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.

New ONA site

Tah-dah! Another social network!

The Online News Association officially launched their new Web site (see right) Monday evening.

If you’re a member with full access, or even a non-member just perusing, you can tell this site is big step forward.

Here are some of the features, as outlined in an e-mail from ONA President Jonathan Dube:

• Networking features, including discussion groups that connect members by region and area of interest, giving you the ability to have one-on-one conversations and to chat in real time.
• An easy-to-navigate membership directory – searchable by name, type of organization, areas of expertise, and more – enabling you to more easily network with people with common interests.
• A Career Center that allows members to post and search job openings.
• A new training section with innovative digital presentations tagged by topic, source and medium. This section features videotaped sessions from ONA’s sold-out 2008 annual conference, with tips on the latest techniques in multimedia storytelling from the New York Times, Washington Post, USA TODAY and the BBC, among others.

So why I am blogging about this? Earlier this month I was asked to be the student group discussion leader, a role I enthusiastically accepted. 

I’ll be posting there a couple times a week in order to start conversations on topics such as classes, cool projects and internships. The group has six members so far, including two pros. 

If you’re a student ONA member, please join us!

If you’re a student interested in online journalism, I highly recommend joining ONA. I joined in April and think ONA is a group often overlooked by student journalists (read about membership benefits).

For only $25 a year, you can’t say no.

One benefit is that you get a heavily discounted conference registration — we’re talking less than half the pro rate.

And if you saw my posts or tweets about this year’s gathering in D.C., you’d see why the experience is so valuable. I went to a number of great sessions, but more important are the connections you make.

NETWORKING IS KEY! (see No. 8)

As someone in the midst of an internship - and soon job - search, I can’t emphasize that enough.

With $1 million to help journalism, I would fund a project to look for ways to financially sustain journalism efforts, building off of the New Business Models for News Summit.

I wasn’t at the conference, so I followed it online. It was a great starting point, but we need more Web people involved. And not just Web people, but innovators who have successfully made money online.

To give you a sense of the people I would invite:

• Sergey Brin and Larry Page (Google co-founders)
• Craig Newmark (Craigslist)
• Matt Flannery (Kiva)

Weigh in: Who else would you invite?

Sidenote: This closed-door summit is not the answer: API Hosting ‘Crisis Summit’ for Newspaper Industry.

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.

Thursday night I finished a video about the UM student production of Cabaret (see related tweets), which I shot on Monday and Wednesday.

This is my first video of the year for The Miami Hurricane, where I advise online and multimedia production, and I plan to shoot more throughout the school year.

What’s noteworthy about this piece is that it’s the first time I’ve used Soundtrack Pro to fix the audio after editing the footage in Final Cut Pro. I’d previously only used Soundtrack for audio projects.

The video is online with a story by Nick Maslow and is on my Vimeo page. It also appears in a nifty widget on the sidebar of my site.

For more information about the musical, visit the Ring Theatre’s site. Enjoy!

Greg with Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts. Photo by Lilly Echeverria.

Yes.

This past weekend (Sept. 19-21) I attended the National Writers Workshop in Fort Lauderdale, an annual conference hosted by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

Among the speakers (A-Z):

• Dave Barry - Miami Herald humor columnist and author
• Roy Peter Clark - director of the writing center, dean of the faculty, senior scholar and vice president at the Poynter Institute
• Leonard Pitts, Jr. - Miami Herald columnist (see photo)

I liveblogged the conference using Twitter and updates can be found by searching greglinch + NWW or NWW.

I’ve posted on Google Docs my notes from a Saturday morning session by Jacqui Banaszynkski, Knight chair in editing at University of Missouri School of Journalism.

I’ll be taking about a month to catch my breath before the next conference, a trip covered by The Miami Hurricane:

Associated Collegiate Press and College Media Advisers conference in Kansas City, Oct. 29 to Nov. 2.

I’ll be flying up on the evening of Oct. 30 and leaving Nov. 2. The Hurricane is sending a total of eight students, plus our adviser.

Related Posts

• Conference craziness: Looking back at SPJ and forward to ONA
• Greetings from Indianapolis!
• NextNewsroom conference recap

Beginning at around 8 a.m. Friday morning, I will use the The Miami Hurricane’s almighty Twitter account to liveblog a Barack Obama rally at the University of Miami.

The event, “Women’s Rally for the Change We Need” rally, will take place on the main campus in Coral Gables.

To easily find the related tweets, search miamihurricane + obama.

Read The Hurricane story, Obama to campaign on UM campus Friday; will focus on women’s issues.

Watch the UMTV livefeed online.

Doors open at 9:30 a.m. and Obama is scheduled to speak at 11:45 p.m.

Tickets, which were available online, sold out in less than two days of the university announcement on Tuesday, according to a university e-mail newsletter. Because more tickets were allotted than the BankUnited Center (our basketball arena) can hold, there is likely going to be quite the crowd early Friday morning.

I’ll be there to provide updates and photos using TwitPic.

Background

This will be the third large-scale event I’ve used Twitter to liveblog for The Hurricane, the first two being a baseball game last spring and the first home football game this fall when we played Charleston Southern University at Dolphin Stadium.

For the football game tweets, you can search for miamihurricane + football on Twitter. Also, I liveblogged the bus ride to the stadium (search for miamihurricane + bus).

For fun

Check out some random photos I’ve snapped using my photo and uploaded to TwitPic.