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matter(s)Journalism education

and the future of newsEdited transcripts from

the inaugural meeting of the New Media DonsBerkeley, California, October, 2001

Compiled by:

Nora PaulInstitute for New Media Studies,

University of Minnesota

Laura RuelEstlow Center for Journalism andNew Media, University of Denver

ContentsIntroduction ......................................3

Participants ......................................4

What are we doing now?Summary ................................5Discussion highlights ................5-7

Just what are new media?Summary ................................8Discussion highlights ................8-9

Incorporating new media : challengesfor journalism professors and students

Summary & discussion highlights ..10

Across the campus: getting buy-in fromother departments


Skills training or critical thinking?Summary ................................12Discussion highlights ..............12-15

Mid-career training opportunitiesSummary ................................16Discussion highlights ..............16-17

Encouraging out-of-the-box thinkingSummary ................................18Discussion highlights ..............18-19

Research agenda:what does the industry need?

Summary ................................20Discussion highlights ..............20-22

Conclusions & continuing the discussion ..23

New Media Dons is an informal,non-profit, grassroots, looselyorganized, (usually disorganized),leaderless, member propelled(when they have time)collaboration of educatorsengaged on the frontlines of newmedia education in journalism.There are no bylaws, no dues(although donations areappreciated to offset publicationcosts!) and no set agenda. Ifbeing part of such a non-organization appeals to you, joinour mailing list online atwww.newmediadons.org.

We thank the followingfor their support:

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY – Medill School of Journalism

SAINT MICHAEL’S COLLEGE – Department of Journalism andMass Communication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA –BERKELEY – Graduate School ofJournalism

UNIVERSITY OF DENVER – Estlow International Center forJournalism and New Media

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND – Philip Merrill College of Journalism

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA –Institute for New Media Studies

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERNCALIFORNIA

Brandy Lietz for work on the NewMedia Dons Web site.

Alison Sides for copyediting.

And all the New Media Dons,past, present and future.

Nora Paul - [email protected] Ruel - [email protected]

journalism education & the future of news 23

Conclusions ...and continuing the discussionAfter eight hours together we realized that we had so many issues in

common and so many ideas worth sharing that we needed a way tocontinue the discussion. While no one has the time for any kind oforganized group, we all agreed that it is important to find the opportunity toget together periodically. In addition, some way to keep communicatingabout this with each other informally would be useful.

With these ideas in mind we suggest the following:

• Convene informal "New Media Don" sessions in conjunction with otherestablished, scheduled conferences to which journalism professors might go.

• The new "New Media Dons" Web site will be a place to compile and shareresources and ideas. It must be a community effort, however, so pleasecheck it out and add to it as you see fit. http://www.newmediadons.org

• We will work on some of the ideas for collaborative projects such as findingways to reward student innovation across campuses - particularly studentswho find projects to work on with students from other disciplines.

• We will share syllabi and course outlines on the New Media Dons Web siteso that others working on approaches to new media programs can get someinsights (and then share their own.)

• Collaboration across disciplines on campuses was clearly of interest to theparticipants. Discussing those things that have worked on individualcampuses is another goal for the Web site. So, if you have a program thatis working, let us know about it.

• The issue of how to share new media research findings is still an openquestion, one that we would love to continue to try to find an answer to. Ifyou have ideas about how that might be done (or who could fund it) let usknow.

This inaugural gathering of the New Media Dons was insightful, energizingand fun and we are looking forward to the next opportunity to get together.

We will come up with a logo and a secret handshake soon - and hope thatthe circle grows. So, if you are going to be having a new media focusedconference, let us know and we'll get some dons together for a little pre-conference sit down.

Nora Paul Laura Ruel

www.newmediadons.org

new mediamatter(s)

Journalism educationand the future of news

he New Media Dons had their first sit-down in October 2001. Paul Grabowiczand I had talked about getting together

people who, like us, were grappling with newmedia in the academy. We figured a meetingof the Dons just prior to the Online NewsAssociation's annual conference on theBerkeley campus would be a good place tostart. So we sent out a call to the Online Newslist and Journet and invited any journalismprofessors who would be coming to theconference to join us for a conversation.

Seventeen professors and leaders of newmedia from 13 journalism programs across thecountry took us up on it. Over the course of 8or so hours we discussed our approaches toincorporating new media into the curriculumand outlined the specifics of our programs forundergraduates, graduates, and mid-careerjournalists. We hashed over ideas aboutresearch questions that need to be answeredand what might be the best way to mesh themwith industry needs. We described some ofthe institutional clashes that are inevitablewhen traditional approaches to journalismeducation are re-examined in light of newmedia influences. We grappled with the newmedia equivalent to the religious question ofhow many angels can dance on the point of aneedle – should we focus on skills training orcritical thinking when it comes to educatingstudents in the area of new media?

It was a relief for all of us to spend this timewith others who “get it.” Often, the “newmedia” person in a journalism program is alone voice fighting inertia and status quo tofigure out a way to bring in a whole new areaof media. It was a real treat to be able to sit ina room and discuss such issues as creating anew media “silo” versus weaving new mediathrough the curriculum, dealing with widelyvarying technical skill levels of students, findingthat balance between training and education.

We certainly didn’t reach any conclusions,

but we did provide some clarity about theissues. At this point, even getting toagreement about what the questions are is abig step. But there is much more to do. Wehope this is the beginning of a broaderconversation, one that includes both journalismfaculty and news practitioners. The ultimategoal for journalism programs is to educate andtrain those journalists who will lead the newsindustry into the new media future. Creatingthat balance between traditions andinnovations is difficult. We all need to talk andthink and test our ideas out with others. Wehope that the New Media Dons is the groupthat can lead the way.

One of the best parts of the meeting, forme, was getting to connect with Laura Ruel.She and I found we had in common so manyideas for our new media institutes. We wereexcited about the ideas that came out of theconversations. We got together to try to makesome sense of it all.

The following publication is our attempt atthat sense-making. It is a summary of thetopics we covered over the eight hours theDons met. We hope we’ve captured theessence of the issues we discussed. If youwould like to see the full transcript of thediscussion – go to www.newmediadons.org.There you will find every word that was said(with the “ummm”s and “you know”s removed.)

We intend to keep the networking of NewMedia Dons going, meeting when we can,planning collaborative projects, and pickingeach others’ brains. If you would like to joinus, or see what we are up to, please go to ourWeb site, www.newmediadons.org. The morethe merrier.

Nora PaulUniversity of MinnesotaInstitute for New Media Studies

T

journalism education & the future of news 322 new media matter(s)

Introductionwritten differently for the different audiencesbut the basic research design and findings arevalid.Nora Paul: That’s one of the things I was thinkingI wanted to do at the institute, provide a translationservice. There is some good academic research thatthe industry needs to know. There is a lot of goodacademic research that goes on but practitionerscan’t decipher it because it’s so filled with thatgobbledy gook that practitioners can’t decipher.

So give me the five bullet points about how this isgoing to affect what they do tomorrow.

Laura Ruel: That’s actually one of the things thatwe’re doing at the Estlow Center. We’re takingresearch like that and making it apply to someonewho says: “If I’m sitting in a newsroom, what doesthis mean for me? How does this affect my job?”

••••••Rich Gordon: What’s really interesting about thisis it suggests that we could potentially learnsomething about online interactivity by looking at ordoing a study of reader representative practices andsubscriber cancellations for a newspaper.

Michael Parks: The Ombudsman’s Organizationis a resource that maybe has not been studied.

Mindy McAdams: A thing about these studies— what I’m seeing —is we could go around and seewhat subscription cancellation rates are atnewspapers then you could identify newspapers thathave low cancellation rates and try to figure out why.

Michael Parks: They actually are doing that.

Everybody churns at about that 30 or 40 percent ayear.

Mindy McAdams: But there must be a [way toquantify this.] Like go look for some people whostand out as being different and then find out why.There must be here and there one or two...

••••••Janice Castro: What you’re talking about is thekind of research that magazines and I assumenewspapers actually do to figure out how to have abetter customer service relationship with their long-time subscribers and even the new subscribers whothey try to renew.

Mindy McAdams: But isn’t the wall comingaway there because the circulation people do thesurvey but it doesn’t get back to the newsroom.

Nora Paul: Those are the kinds of surveys thatare done at one organization and not shared acrossthe industry. That’s the whole thing about being non-denominational.

Michael Parks: I think that’s a bigger wall toworry about.

Janice Castro: That’s true, but my point is simplythis: If the publisher thinks it’s so important that theyshould spend all this money developing postal mailrelationships with subscribers and making them feelspecial because they get a letter from the publisher...

I know somebody who was one of the inner circlesubscribers because he’d been subscribing for 30years or something. If they’re spending all thismoney to do that and to make subscribers feelspecial why wouldn’t they want to? If— when you’rean advertiser wouldn’t you just love to sit down at thetable with your target customer?

Mindy McAdams: If you could hear what yourreaders want you could give it to them and theysubscribe or stay with you or —

Dianne Lynch: One of the things, too, there’ssurveying and then there’s also prototyping. So whatif there were a couple of prototype things that werecreated that had pages that people could respond toand then you could test to see what peoples’attitudes toward the whole product was afterwards?Dianne Lynch (left) and Janice Castro.

Janice Castro Northwestern University,Medill School of Journalism, AssistantProfessor. Worked for Time Magazinefor more than 20 years. Managing editorof Time’s online division; also worked aseditorial director of Britannica.com.

Neil Chase CBS Marketwatch,Managing Editor. Former professor atNorthwestern University's Medill Schoolof Journalism and editor at the SanFrancisco Examiner and the ArizonaRepublic.

Wendell Cochran American University,Associate Professor, Journalism DivisionDirector. Has 25 years experience indaily newspaper journalism, including astint as special projects editor at GannettNews Service.

Rich Gordon Northwestern University,Medill School of Journalism, AssociateProfessor, Chair - New Media Program.Former director of new media for MiamiHerald; also worked as an investigativeand computer assisted reporting expert.

Paul Grabowicz University of California- Berkeley, Graduate School ofJournalism, Assistant Dean, AdjunctProfessor, Director of New MediaProgram. Former investigative reporterfor the Oakland Tribune.

Chris Harvey University of Maryland,Philip Merrill College of Journalism,Lecturer and Online Bureau Director.Has worked as an online editor,magazine editor and newspaperreporter.

Van Kornegay University of SouthCarolina, College of Journalism andMass Communications, AssistantProfessor. Teaches courses in graphicsand public relations.

Dianne Lynch St. Michael’s College,Journalism Department Chair. Writesreflections on women and the Internetevery other Wednesday forABCNews.com.

Melinda (“Mindy”) McAdamsUniversity of Florida, Professor andKnight Chair in Journalism. Was Webstrategist at the American Press Instituteand one of the first online editors withthe Washington Post’s Digital Ink.

Donica Mensing University of Nevada,Reno, Reynolds School of Journalism,Assistant Professor. Teaches onlinereporting and editing, and manages theschool’s online weekly magazine.

Julie Nichols University of SouthCarolina, College of Journalism andMass Communications. NewsplexAdministrator

Elizabeth Osder Stanford University,Knight Journalism Fellow. Pioneeringinteractive journalism since 1991. Mostrecently Global Managing Partnerfor iXL. Former new media editor for TheNew York Times.

Michael Parks University of SouthernCalifornia, Annenberg’s School ofJournalism, Interim Director and VisitingProfessor. Former editor of the LosAngeles Times, received a Pulitzer Prizefor International Reporting.

Nora Paul University of Minnesota,Institute for New Media Studies, Director.Formerly at the Poynter Institute forMedia Studies; former editor ofinformation services, Miami Herald.

Laura Ruel University of Denver,Estlow Center for Journalism and NewMedia, Executive Director, Instructor.Worked for more than 15 years in thejournalism industry as a reporter, editor,designer and manager.

Jane Stevens University of California -Berkeley, Graduate School ofJournalism, Lecturer, FreelanceMultimedia Journalist. Specializes inscience and technology.

Dennis P. Walsh formerly of Miami(Ohio) University, Center for InteractiveMedia Studies, Professor Emeritus.Created a center for studying Internet-related issues.


ParticipantsAttendees of the inaugural New MediaDons meeting. For contact information,log onto www.newmediadons.org.

some ideas about how hypertext ought to beorganized and how navigation ought to be set up forhypertext, but they’re just ideas. I have no ideawhether I’m right or not and I would like to.

Michael Parks: What we’re hearing is there’sdifferent types of research. There is traditionalscholarly research, there is the research that’simmediately applicable in the industry, there’sresearch that would inform theose teaching and thereis a model that is kind of akin to the industry.Journalism schools should lookat themselves as medicalschools do or as law schools,that is looking at problems andsolving problems. That’s adifferent type of research but Ithink it’s very valid and veryvaluable. It goes exactly to whatyou’re talking about, and it iswhat I think Annenberg ought todo.

Rich Gordon: It doesn’t haveto be far a field from traditionalacademic research either.

Mindy McAdams: Withmedical research you’re solvinga problem.You can get a Ph.D.You can be a theoretical personwho does experiments with testtubes and then you publish andeventually it goes into practice.

Michael Parks: Sorry, I wasn't going to dump allover the academic research of mass communicationbut the verb counting exercises are not much use.

But there is are very good and valid researchquestions we ought to put out there that say, "Howdo you tackle these?”

Nora Paul: I also think that there is marketresearch. If the aim of our professional trainingprograms is to get people out into the marketplace,do we really understand what the marketplace isneeding? I’m a firm believer in letting the peoplewho need the invention do the inventing.

Mindy McAdams: There are academics who arein the advertising department at J-schools like minewhere there’s an advertising department. That’s whatthey do. They study audiences and audience effects

and assess audience reactions and uses andgratifications —

Nora Paul: I mean in terms of market research forjournalism, if we can do some research into what isthe marketplace for journalism. Its kind of like thesurveyor thing we did for ONA with the editorial skillsand technical skills. What does the online newsroomneed? I think we should revisit it.

Elizabeth Osder: The only thing that I wanted toadd is: What are the questions orthe things that we want to findout? What are 10 goodquestions?

It takes a long time to write thegood questions. Are there 10good questions that we couldrefine and put out to theacademy to maybe knockaround? I’m not trained as amass comm researcher. I don’tknow honestly what themethodology is that I would go atcertain questions with.

The beautiful thing about thisonline interactive thing is that it isinterdisciplinary and the researchthat we need is touched upon byall of these differentdepartments. I plan to trudgearound Stanford this year andI’m going to tear off pieces fromthe business school, I’m going totear off pieces from product

design, I’m going to tear off pieces from instructionalto system technology and learning education, I’mgoing to tear off pieces from computer science.

If we can be open about where we get ourinformation it can move us forward a lot faster thanliving in the cocoon of mass comm researchers andtrying to break away from verb counting. So that’sthe other thing.

Rich Gordon: I think there are a lot of researchproblems that can meet all of these needs that bothinform the industry, inform our teaching and producea work that’s publishable in academic circles.

Nora Paul: It creates new understanding aboutwhat it is we’re all about.

Rich Gordon: The results may have to be

“Journalismschools should

look atthemselves as

medical schoolsdo or as law

schools, that islooking at

problems andsolving

problems.”Michael Parks

University of Southern California,Annenberg’s School of Journalism.

Interim Director and VisitingProfessor

Van Kornegay: We've talked a lot about trainingand how to integrate that but- the whole researchquestion is still something we haven’t discussed toomuch. At our university that’s a big issue, skillstraining is like a dirty word. It’s like, “What are youdoing to contribute to the knowledge base?” That iswhat people are pressing us for a lot.

••••••• Rich Gordon: Can I put another topic on theagenda then? If we get into a really great discussionof research interest – we can keep it there but we’veactually tried two or three times to start thatconversation and it never got going.

I feel like we’ve kept bouncing around a topic thatwould be really good to come back to, which is:Rather than focus on tactical things about specificcourses or specific curricula, etc., what if we focusedmore on the question of: What do we want people toknow? What’s new about new media that we want ajournalism student to know?

I don’t mean particular software, it’s more justtalking about what it is. I keep coming back to thisidea. I think for our school what would be really greatis if we could make sure that students come outknowing how to put together a story without writing init — just pictures and sound.

I'm talking about sound collected out there, realworld sound. I think it would be a great exercise. Butwe want to go above the course outline or curriculalevel and state: What are the objectives of this?

Laura Ruel: What are the major areas that youwant your curriculum to fall under?

Nora Paul: That’s why I think of this Chinesemenu idea. There's this notion of what is journalism,what are the components. There are ethics andvalues, but there is also thinking about the storypackage and what are the required skills.

Paul Grabowicz: Maybe those two questionsare the same. Maybe our objectives are what we

should be doing the research about so that we knowwe’ve got the right objectives.

••••••• Wendell Cochran: Can I ask you a questionabout the research? The truth is I don’t know nothingabout no research and we don’t do research andwe’re not required to do research in the formalacademic definition so we haven’t. I don’t want todemean anyone else’s research, but we haven’t sataround and sucked our thumbs about what to do,we’ve just gone out and tried to do stuff.

Now maybe that’s the wrong thing but I think that’swhy we’re having trouble getting onto the researchtopic because you’ve got this range of people withdifferent research expectations.

Mindy McAdams: My dean told me you’ll neverhave to do a lick of research in your life but the thingis I’m at a research one institution, so all mycolleagues do research. But what’s more importantfor me is my graduate students are expected to doresearch.

The students, ones who don’t do a thesis, franklyvery few of them, they’re not our best students. Thegood ones do theses and then there are doctoratestudents of whom we have quite a few and I have towork with both our doctoral and master’s students soI end up working with them on their research.

So I’ve had to learn a really high amount ofrespect for what academic research is, should be,how it’s done and what it means. It doesn’t mean I’mever going to do it since I don’t have to.

Rich Gordon: I have the same situation asWendell. Actually I don’t have to worry aboutgraduate students doing theses in my program, but Ido have to figure out what the hell I’m teaching.Frankly, there’s not enough known about what works,what doesn’t work.

I have my own preconceptions but I would surelike to add some real information. For example, if I’mtelling people about hypertext construction, I have


What are we doing now?By way of introduction, we went around the room and described the genesis of ourjournalism program’s new media focus. Many of us had come to the academy after yearsas journalists specifically to lead the introduction of new media into the curriculum. All ofus agreed that the magic formula was, by no means, established and several were on theirthird or fourth approach to answering the question, “What is the best way to teach newmedia?” Some of the programs are for graduate students only. Others have strongprograms focused on the needs of mid-career journalists. Many were figuring out how tosqueeze new media into already full undergraduate degree requirements. Here aredescriptions of the programs:

Research agendas what does the industry need?As a group of academic types who all — at one time — were working journalists, wecouldn’t escape our strong feelings that we needed to bring our two worlds together.Focusing research on studies with practical application is essential. We are excitedbecause — at this point in the history of new media journalism — the academic world cantake more risks and try things that our bottom-line real world colleagues cannot attempt.The conversation also focused on the need to make the information we produce accessibleand usable to those who do and teach new media journalism.

Dennis Walsh Miami UniversityInteractive Media Studies Centerhttp://www.muohio.edu/ims

We had a very different approach becausewe’re in an English department. We startedimmediately looking at collaboration with everyother department on campus from fine arts tobusiness to the library. The library in particularwas essential to our issue. We reached out toall sorts of industries; and not just journalismbecause we were anticipating convergence ofmedia all across the board.

Donica Mensing University of Nevada, Renohttp://www.unr.edu/journalism

I’ve been teaching online journalism since1997. We have an online magazine. We doseveral different courses in new media whichstudents take but we don’t have a specialsequence, we just try to encourage all thestudents to take these as electives. But we’restruggling with how to incorporate them inother classes where we have people who havebeen teaching journalism for a long time.

Mindy McAdamsUniversity of Floridahttp://www.jou.ufl.edu

We have a college of journalism and withinthe journalism major we have a concentrationin online media. It’s equivalent to the otherconcentrations, reporting and editing,photojournalism, and magazine editing andwriting. The students who aren’t in theconcentration tend to take online mediacourses of which there are six, but they can’talways squeeze them in, because they don’thave any left-over electives they can take inthe school.

Wendell CochranAmerican Universityhttp://www.soc.american.edu

I don’t really know exactly how to describewhat we’re doing except we’re trying to doeverything and nothing at the same time. Weare among the very first journalism programsto get interactive or get online. In ’92 we had acomplete renovation and we were Internet livethe first time there was a Web. We teach aclass we call “Computer Techniques” which is ablend of research and design techniques that

actually very fewjournalismstudents take.There are threedivisions:Journalism, PublicCommunication,Visual Media.We’ve got all thepieces. We justdon’t worktogether very wellmost of the time.

Julie Nichols University ofSouth Carolinahttp://www.jour.sc.edu/home2.htmlWhat we're doing

with Newsplex isdriving what we'redoing withcurriculum.We were moving

towardsconvergence with our print and broadcastingstudents before the Newsplex project came tous. Some of our students are already doing it -

“I don’treally knowexactly howto describewhat we’re

doing exceptwe’re trying

to doeverythingand nothingat the same

time.”Wendell Cochran

American University.Associate Professor,Journalism Division

Director.


our undergraduate senior print students arenow required to put things on line as part ofthat rotation. The Newsplex has shaken us upand made us think really differently about whatwe're doing. We are starting to restructure ourgraduate Masters program in newspaperleadership to take advantage of the Newsplex- the program has basically never beenimplemented. We've taken it and turned itaround and arefocusing it onconvergence.

Van Kornegay University of SouthCarolina We do a weekly labnewspaper, which is acity newspaper. It isalso Web based. Andwe do a nightlynewscast in our seniorbroadcast facility. Wetry to mimic a real lifenewsroomexperience. Whatwe're working for thissemester is to get the broadcasters who havebeen watching the newsprint journalists putthings on the Web and do graphics to gettogether and do some cross training. Thenwe'll go live and see how long we can keepgoing with it before anybody falls down dead.

We're working on some kind of capstoneexperience that they'll do at thesenior level at Newsplex. We're doing thisdance right now with Ifra aboutwhat do they want to do in terms of research,what questions can theyanswered by our faculty or students. Rightnow I think we probably think ofour students as future lab mice or something.

Chris HarveyUniversity of Marylandhttp://www.journalism.umd.edu

Our curriculum is both for undergraduateand graduate students. It began evolving acouple of years ago, in the spring of 1998.Chris Callahan, who is one of the associatedeans and Chet Rhodes, who was one of ourbroadcast teachers, started an on-line classthat they co-taught. It was taken over after a

year or two by one of our Ph.D. students. Andnow I've taken over the beginning on-lineclass which is a mix of skills -- web writing andediting, headline writing, web productioncombined with discussions of bigger issues.

But the main thing they wanted me to dowas to create a news bureau on par with whatthe college was doing for the print andbroadcast specializations. Online isn't yet a

formal specializationat our school. Welaunched the onlinenews bureau. For six-credits, studentsproduce a newsmagazine on theWeb. Students workthree full days a weekas producers,photographers,reporters, and writers -it's a pretty intensiveexperience. We havea few other courses,one on visualcommunication and atheory course on newtechnologies.

So, loosely, we have an online curriculum,but it's not formally structured as such.

Laura RuelUniversity of DenverEstlow International Centerfor Journalism and New MediaSchool of Communicationhttp://estlowcenter.du.eduhttp://dms.du.edu

With the help of faculty from many differentunits, Jeff Rutenbeck began developing DU’sDigital Media Studies (DMS) program in 1994.The program started accepting undergraduateand graduate students in 1996. A cross-disciplinary effort among the School ofCommunication, the School of Art, and theDepartment of Computer Science, DMSinvolves students in design, technical andcritical approaches to digital content creation.DMS faculty are housed in their variousdepartments but assigned to teach for DMSfull-time. Almost all classes taught by DMSfaculty are cross-listed in their homedepartments. There are about 120undergraduate majors and about 30 graduatestudents.

do, that would give all of us who have beenstruggling to engage the Computer ScienceDepartment a platform.

Dianne Lynch: There were teams from allover the world and actually my students werethe only undergraduates that got accepted tothe finals and I was so proud.

Mindy McAdams: That's so cool.••••••

Rich Gordon: There's a fine line betweenvery specific andconstraining. We definitelywant to set someboundaries but I wouldurge us to try to figure out--

Nora Paul: I think weshould look at things likethe fancy browser contestand see what kind of --

Dianne Lynch: Therewere almost norequirements except thatyou have to be able toshow it and you shouldhave seen them.

Laura Ruel: I think,especially the first time wedo it, it needs to be very,very open. Then, we cansee what happens.

Mindy McAdams: Thepoint about that is whenteachers have a class where the students aresupposed to design an online newspaper, ifthey just have that assignment, you go andlook at their students work on the Web andthey all look like newspapers that we alreadysee on the Web.

But when you say even just like design astory or something like that then you get allthis wild stuff. But as soon as you say onlinenewspaper it puts it in a box.

Dianne Lynch: One of the things that Lisaand I experienced in this particular situation isthat when you go to these students and yousay this is about a browser they light up. It's

like, “You mean we're supposed to give anew IE.” I say, “No, it can be anything thatyou can conceive of.” That for them is fun.

That's like, “Oh my God, we could do thisand we could do this and what about this.”The most difficult decision they made was ofall those ideas which one were they actuallygoing to do. So it's really introducing it likethat wide-open thing. They don't have troublewith that.

I think faculty probably, do but I don't thinkstudents do.

Laura Ruel: The onlything to keep in mind isthis: Is this going to be ajournalism [contest] – arewe going to use that wordso that we don't get thingsthat are --

Dianne Lynch: I use theexpression "digital news"

Mindy McAdams:Because that's allencompassing. That canbe a Flash presentationand it can be video and itcan be --

Laura Ruel: But newscan be ...

Mindy McAdams: Newscan be all kinds of things,that's true, but it won'tbe a short story.

Rich Gordon: I was going to say I actuallythink that a funny characteristic is non-fictionnews versus fiction. There's a lot ofinteresting experimentation going on ininteractive fictional narratives in all kinds ofspaces right now so maybe --

Dianne Lynch: So for example if you saidthat and somebody came in with a series ofthree dimensional maps -- it's a graphicrepresentation of something but here's thequestion --

Wendell Cochran: As long as it's not TheHobbit.

“DU’s Digital MediaStudies program ... is across-disciplinary effort

among the School ofCommunication, the

School of Art, and theDepartment of

Computer Science.”Laura Ruel University of Denver

Estlow Center for Journalism and New MediaExecutive Director, Instructor

“The exciting partabout being in

academia at thisparticular momentin the history of

online news is thatI think we have anopportunity to be

more radical, moreexperimental than

the industry isgoing to be...”

Rich Gordon Northwestern UniversityMedill School of Journalism. AssociateProfessor, Chair - New Media Program

Nora Paul: If you think about the differentkinds of research there’s the attitude surveyand the kind of survey that compares this tothat. But,what you’re talking about isprototyping. What if we just completely threwout the model that were using now and tried itthis way instead. That would be much morefun

Mindy McAdams: Everybody does a studythat shows that people are worried abouttheir advertising revenues. But, so what?

Nora Paul: There are these two guys inDallas that used to work at Belo Interactivethat came up with a prototype of the news asif it were sold like Amazon sells books. Theyprototyped this page with the news item andit had all the kinds of things you get onAmazon like recommendations this is whatpeople who read that item also read, and ifyou want to buy more, there are thesestories.

It was really interesting. So what are theother kinds of models that could be mockedup?

Wendell Cochran: That kind of innovativethinking is what is needed. It lights a fireunder folks. The other approach of askingindustry what they want to know is kind of likethe way people design newspapers now.Readers, what do you want to know? We'llmake a paper --

Nora Paul: They want to know how to makemoney.

Rich Gordon: This is where -- to go back tosomething to make a suggestion on -- to methe exciting part about being in academia atthis particular moment in the history of onlinenews is that I think we have an opportunity to

be more radical, more experimental than theindustry is going to be at this point becausethey're so short-term profit focused right nowand it's very hard to find tangible economicbenefits of any particular online newsinnovation. So if we could create a situationwhere my new media class that's working ona prototype of some kind turns into somethingthat can be shown to audiences and reactedto, which generates research results that canbe published -- that's the home run.

Speaking for myself that would be fun.

Nora Paul: I had my Institute's first boardmeeting on Wednesday. On the board arethe folks in charge of new media atMinnesota Public Radio and the Star Tribuneand some interactive design and advertisingpeople and the VP for content for IBS, the TVWeb site people and what Rich said is justwhat one of them said. I wrote it down, one ofthem said, “Universities matter again becauseyou all are the ones that can do this stuff thatwe don’t have time to do plus if you do it theneverybody will know about it where we can’tjustify the cost of doing it just for ourselves.”

Dianne Lynch: In terms of drawing onstudents there was an international browsercompetition that a couple of my studentswent to in New York City and students fromall over the world's graduate programs gottogether and did a presentation in New Yorkin March or April on what a browser shouldlook like.

It was out of the box, some of these werenuts. But, they were amazing, they wereextraordinary. I thought instead of havingMaster's students do research papers maybewe ought to have a competition for out-of-the-box ideas for publication.

Rich Gordon: You know what that would


Rich GordonNorthwestern Universityhttp://www.medill.northwestern.edu

I inherited the New Media program fromNeil Chase. Medill is a very traditionalprofessional oriented print-newspaper focusedschool. It first added an introductory NewMedia course at the undergrad and grad levelwhich was an elective.

Then there was concern about enrollment inthe graduate program and we believed thatadding an interactive / new media major at thegraduate level would be a good thing. Thecore graduate program is still the traditionalMedill masters in journalism, a typical four-quarter student will have two of those quartersin reporting for print. Then we layer on theintroductory new media class that was alreadyin place and add a new media capstone class.That’s a course where masters students donothing other than this class. We have theirundivided attention and we try to pack everysingle conceivable thing into it - from newskills training to wrestling with the businessissues of new media to actual production.

We went from zero to two dozen studentsovernight – with one class entering. We keptthat going for two admission cycles. Nowwe’re on our third major admission cycle andit’s declining – there are fewer people in thepool. We are hoping that we can actuallymove away from the construction of a new siloand toward the integration of new mediaelsewhere in the curriculum.

Paul GrabowiczUniversity of California, Berkeleyhttp://journalism.berkeley.edu

Our school is different – we’re all graduate,no undergraduate. There are about 115students in the 2-year program. We don’t dopublic relations or advertising, it’s purelyjournalism. We have concentrations in, Godhelp us, newspapers, magazines, television,radio, documentary, photo journalism and newmedia.

In ’94 I started putting it together. Now Iteach computer assisted reporting – that’s nowa mandatory course. Then there is the newmedia publishing course which is mostly abouthow to take a story and put it on the Web and

the technology is part of that. This year wehave a new course, Multi-Media Skills – oursort of dabbling in convergence. In it we splitoff using digital video equipment, digital audioequipment and digital still cameras and theediting tools for each into a separate class.Although the students still do a sort of story inthe class we found that trying to pack the skillsand the journalism into one class becameimpossible.

We have a class in multi-media reportingthat builds on the skills class – How do you tella story with video, audio, and text on theWeb?

Then I teach my weird class with thebusiness school. It’s called New MediaPublishing Strategies. We have journalism,business, information management andsystems students get together and study anonline publication, first from a businessperspective and then from a journalismperspective. They work on teams of studentsfrom different disciplines. It is an interestingmesh of cultures, to say the least.

Nora PaulUniversity of MinnesotaInstitute for New Media Studieshttp://www.sjmc.umn.eduhttp://www.inms.umn.edu

The New Media Initiative, funded by theMinnesota Legislature in 1998, consists of fourparts. One was that Murphy Hall which wasstate of the art 1938 was gutted andrenovated into at least state of the art 2004.The second part was to get away from thesilo-ed program so we’re eliminating broadcastjournalism and print journalism and making it aconcentration with the understanding thatyou’re going to be working in a multi-channelenvironment and you’ll have to know how tooperate within all those channels. The thirdpart was the addition of eight new facultypositions – all of them with journalism and newmedia in their backgrounds. The fourth partwas the creation of this Institute for NewMedia Studies. Three out of the four parts ofthe Initiative are in place, it is the re-design ofthe curriculum that is not yet completed.

Out of the box thinkingWhat comes to mind when you are asked to create a journalism Web site? As educatorswe may hamper and limit our students' creativity and innovative thinking by definingterms too specifically. We spent a good part of our second day brainstorming about waysto get students to push their thinking away from conventions. In the context of discussingthe parameters of a "new media competition" for students (although we even had troublewith those words, too!), we realized that we need to guide, but not interpret.


Just what are new media?If the conversation ever lags among a group of journalism professors, just throw out thisquestion, “What is new media?” That is guaranteed to get them into hot debate. Theterminology and nuances of new media were a recurrent theme in the meeting. Whatare the elements of new media? What makes it different than “old media”? What is themore descriptive, inclusive term: interactive, online, converged, multimedia? Here aresome of the comments about “new media” that came up in discussion.

Nora Paul: You’ve gone with “interactive”rather than “new media?”

Wendell Cochran: The truth is I don’t likeNew Media because, first of all, I don’t likemedia. And secondly, I don’t know what’s newabout it except the fact that you look at it on thecomputer screen. But what we haven’t done inour interactive program that we want to do isthat interactive word. How do you get theaudience playing back into it. We haven’t reallygotten to that piece of it.

Dennis Walsh: At Miami when we started ourCenter we decided on the name, InteractiveMedia over Digital or New Media, with thatnotion of being able to reach out to theaudience. But we had a long discussion on whatdo you call this?

Rich Gordon: That discussion has not beenfinished.

Nora Paul: I just started an article that I’mcalling “In Defense of New Media.” I think thereare things that make it appropriate to call it new,particularly the fact that we still haven’t figured itout. And although the Internet, if that’s the newmedium that everyone is focusing on, has beenhere for a long time, there are still new things tobe discovered about it. I would say that what I’mdoing is trying to figure out what’s new in themedia environment. And there’s constantnewness coming in to the media environment.So I’m getting more comfortable with the term, Ihated the term “new media” - so maybe I’m justtrying to figure out a way to justify not having tochange the logo of the Institute.

•••••••Van Kornegay: I serve on a committee atUSC – an informatics committee. But I’m struckwith how the Romans may have conquered theGreeks but the Greeks’ culture just may have

conquered the Romans. I wonder if that’sgetting ready to happen in journalism educationbecause this New Media is no longer in aproprietary phase and these guys that we haveon that committee – information science andmedical people and people with a vested interestin reaching an audiences are saying, “Hey, we’republishers, now, too. What are you guys doing inthe way?” That’s kind of the attitude.

Wendell Cochran: Well, that’s actually one ofthe reasons I don’t like the word “media”because when I actually first heard it was insecondary school, and these are the people whohanded out the film strips.

Mindy McAdams: I’m on the opposite side. Ilike media, probably because I spent time livingin Canada. Britain, Canada, Australia and muchof Europe has a whole different take on mediaand University media studies. Journalism isclearly part of that. So, when I think of media Ithink of communications media but not only thelanguage but the engineering and the satellitesand to me that’s all media.

•••••••Rich Gordon: We wrestle with this discussionof what’s “new media” and what’s “interactivemedia” and what these things mean. Thestudents have much less an idea than we doabout it, frankly. I mean, they know the stuffthey do on the Web, but they don’t know what“new media journalism” is. I’m not sure we do,but I know I don’t think they do.

•••••••Jane Stevens: I’m teaching multi-mediajournalism which I define and teach as gettingstudents to shoot video, edit video, write the text,grab stills from their video, do simple graphicsand put it in a story that’s non-linear and itscomponents are as non-redundant as possible.And I want to do an interactivity course, becauseI think that’s a place that news organizations

Some are one-week, intense courseson Web site building. There usually is await list and sometimes not enoughspaces for all the mid-careerprofessionals.

Wendell Cochran: We are doing aset of those, too. We actually haveclasses where people do Flash, they doDreamweaver, they do Photoshop.Actually they even do it over aweekend, and people pay $750 to takethem.

University of FloridaMindy McAdams: We have a giantcommunity college in the same townwith our giant university. When we talkabout skills programs, yeah, you couldmake boatloads of money but it's like,that’s what they're there for.

•••••• University of California - BerkeleyPaul Grabowicz: With the mid-careerthing, we're kind of blundering aroundthat, too. We have a Knight programthat we run with USC, Maryland has asimilar one, and a lot of that is trainingin multimedia / new media for mid-career journalists, bringing them in for aweek at a time. We're expanding that,doing the same thing with the MaynardInstitute. In January we're bringing in abunch of people who are mid-careerjust to learn digital audio, digital video,Web production, all of that.

Jane Stevens: I tell you, there issuch a demand for mid-career training.On the side, occasionally, I will do oneon science and technology for the mid-career journalist, and the last one I did,it was completely filled within threedays of its announcement. We're doinganother one in November for people onthe waiting list.

“We have a giantcommunity collegein the same town

with our giantuniversity. When

we talk about skillsprograms, yeah,you could make

boatloads of moneybut it's like, that’s

what they [thecommunity

colleges] are therefor.”

Melinda (“Mindy”) McAdamsUniversity of Florida, Professor and

Knight Chair in Journalism.


really have to pay attention to in a big way. Ithink that they don’t realize how muchinteractivity is going on out there, nor are theytapping into it. I’m still shocked when I go tonews organization Web sites and see that ittakes me, if I can find it at all, digging deep tofind an e-mail for the personwho wrote the story.

Nora Paul: So you defineinteractivity mainly ascommunications?

Jane Stevens:Communications and also incontributing to the story.One of the ONA finalists is avery interesting story thatSlate started where theysaid, “Ok, we’re going tohave the story built as wehear from you.”…What I’mtalking about is havingpeople in the community whohave the same tools thatwe’re starting to use andthey can send us a multi-media version of what theysee as the story.

Nora Paul: I am mostinterested in interactivecontent which I think of ascontent that’s been createdin such a way that myexperience with it might bedifferent from yours becauseof the choices that you make – and the choicesthat are built into the content.

Rich Gordon: When we finish having thedebate about new media we can start the debateabout interactive media. If I had my drutherswe would re-name our media programInteractive Media Program.

Rich Gordon: The definition for interactivitythat I use came out of some text book I readsomewhere basically saying that interactivity isthe attribute of a medium that responds to theuser’s control. A chat room or a story where theuser contributes falls into that but it alsoencompasses a lot of other things including the

construction of the story, how you give the useroptions they wouldn’t have in a traditional forum.

Wendell Cochran: But it’s not interactivejournalism unless it also tells a story.

Rich Gordon: That’s oneof the things that makes itsuch a fun challengebecause if all you do is givethe user input and controlyou’re not telling a storyanymore.

Nora Paul: The wholenotion of open media is suchan interesting one. To me it isone of the things that is themost new about media - thatthe control has beenabdicated to the user or tothe audience. That’ssomething that journalists arejust not very comfortablewith, this abdication ofcontrol.

Mindy McAdams: I’d say“shared” works better than“abdicate control.”

•••••••Jane Stevens: Peopleare beginning to do their ownstory telling and not have togo for a piece of media.

Wendell Cochran: Backto that stupid word again, media. It meanssomething. It means we mediate or standbetween and the change now is they are tellingtheir own stories. And it’s clear if you deal withthe government these days, they don’t think thatthey need us to tell the stories.

Paul Grabowicz: It’s those things that sort ofgnaw at me constantly. Something reallydifferent is happening to journalism and I don’tknow how much of it to get our journalism facultyin on because I’m afraid they’ll just say, “That’snot journalism, what’s happened to you?” But itseems to be at the heart of a lot of this. We haveto figure out what are we going to do when thereaders, “the rabble,” have taken this over.

Mid-career training opportunitiesJournalism education for undergraduates and graduates is not the only thing on the agendaof journalism schools. Many are developing mid-career training programs for journalists.Here are comments about some of the programs, what's working, and plans for the future:

American UniversityWendell Cochran: Three years ago westarted this weekend graduate programcalled Interactive Journalism. We werehaving trouble getting enrollments for ourweekend programs in print and broadcastso out of fright they constructed thisprogram over the summer and they have 15or 18 students....

There is a mix of people, some are in thefield and a lot are actually career changers.Among the people who graduated in thefirst class is a guy who was the graphicseditor of the Baltimore Sun and is now atthe LA Times online. It's a Masters degreein Journalism. It is only weekends and ittakes 20 months. You take class for 6Saturdays, take a Saturday off and thenstart another class and do that 10 times.This year we've developed more of aconverged model. We have a reportingclass that was divided between print andbroadcast and this year we've made nodistinction - everyone is doing print,broadcast and Web work and asupplemental class we call Digital Skills. It

has three modules: digital broadcast / digitalaudio, Web design, and computer assistedjournalism. Everyone seems pretty happy

with it so far. If itworks then we'llbring more of thisback to theundergradprogram.

•••••• Nora Paul: Areyou seeing [theNewsplex] as aplace to bring inprofessionals thatare trying to workin convergednewsrooms?

University ofSouth Carolina- NewsplexJulie Nichols:

Absolutely, it's a shared use facility with Ifra.They are raising the money for us to buildthis facility and we will give it to theUniversity and share the use of it. So weenvision Ifra members coming in for trainingand other times tearing out all thetechnology and putting in something thatthey want to test. It will provide professionaltraining for all levels of journalists,managers, editors, whoever we need tocome in and learn how to function in thissort of environment that is trying tointegrate online, broadcast, newspapers,everything together.

•••••• University of DenverLaura Ruel: One of the things we do inbetween quarters is offer interterm courses.

“I’m teachingmulti-media

journalism which Idefine and teach

as getting studentsto shoot video,

edit video, writethe text, grab stillsfrom their video,

do simple graphicsand put it in a

story that’s non-linear and its

components are asnon-redundant as

possible.”Jane Stevens

University of California - Berkeley,Graduate School of Journalism.

DonicaMensing,left, and

NoraPaul

“ I tell you,there is sucha demand formid-career

training. ...The last one I

did wascompletelyfilled withinthree days. ”

Jane Stevens University of California -

Berkeley, Graduate Schoolof Journalism.


Incorporating new media Challenges for instructors & studentsChange is hard. Developing a new approach, incorporating a new agenda, rethinking thosethings you've always thought is particularly difficult. Journalism programs have been facingthese difficult changes as they try to figure out just what "new media" means for journalismeducation. Getting a course right is often a hit or miss proposition. The following commentsaffirm the issues that journalism professors and students are facing.

Rich Gordon: There seems to be, at leastfrom what people say among the faculty, a realinterest in starting to figure this out and toreconstruct the curriculum. It's not going to be aquick or easy process, but several things arehappening that are promising.

•••••••Nora Paul: The trouble is that new media issuch a moving target. By the time the universityhas turned their attention to the immediateproblem and come up with the solution there willbe another, newer media problem looking for asolution.

•••••••Paul Grabowicz: We've had sort of creepingconvergence here. It's come not from me, it'scome from the faculty. In our intro reportingclass that all the students have to take everyinstructor is putting in a segment of how wouldyou do this if you were doing it for a televisionshow? How would you do this story if you weredoing it on the Web? Which is great becausewe didn't force feed them to do it. We havebeen letting that evolve until they (the students)sort of don't realize anymore how far down theroad they are. Now everyone wants Webpages. Four years ago, the feeling was,"Something's wrong with this, it's not realjournalism." Now they all want them. So that'sthe other way that convergence works.

•••••••Mindy McAdams: We all know we're in astate of flux and when you have a new course,I've certainly learned this, the collection of kidsin the course each time you teach it can make itlook like a really stupid course that you justmade up or the next time you teach basicallythe same course to an entirely different class,and they love it, you love it, everybody's thrilled,and then the next semester it might be back tothe "I'm a total failure, I don't know how to teachthis thing." So with these new courses, it takes

a little while for you to even know if you're doinganything right.

•••••••

Paul Grabowicz: We started to split the skillssection out separately. I don't know if this isright. This is my third go around on this. First itwas all in one, and then I split it out and thatdidn't work, and then I went back to all in oneand now I'm back to splitting it out.

Laura Ruel: But how did you know it didn'twork?

Paul Grabowicz: Because not only were thestudents dissatisfied but the instructors weredissatisfied and there was a sort of unanimityabout it.

Nora Paul: But this is Mindy's situation (abovecomment) in some ways. Are we so insecurethat we don't even stick with anything longenough to find out whether it works or not?

Paul Grabowicz: In those cases it just didn'tfeel fixable. It was just so far off the charts. Itwas too much tech stuff and not any (time leftfor) journalism. So the latest iteration is (aseparate multimedia skills class with) bone headjournalism and losts of tech stuff.

•••••••

Rich Gordon: It has been my experience thatamong the most conservative, change-resistantpeople we have are a substantial number of ourstudents who basically fell in love with ourimage of journalism. They want to work for anewspaper, they want to do newspaper work,that's what they want to be. Our undergrad newmedia course was made a requirement for thenewspaper students and there were a numberof students who really didn't want to be there.

go for a job interview.

Wendell Cochran: As journalismteachers, shouldn't we untask ourselves ofthat and find somebody who can do thatpiece of it, in a day, rather than us spending15 weeks working through that at all thesedifferent levels.

Rich Gordon: I have very conflictedfeelings on this general topic because whileI completely agree with Wendell about thebutton pushing, I keep going back to myexperience learning computer assistedreporting. I already had a pretty good ideaof what I wanted to be able to do. I wasable to think analytically about numbers in away that a lot of traditional journalists aren'tcomfortable with. So, I could certainly seethe need to teach somebody how to thinkanalytically. But at the same time, when itreally hit home, when the "ah ha" started tohappen, when I got a sense of power andcontrol was when I pushed the buttons to doit. It was the experience of learning how torun a query in database software that gaveme an understanding that persists todayabout the way Web sites should workbecause of the idea of underlyingdatabases. If I just sat and had someonelecture to me about records and fields indatabases it would never have hit home, Iwould never have gotten it.

•••••••Jane Stevens: There are some issues ifyou were to de-couple all the tools from thejournalism. For example, I've sat in andwatched how computer science peer groupsteach other students. They'll say things like,"Well, you just go to this news site and youright click on the photo and you can save itand use it." You know, no copyright issuesare ever mentioned, and I think that whenyou're teaching it hand-in- hand with thejournalism you bring all these issues up.

“While I completelyagree with Wendell... I keep going back

to my experiencelearning computer

assisted reporting. Iwas able to thinkanalytically aboutnumbers ... so, I

could certainly seethe need to teachsomebody how tothink analytically.But at the same

time, when it reallyhit home, when the"ah ha" started to

happen, when I got asense of power andcontrol was when Ipushed the buttons

to do it.”Rich Gordon Northwestern University

Medill School of Journalism. AssociateProfessor, Chair - New Media Program


and on the Web.Those of us in this room, we all learned

journalism at a time when our professorscould say, "Do what I did. Follow my model,you'll have a good long career and you'llprobably be successful. I don't think any ofus can look at our students in the eye andsay that about ourselves, right? I can'tpromise that your career…in fact I couldpromise that it's not going to look like mine.

•••••••Elizabeth Osder: I try to think of mystudents and I say, where will they be in2046 or, you know, when they're retiring? Idon't know what the world will look like.They'll be doing VR journalism, who the hellknows. But what I can do with the limitedamount of time I have with them is givethem some good exercises to solveproblems. I don't care if they can shoot thedigital camera, I want them to know what agood video segment is, how to get it, andhow to get it to me fast... But that's the ideathat not everybody is the actual journalist -there is this role of producer and problemsolver who can bring all these elementstogether and put these packages together.That's this friction of trying to teacheveryone to do everything versus to learnhow to be critical about what is good, to bean editor and to bring those things togetherthat work. With the time we have, you'vegot a better shot at having people rigorouslydiscuss what works and what doesn't - togive them some critical thinking skills andcome up with a vocabulary that reallyexpresses that.

•••••••Wendell Cochran: …The less we canteach button pushing and the more we canteach what we're doing, great.

Laura Ruel: But I do think it's important toteach some skills because you have peoplethat want to walk out of there and say, “Iknow how to use Dreamweaver,” when they

Rich Gordon: If we took the knowledge thatexists at Northwestern among students andfaculty in other departments in the things we arecalling “new media” – in computer science and inthe school of education, in the Radio TelevisionFilm Program or our School of Speech, andcould figure out how to leverage that, then, firstoff, there might be somewheels we wouldn’t need toreinvent over in thejournalism side and secondly,I think we could actually dosome great stuff. We’ve hada couple of small successesof putting journalism studentswith computer sciencestudents to do somethingtogether and it’s been afabulous experience for thestudents as well as thefaculty on both sides. Butthere is all kinds ofinstitutional inertia thatmakes those things harderthan they should be.

••••••• Dennis Walsh: We startedto approach the university asa whole recognizing that thiswhole post-modern trend isbreaking down the silos – itisn’t just journalism, it isn’tjust tv and it isn’t just culturalstudies, it’s this wholepotpourri. It requires facultyfrom multiple disciplines to coordinate. But thenyou get into the whole structure of the universityand what lines and how much money areallotted where and people who have investedtheir lives in Shakespeare who don’t wantanything to do with this unless Shakespeare isinvolved. It’s really a tough nut to break.

•••••••Paul Grabowicz: My biggest block has beentrying to figure out how to deal with the computerscience department, some of you have hadsome success that I would love to hear about.I’ve had success with the business school

although for the most part it has been, “Gee,we’re happy to participate - go for it.” But I’dreally like to crack the computer science nut, Idon’t know quite how to do that. I’d love to hearfrom people about other departments thatthey’ve worked with - what’s worked and whathasn’t.

Michael Parks: At USC,Larry Pryor’s success indealing with differentdepartments has been totallybased on personalities.

Rich Gordon: I’d say therehave to be two factors. One,there has to be a kindredspirit over there who is asinterested in the mediaapplications of technology aswe are in the technologicalunderpinnings of media andthere’s an awful lot of thatthat just doesn’t exist. I can’tsay that everybody in ourcomputer science program ison-board. But I’d like to saythis, this department atNorthwestern is morefocused on the practicalapplication of technologyrather than theoretical thanmost programs elsewhere.That’s one thing that makes it

work because even if you weren’t around, theywould be doing things that actually looksomething like journalism because they’reinterested in the application technology ...

Neil Chase: They make every student in thecomputer science sequence find a final projectthat has a real client. They came to thejournalism school as I was leaving because theywere trying to get a grant for this library researchthing for the government that they had nocontent for, and we run a news service, so theycame to us because we have all the stories.

Across the campus How to get “buy in” from other departments

“We started toapproach theuniversity as a

whole recognizingthat this whole

post-modern trendis breaking downthe silo – it isn’t

just journalism, itisn’t just TV and itisn’t just culturalstudies. It’s this

whole potpourri. ”Dennis P. Walsh

formally of Miami (Ohio) University,Center for Interactive Media Studies

Professor Emeritus.

Really understanding integrated media is going to take integrated study. Journalism schoolsare increasingly looking at ways to tie in with other academic disciplines’ interests in newmedia and creating intriguing partnerships. Here are some of the ideas behind bridgingbetween disciplines and some of the issues involved:

“The truth is, if Iwas hiring an

editor today, if acandidate comes inand can't do pretty

advancedspreadsheet stuff,

if he can't doInternet research

stuff, I'm nothiring him because

everybody whowould be sittingbeside him can.

…The less we canteach button

pushing and themore we can teachwhat we're doing,

great.”

Wendell CochranAmerican University. AssociateProfessor, Journalism Division

Director.

Wendell Cochran: I don't think that newmedia is good, because I think that what wedo is three things. No matter what kind ofjournalists we are we gather information, weanalyze it, and we present it. The tools withwhich we do that change over time, thefunctions don't change over time. And if wecan work on the function so that they arebetter at getting it, better at analyzing it, andbetter at presenting it, in whatever form orformat, we will have succeeded.

Mindy McAdams: I think what Wendell justsaid is right, but we can't teach presentationwithout them using the tools. Now bear withme for a second. Does that mean that weneed to teach the tools beyond the basics?Because the reality they'll face in the world isthey'll have to teach themselves. Nobody willsend them out for training.

So you have to give them the tools, givethem the bare minimum of instruction, give

them the tie-in to practice, right? Is that whatyou do in your classes, show them the basics,you can carry around the camera, shoot withit, and learn from your mistakes, right? But it'snot like Wendell has to stand up there andteach shooting for video for hours and hoursand hours. It's like, "You see this button,when it's on you're shooting. Here, shootsome video, bring it back and then we'll trashit when we look at what you did."

Because they're going to be handedanother camera on their first job and their nextjob, and they'll be handed Dreamweaver 15,and all the buttons will be different so there'sno point teaching the tools, but they have touse them.

Wendell Cochran: There's one tool wehave to teach over and over day by day, andthat's writing. That's what gets lost too muchin the classes that focus on this particularpiece of software or this particular techniqueof editing, it's writing and that's the basis ofevery bit of presentation that we do.

•••••••Rich Gordon: A certain amount of whatwe're trying to do is additive. It's impossible inone course to give everybody everything theyneed to do what's called interactive multi-media journalism but the goal would be that atsome point they're ready to do that. But wedon't control the sequence of who takes whatin what order, nor do we have any control ofwhat they came in with in the first place. Oneof the things we struggle with is what do youdo with an interactive new media course when

you've got people who've been designing Webpages since high school and other people whodon't know how to double click a mouse.You've got that entire range to cover and youend up short-changing both groups.

Nora Paul: It's the same question we hadasked with regards to computer assistedreporting: Should we integrate it or should wedo separate courses? Did we learn anythingfrom the adaptation of the new technology intojournalism curricula from the past or not?

Wendell Cochran: I think we did. When Istart talking about any of this stuff I usuallyrefer to Phil Myers' intro to the second editionof Precision Journalism which says somethinglike, in case you haven't noticed, they'veraised the stakes of what it takes to be ajournalist. I think we should call this stuff"modern journalism" or "today's journalism."

Paul Grabowicz: What about "post-modernjournalism"?

Wendell Cochran: God, I hope not. Butthe truth is, if I was hiring an editor today, if acandidate comes in and can't do prettyadvanced spreadsheet stuff, if he can't doInternet research stuff, I'm not hiring himbecause everybody who would be sittingbeside him can. At CNN you're not gettinghired very much today …. Ok, I can stopthere. (laughter) But really, all the CNN peopleare expected to produce for the Web site,produce radio, and produce video. On the air

Skills training or critical thinking?The amount of time and the credit hours available for new media courses are limited. What is the most effective approach: teaching technical skills

or developing critical thinking about new media? How do you deal with classes where student skills range from those who have been buildingpersonal Web pages since high school to those not quite sure how to use a mouse? What will best prepare students for their first job, knowing the

software or knowing how to apply the concepts of new media? The following comments reflect the range of issues in this ongoing debate:

1312 new media matter(s): journalism education & the future of news

JulieNichols

andMichaelParks.

“I try to think ofmy students and Isay, “Where willthey be in 2046?”... I don't know

what the world willlook like. They'll

be doing VRjournalism – whothe hell knows?

But what I can dowith the limitedamount of time Ihave with them isgive them some

good exercises tosolve problems. Idon't care if they

can shoot thedigital camera. I

want them to knowwhat a good videosegment is, how to

get it, and howto get it

to me fast...”Elizabeth Osder Stanford University,

Knight Journalism Fellow