Transforming The Journalism Curriculum

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Transforming The Journalism Curriculum

• Presentation by Mindy McAdams
• University of Florida

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What we do well now

• Teach students how to report and understand the
  professional norms of the field
• Train them in a specialization (e.g., such as
  photojournalism, print editing, on-camera
  reporting for TV)

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What we dont do well now

• Teach them how to survive and thrive in the field
  that journalism is becoming

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Our challenges

• Our current department structures are not
  designed to support cross-platform journalism
• Our faculty are often not well-versed in multiple
  platforms, new technologies
• Our students might resist, saying I only want to
  
• Our schools lack equipment and facilities, e.g.,
  software, updated labs

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Is it an optionto waitand do nothing?
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Possible solutions

• Hire one versatile faculty member and set up
  convergence courses
• Doesnt this encourage the same silo mentalities
  among both students and educators?
• Does this prepare the students to think
  different?

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If we wantto train studentsto think different,
then weve got to do it ourselves.
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These reasons dont cut it

• We dont know how
• We dont have equipment
• We dont know what theyre doing in these
  newsrooms

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Video
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Video

• Example from the Toronto Star
• Example from the San Jose Mercury News
• And some blogs to keep you well informed

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Angela Grant In the Circle
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Cyndy Green VideoJournalism
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Richard Koci Hernandez MultimediaShooter
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Cade White Digicade
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Databases
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Five things you can do now

• Assign articles by or about Adrian Holovaty
• Study ChicagoCrime.org
• Discuss the Naples affordable housing project
• Assign a project built with Atlas
• Use exercises from NICAR to teach Excel

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The way I see it, there are three basic tasks
that journalists do1. Gathering information.
2. Distilling information. 3. Presenting
information. Doing journalism through computer
programming is just a different way of
accomplishing these goals. Namely, the technique
favors automation wherever possible.
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http//www.chicagocrime.org/map/
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http//www.naplesnews.com/affordable_housing/searc
h/
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http//www.naplesnews.com/affordable_housing/searc
h/
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http//www.naplesnews.com/affordable_housing/searc
h/
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http//fmatlas.com/atlas2/
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http//fmatlas.com/atlas2/
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http//www.ire.org/resourcecenter/tipsheets.php
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Graphics
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Los Angeles Times
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Another good use for Excel
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Houston Chronicle
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Photo
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Two issues

• Visual skills for all studentsnot just the
  photojournalism students
• Composition
• Rationales
• Ethics
• Editing and formatting photo files for online

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http//markhancock.blogspot.com/
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http//www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3842331/
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Magnum in Motion
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Audio
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Audio is easy and cheap

• Microphone handling
• Interview techniques
• Digital editing (Audacity is free)
• Save file as MP3
• Use a free audio player to embed the MP3 directly
  on a Web page

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HTML and CSS
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Why teach HTML and CSS?

• Dreamweaver is not necessarily as useful as HTML
  and (at least some) CSS
• Facebook / MySpace will not help them in a
  journalism job
• Its a leg up

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Ways to introduce HTML and CSS

• One solution Use Blogger (covered in a later
  session)
• Require students to build a simple Web page by
  hand with HTML
• Headings
• Links
• Images

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Pssst! My own secret

• I have usually learned technology that I teach in
  class less than one week before the first time I
  taught it

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In conclusion

• We all need to start now
• We are all behindbut we can catch up!

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Transforming The Journalism Curriculum

• Presentation by Mindy McAdams
• University of Florida