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.

I set up this CoverItLive blog to automatically aggregate all the tweets tagged #knc09 #fncm09 #kncmit (translation: Knight News Challenge, Future of News and Civic Media and Knight News Challenge Massachusetts Institute of Technology) so I (and others who can’t follow all the awesomeness minute-by-minute) can read them later.

Enjoy!

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?

The games run from Feb. 7-13, but we’ll be there from Feb. 5-15. Students will be split across newsrooms in Boise, McCall and Sun Valley.

(Somehow I have a knack for taking trips that require really early flights, as evinced by the post time.)

The Job

Rich Beckman, Knight Chair of Visual Journalism at UM, is the executive producer for Special Olympics Live, a site we will update with photos and videos daily. I’m on Rich’s team in Boise and will be documenting the team’s efforts with other a couple other Miami folks and a couple students from Universidad de los Andes in Chile.

In addition, I’m in charge of social media for the site, which isn’t really “live.”

I’ll post some updates on my @greglinch Twitter account, but I’ve created @soilive to handle our general webcasting team coverage.

You can follow the hashtag #soi and/or subscribe to the RSS feed for a Twitter search of #soi. If you’re interested, you can also join the official Special Olympics community, where fans post blogs, photos and videos.

The Tech

I’m bringing my Canon Rebel XT (15-55mm and 75-300mm lenses), in addition to one of the broadcast department’s Sony DSR-PD150 to use for the video work. Other UM students will use thePanasonic AG-DVX100, which are shared between the visual journalism and motion pictures programs.

I typically use the Panasonic, but have a good amount of experience with the Sony, so I’ll be ready to rock once we’re wheels down in Idaho.

The Sony kit is in a huge Pelican case and comes with:

• It’s standard shotgun mic
• Sennheiser ME-66 shotgun mic
• Sony ECM-44B wired lavalier mic
• Electro Voice EV-50 hand mic
• Sennheiser headphones
• 50-foot XLR cable
• Spare battery
• DC charger

As you may remember, I was also part of a volunteer team from the UM School of Communication that shot the Special Olympics torch run in Miami in January.

Full disclosure: Special Olympics is covering all of our travel and lodging expenses for the World Winter Games, but we are not being paid.

(Full disclosure: I’m the CoPress community manager, as well as a core team member.)

In a major move to help college newspapers thrive online, CoPress has announced a plan to move interested papers to WordPress and host the sites for a low monthly fee, plus a minor initial setup cost.

Or, if you’re just looking for low-cost hosting sans WordPress, that’s also an option. If you go that route, you don’t pay the initial setup cost.

What’s the advantage? Well, when you consider how much money your college news site could generate if you sold all the ads, and therefore took in related revenue, choosing CoPress could pay for itself.

Not to mention the fact that you have complete control over your site. That, in my view, is the most attractive reason. I oversaw The Miami Hurricane’s move from College Publisher to WordPress last summer and wish CoPress existed at the time.

But, whereas our situation allowed us to make the move on our own, many school papers don’t have a server or the technical know-how to make such a move. Or, if you do, you can avoid a possible headache (particularly in transfering your College Publisher archives) with a little help from your friends.

That’s where CoPress comes in – we can do all that. Check out the post about the hosting plan.

For more information, visit the CoPress hosting page.

Leave a comment on the CoPress post or e-mail hosting@copress.org with any questions. Also, you can follow us on Twitter.

Newspaper reporters, editors and others listen as Miami Herald Multimedia Editor Rick Hirsch gives opening remarks at Saturday's workshop. (From my camera phone, TwitPic)

This is the first in an occasional series called “Tips from a J-Student.” Posts will focus on ways journalism students can better prepare themselves for jobs, internships and other opportunities.

Click here for my Top 10 list of tips.

I know I’ve said this before in some form or another, but (in my Mel Brooks voice):

“It’s good to be a student.”

About 50 newspaper and other media professionals gathered at the University of Miami’s School of Communication on Saturday for a day of online and multimedia training sessions, sponsored by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors and Florida Press Association.

For the second consecutive year, Matthew Bunch (@matthewsbunch) and I volunteered for the event. Deborah Acosta (@deborahacosta) a first-year graduate student, also volunteered.

Yes, we helped unload a car. Yes, we helped set up breakfast. Yes, we handed out name tags and programs. 

But why?

Well, there was free breakfast and lunch. More importantly, it was an opportunity to see old friends, meet new people and learn something (sessions were also free for volunteers).

For example, I met University of Florida journalism professor Dave Stanton (@gotoPlanB) after months of hearing about him from former students and Orlando Sentinel senior producer Danny Sanchez (@DannySanchez) after following each on Twitter for awhile.

As for learning something new, I was able to attend a session in each of the three time slots (more details). It just so happened that all of them were led by Miami Herald journalists:

• Spreadsheets and databases – Rob Barry, investigative reporter and database specialist; Stephanie Rosenblatt, multimedia developer
• Online story planning – Paul Cheung, deputy multimedia presentation editor; Niala Boodhoo, multimedia business specialist
• SEO and you – Suzanne Levinson, director of site operations

I wish I could have attended all the workshops, but I picked the ones where I thought I would learn the most. 

So what good does this do you?

Find out if your school hosts any professional development events. Most UM journalism students have no idea this opportunity – though limited to a few volunteers – exists at all.

If there’s not such an event, see what you can do to lobby for workshops or some other opportunity to network and learn (somewhat related: a shameless plug for Sean Blanda’s efforts to bring BarCamp NewsInnovation to Philadelphia). 

But the overall lesson is to take advantage of any available opportunity to improve your skill set, make new connections and continue relationships. And, if that opportunity doesn’t exist, try to make it happen.

Upcoming opportunity: From Jan. 3 to 10, Knight Char in Visual Journalism Rich Beckman will host his annual Beyond Bootcamp workshops at UM for the first time.

Students have the (paid) opportunity to assistant in one of the three-day sessions. I’ll be helping out with the video narratives sessions, Jan. 7 to 10. Of course, I plan to blog about this event.

Looking forward: Several upcoming posts in this series will related to applying for summer internships. Although it’s too late for many summer opportunities, I hope these posts will help students applying in the spring and beyond. 

Weigh in: Have you found any similar training or networking opportunities at your school? If not, what kind would you like to see?

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.

Kevin announcing the news on Twitter.

About one week after CoPress submitted an application for this year’s Knight News Challenge, we found out today that we advanced to the second round.

I did a happy dance in my chair.

Kevin Koehler (@kev097), who toiled into the late hours of the night last Sunday to polish the application, announced the good news via Twitter (see photo).

A little background on the project, quoting our application:

CoPress is a collaborative project to invigorate online student media through community, software, and knowledge. A single organization providing Web support, we will fill a gaping need for college publications, providing the tools they lack to thrive in the digital revolution, and platforms for innovation.

For a more detailed overview, visit the CoPress about page. For all the juicy details, check out our meeting notes.

Also, be sure to check out our application, leave a comment and give us stars if you think we’re cool.

An updated and expanded application is due in a few weeks, so we’ll be adding more details before then.

Special congratulations to Daniel Bachhuber, our fearless leader who started the group and is just plain awesome.

UPDATE, Nov. 12: Check out the CoPress post on the news, We’re in: Knight Challenge round duex.

This past weekend I attended the Associated Collegiate Press/College Media Advisers conference in Kansas City, Mo.

The Miami Hurricane sent six people, four from the newsroom and two from the business office.

Other UM student media also sent staffers, including five from the Ibis yearbook and one from Distraction magazine. The respective Hurricane and Ibis advisers also attended.

(Quick shout-out to Hurricane adviser Bob Radziewicz, who learned some iMovie and Audacity at the conference, yay! And he got Twitter on his own. Follow him @caneadviser.)

Another UM professor, Rich Beckman, was the conference’s first keynote speaker on Thursday (Mark Glaser of MediaShift was the keynote on Friday).

Rich started his talk by discussing how the newspaper industry fell behind with the Web. But, instead of harping on the negative, he mostly offered advice for the hundreds of students and advisers in attendance.

To summarize Rich’s advice:

• You still need the basics — writing and editing across platforms, legal and ethical grounding
• Everyone needs to know audio and video content gathering, editing and storytelling skills
• Photojournalism and photo editing skills and the ability to produce audio-driven photo galleries and stories
• Understand audience, usability, social networking, etc.
• You need multimedia storytelling skills
• Skills are given. Once you have them, you need to learn how to use them
• Take advantage of what the Web is good at (interactivity, availability, etc.)
• Use your publications to test your skills
• Follow people, not organizations, when looking for good examples of journalism
• Find mentors

Rich also discussed how multimedia design and infographic skills as well as multimedia programming and producing skills will land you the best (and best paid) jobs at top news organizations.

Besides the familiar faces, I got to see some new faces and meet some people in person for the first time, including Andrew Dunn, Anthony Pesce (whose video is embedded above) and Miles Skorpen. I’d known each through Twitter and the latter two from CoPress, so it was great to hang with them at the conference.

I also had a mini reunion of sorts with David Grant, editor of the Collegiate Times (Virginia Tech) and Kristen Daum, editor-elect of the State News (Michigan State). The three of us were part of the Al Neuharth Free Spirit scholarship class of 2005.

Speaking of awards:

• The Hurricane didn’t win an online Pacemaker, but we got a pretty plaque for being a finalist. So, we’re looking to next year’s competition, when we’ll be entering the new WordPress site that Brian Schlansky and I created last summer.
• Will Wooten, Hurricane visuals editor in spring 2008, won a third place page one design award for the “Do Not Rush the Field” cover

Sneak peak at next project

I’ll be playing producer and leading one of five video teams today for an Election Day 2008 multimedia project, which is being organized by the UM visual journalism program. The group, which also includes seven still photo teams, is being led by vis-j faculty Jim Virga, Kim Grinfeder and Rich Beckman.

We’ll be working in the West Grove and later putting together a site with all the stories, expected to launch soon after the election is finished. Note: This is not live coverage, but instead a documentary-style project.

I’ll write a recap post with my thoughts and a link after it launches.

Until then, follow the project on Twitter. Alex de Carvalho (@alexdc), who is one of the project’s other coaches, and I (@greglinch) will be live tweeting using the hastag #grove.