to multimedia journalism, and many of them are great. But there’s no single hub to discuss, share, critique, rate and learn about the field – including in-depth thoughts from industry leaders. That’s the hole Multimedia Standards aims to fill.

But what about the name: Multimedia Standards? The site offers none. Instead, we offer resources and opinions on everything from “what is multimedia” to “what is good multimedia” and beyond.

Users can listen to an international group experts in an interactive grid; submit and critique projects; find other sites on our resources pages and easily subscribe to them (we provide the RSS feeds); see upcoming events on our calendar; and read about upcoming contests and recent winners. User input, from critiquing multimedia projects to saving links in our Publish2 newsgroup (which feeds to the top-right homepage widget), is key and we plan to continue updating the site with more featured links.

The team

Each student gathered and edited audio and were involved in the planning and research of the site. The class included:

• Deborah Acosta – content team leader
• Walyce Almeida – content team
• Andrea Ballocchi – programming team
• Matt Byrnes – design and programming teams
• Melissa Gerber – programming team
• Andrea Huber – design team leader
• Akilah Johnson – content team
• Shell Jun Zhu – content team
• Greg Linch – producer
• Holly Max – design team
• Brian Schlansky – programming team leader
• Laura Sutnick – design team
• Jesse Swanson – content team
• Rich Beckman – executive producer

The site

We spent a good deal of time early on discussing how to best organize the site’s content because of the nature of the content. The sections/navigation include:

• Summary – a synopsis of all our research from the interviews, including an overview of the topics discussed and thoughts on the future
• The Grid – 10 questions and answers from our interviews; links to profiles, which feature the full interviews
• Resources – RSS feeds featuring multimedia producers, commentators and related organizations
• Submit/Critique – submit multimedia sites and projects for critiques and star ratings by users
• Events – a Google calender with upcoming conferences, training events, etc.
• Awards – information about upcoming awards and recently announced winners
• About – credits, photos and links to individual Web sites, Twitter accounts and e-mail addresses

The Grid

Unfortunately, The Matrix was taken. So we went with The Grid, which features (A-Z):

• Alberto Cairo
• Leo Caobelli
• Pamela Chen
• Andrew DeVigal
• David Dunkley Gyimah
• Kim Grinfeder
• Kenny Irby
• Gary Kebbel
• Tom Kennedy
• Brian Storm
• Will Sullivan
• Ashley Wells

What can I do?

Your interaction is key to the site being more than just a static presentation of our work. For example, submitting and critiquing projects, adding events and more.

Let me know if you’re interested in learning anything more about the site; I’ll respond via the comments or write another post, if the questions warrant. Also, please comment with feedback. How can we make the site better?

Send comments to multimediastandards [at] gmail [dot] com

Looking forward, there’s a second round of interviews in pipeline, which will be used to create a second grid. Although I’ve graduated and won’t be directly involved with that, I’ll be sure to post an update when part deux launches.

Yet another CoverItLive blog! Yes, on Thursday at 1 p.m. EDT I will help lead a Poynter live chat about avoiding social media overload (during my lunch break):

How Do I Help Students Handle Information Overload on Social Media Sites?

The URL is simple and easy to remember (and tweet!), so please share the link with others!

http://bit.ly/poynterchat

Also, please come ready with questions and/or ready to help answer others’ questions.

If you are not able to follow the chat live, you can submit questions beforehand by commenting below or contacting me on Twitter.

I’ll be co-leading the discussion with Poynter’s Sara Quinn, a visual journalism faculty member who oversees the Poynter College Fellowship, which I attended in late May.

Speaking of cool Poynter people…

Mallary Tenore invited me to help with this chat, and I thank her for the opportunity. She’s awesome. If you don’t read her blog or follow her, you should.

I’d also like to thank Ellyn Angelotti, Poynter’s interactivity editor, who you should also follow.

Some background: While at #pcf09, some other fellows and I joined a live chat led by Emily Ingram. Ellyn said if I pitched a good idea, I could lead one too. I mentioned the topic of effectively using various social networks, which soon became this topic. Voila!

The Andersons from Greg Linch on Vimeo.

I doubt that it needs to be said, but I’m extremely excited. As I wrote in my essay, I’m looking forward to not only learning from some of the most respected journalists in the field, but also to learn from my peers.

Oh, and did I mention, the tuition is free!

After a little research, I’ve found 10 others who have been accepted, nine of whom I found through Twitter search.

One of my tweeps is listed as alternate. We’ve never met, but I hope she has the opportunity to attend because I know she’s a very talented college journalist.

As for how this effects my summer plans, it doesn’t change anything. I will go to my internship at the Dallas Morning News, which I am also eagerly anticipating, soon after the fellowship.

In short, I proclaim this the summer of Greg!

PS. I can’t believe I’m graduating in a little more than two months. Where have the college years gone?

Watch the keynote here (not visable in RSS feed) or at:

• http://www.mogulus.com/greglinch

The second set of workshops, which conclude Saturday, includes the following sessions (more about faculty):

• Creating video narratives by Washington Post video guru Travis Fox and University of Miami visual journalism professor Jim Virga.
• Creating effective online infographics by University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill visual communication professor Alberto Cairo and New York Times graphics editor Xaquin Gonzalez.
• Multimedia programming for journalists by NYT senior multimedia producer Tom Jackson and Internet consultant Donny Loflin, who specializes in multimedia and application development.

I am attending the infographics workshops because it’s the area I know the least about, though I wish I could take all three!

Notes

Special thanks to Richard Koci Hernandez for embedding the livestream video player at Multimedia Shooter.

Follow all Beyond Bootcamp tweets:

• http://www.greglinch.com/multimedia/beyondbootcamp

As I mentioned the other day, please share the livestream and other links on Twitter, Facebook, e-mail, IM, etc.

Sidenote: I received an NBC xylophone-like chime from MSNBC’s Jim Seida for being an “awesome” audio workshop assistant.

I really enjoyed working with Jim and NYT’s Nancy Donaldson during the past three days. They didn’t treat me merely as an assistant (I only fetched water once), but asked me to help participants work in Soundtrack Pro, create their narratives and act as a “third teacher” (Jim’s words).

But, besides helping, I also learned a number of useful tips and tricks. Thanks, Jim and Nancy — you guys rock!

Some background: I will be an online intern at The Dallas Morning News this summer (see related post), a position that focuses on writing and video (mostly breaking news and enterprise).

My career goal is to work as a multimedia reporter.

I have some degree of proficiency in each of the following (in no particular order):

• Writing and reporting
• Media law and ethics
• AP style
• Video content gathering and editing
• Audio content gathering and editing
• Photography and photo editing
• Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign
• HTML/CSS
• Blogging
• Social media
• Content and community management
• SEO (more than basic)
• Flash (I currently know enough to make this portfolio site)
• JavaScript (fairly basic, I know how to use libraries)
• Spanish (studied for seven years)

Here are some ideas for what I could learn:

• XML
• ActionScript 3
• Database reporting, a.k.a computer-assisted reporting (map mashups, mySQL, etc.)
• PHP (because I work with WordPress and Ning a lot)
• JavaScript (more in-depth)
• Search engine optimization (more in-depth)

What do you think?

Or should I simply work on improving some of the skills I already have? I’m taking a video class in the spring to further refine those skills, so I probably won’t focus on video during break.

If there’s another skill you think would be valuable, please let me know. I will probably focus on one, maybe two depending on the intensity of the primary skill.

A couple of my visual journalism professors have recommended learning XML and more Flash, specifically focusing on AS3.

Personally, I’m learning towards database and CAR stuff.

I would greatly appreciate any suggestions in comments below, with a brief explanation of why.

Thanks!

Update, Dec. 22: Apparently one of my plugins broke the comment feature, so no one has been able to respond so far. Fortunately, Twitter came to the rescue!

Almost all of the recommendations have been for learning more about databases and CAR, as well as SEO.

Last week there was an epic Twitter discussion about journalism education.

The conversation continued on the blogosphere and I’d like to offer a few links in the interest of keeping that conversation alive:

Rich Beckman discusses how to reshape journalism education – Greg Linch (me)

J-Schools Now – Emily Kostic

Peripheral education – Daniel Bachhuber

What do you think? Please post a comment or, if you blog about this topic, drop a link here.

UPDATE (Dec. 2 at 11 p.m.): Jared Silfies has also weighed in,

Education 2.0: The Internet makes us the computer wearing tennis shoes

Read the Twitter discussion: Twitter discussion about journalism education or see it as a Wordle visualization.

Context: Rich Beckman, Knight Chair in visual journalism at the University of Miami, gave a presentation on Nov. 11 about how we should reshape journalism education. He spoke as part of the first Knight Chair Lecture Series.

Notes

(everything should be attributed to Beckman unless otherwise noted or in brackets)

• This is a time of great change
• We’re at the point where almost all of our students are coming out a high-speed Internet culture
• They’ve changed their behavioral habits
• “None of us were raised in the environment our students were”
• Question: How do we interact, how do we teach, how do we get on the cutting edge? Maybe we can’t, but we need to think of ways to try.

New York Times cut 100 positions from print newsroom and added 30 new jobs in online newsroom, but doesn’t really work in academia.

We can learn from everything that went from the newspaper industry

• Reactive rather than proactive strategies
• Failure to make appropriate hires
• Lack of appropriately trained Web and multimedia savvy young journalists
• Reliance on flexible IT platforms (one of the biggest problems under the radar — wed to technology that’s not friendly to the Internet such as social networking, interactivity, dynamic content, etc.)
• Failure to understand the impact of niche publishing (e.g. travel, people go online now instead of going to newspaper)
• Loss of revenue translated into loss of training dollars (“We cannot say we cannot afford to train or re-train people. We have no choice but to re-train people in the new environment”)
• Failure to integrate social networks, blogs and citizen journalism strategies
• Failure to understand best practices
• Failure to adopt integrated marketing strategies and publishing strategies (didn’t link within their site, refused to break news online — “All critical mistakes leading to declining readership and declining revenue”)

Major challenges

• Continuing education – experiential learning, reduced teaching loads, professional internships, team-teaching opportunities, summer study grants (“Multimedia is a team sport” –> used West Grove site as example of teamwork)
• Stratified curricula – most programs still feature tool-based curriculum tracks, rather than practice-based curriculum tracks; for instance, documentary film, documentary broadcast and documentary multimedia in three separate sequences (film, broadcast and visual journalism); the goal is the same; the tools are sometimes different, but the storytelling is always more important than the tool (“This integrated use of mm has permeated our industry not only in the U.S., but throughout the world” We need to find a way to bring those kids together
• Graduates working in jobs did not exist three years ago or have evolved to require additional skill sets, but most schools are not designed to react to quickly evolving industries
• Staffing – you are what your Web presence projects and you are limited by your technical infrastructure and support staff; you cannot excel without appropriate technology and appropriate tech expertise. Most schools still do not understand the need or appreciate the need for a stellar CIO and staff, do not fund these positions at an appropriate level and do not involve them properly (“That is your new face, your Web site.”)
• Textbooks – “In my field, there’s no textbook I can use”; when your audience is student who don’t read newspaper because news is not timely, you can’t expect them to learn about new tech from a year-old book

What’s happening

• NYT publisher saying he doesn’t know if print product will be around in five years
• Kaplan accounts for 50 percent of The Washington Post Company’s revenue
• Christian Science Monitor dropping print edition except for weekly

Is this good news?

• Newspapers running extra copies, this doesn’t mean newspapers are alive, just that people want documents
• Most people get their coupons from the Sunday paper

Sign of the times

• Traditional intern description
• Intern plus audio gathering and audio slideshow skills
• Intern who can train staff, create interactive database-driven Web products

Where are the eyes?

• Google, Yahoo, MySpace, YouTube, Facebook
• CNN is highest news site at no. 9

Your skill set

• [same as the list in this post from ACP/CMA]
• (Many schools refuse to offer programming, say go to comp sci school; you can’t say/do that)
• We should have eye trackers here for usability

Pieces of the puzzle

• You have to have the skills, but having skills is simply the foundation
• “I can teach software to a monkey”
• Knowing how to use these skills to best communicate on top of the foundation
• Multimedia storytelling has the potential to produce better journalism

Fitting the pieces together

Understand every storytelling tool in your expanded tool palette, having the skills to implement or to guide implementation, knowing what is possible, understanding your story, understanding and engaging.

“I don’t believe in telling stories about people unless those people can understand it.” Examples:

• South of Here
• Ancient Way

We’ll take Grove site to the Grove because many residents don’t have a computer

“Our job is to help our subjects better tell their stories”

Challenge yourself and your students

• Students learn best when they are engaged and actively participating in the learning process
• Do not teach software; teach students to use software to become stronger storytellers and researchers
• Involve your students in real world projects, not classroom exercises (he’d require people to go abroad)
• Be willing to learn from your students (see how they interact, communicate)
• Maintain high expectations and adopt professional standards

Multimedia for social change

• Multimedia has the unique ability to give your subjects a voice, to let them tell their own stories. Audiences relate to your subjects, not to you. It is not your story. Your jub is to help your subject best tell his or her story.
• Never before has an individual had such an inexpensive and …
• [30 UM students signed up for Idaho, 16 coaches including Jim and Kim, Andrea and Shell coaches, coaches from big media outlets, three newsrooms running 24 hours, 200 total students]

Endless opportunities

• It is one of the most exciting times in history to be a member of a university community. The world is our classroom, technology is our partner and both students and faculty are excited about learning. It is also one of the most challenging times to be an educator because every day you stand still is another day that you fall behind.
• Challenge yourselves to go forward and make a difference

Gina Maranto, English composition professor, asked a question about IT, team teaching, doing those things in research institution.

Beckman responded:

• “I don’t think there’s problems, I think there’s challenges and opportunities. I’ll work within the system or outside the system. Here, I think I’ll be able to work within the system”
• At UNC, they hid away and bought their own server, developed their own CMS, etc. When they got recognition, then school jumped on the bandwagon
• [Beckman was executive producer for Special Olympics World Games in Shanghai in 2007 with videos and photos from all the athletes and events.] CEO of Special Olympics, said this is the new face of Special Olympics, will keep site forever and keep doing it.

My thoughts

Ditto

WEIGH IN: What do you think?

I shot and edited the video for my multimedia storytelling class with Rich Beckman, Knight Chair in visual journalism. I got a lot of good responses and feedback* from Beckman and my classmates, but I’m still hungry for more.

What did you like? What could have been done better? Please let me know in the comments or by using this nifty contact form.

*A footnote: One of aspect that could be improved is the amount of visual variety; specifically, use fewer basketball clips and show different types of interaction. From the time the project was assigned to when it was due, there was only one opportunity to go with the class to shoot, so I only have them playing basketball.

Even though the assignment is complete, I plan to go back and shoot more footage of Rocmel interacting with his friends and classmates.