I’ll be trekking down to Richmond, the capitol of the commonwealth I now call home, to speak with a graduate-level online journalism class on Friday evening. My esteemed Publish2 colleague (and all-around awesome dude) Ryan Sholin was not able to attend and I’ve been invited to discuss what we do, how journalism is changing and whatever other topics can fit into the session.
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.
After some teasing on Twitter (with the recently neglected #multimediastandards hashtag), we’re now ready to announce the beta launch of Multimedia Standards!
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:
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 Poynterlive chat about avoiding social media overload (during my lunch break):
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!
Below is a near-final draft version of a video Jackie Villavicencio and I did for our video journalism class. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!
I learned Tuesday by e-mail that I’ve been selected as one of 40 students to participate in the PoynterFellowship for College Journalists this summer. It takes place May 17-29 at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla.
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.
