Photo story day - JEM 200's in-class lecture assignment

Lecture assignment, March 25, 2010

Students in the JEM 200 course at the University of Tennessee were assigned to do a photo story of the lecture itself last week. Here's a short video of how the class went. Below are some of the instructions students received about the assignment.

Students,

You will be asked to begin an in-class photo assignment in lecture this week. To prepare, do the following.

• Acquire a camera and get familiar with the kind of pictures it can take -- particularly pictures indoors with reasonably good light.
• Establish an account with some picture hosting service. Recommended is Picasaweb, Google's service.
• Upload some pictures to your account so that you can get familiar with the process.
• Review JPROF's series on photojournalism, especially the part about writing cutlines.

You will be asked to take enough pictures to select 10 to 15 good ones (which means you should be taking 50 to 100 pictures, at least) and load them into an album on your hosting service. (Picasaweb is good for this because it lets you create new albums at will. Then, it can automatically make an embeddable slide show from that album.)

You will need to write cutlines for all of the pictures that go into your album, so part of your assignment will be getting cutline information. We'll talk more about that during lecture.

Your photos should include examples of long range, medium range and close-up pictures. You should have more close-up pictures than anything else.

This is a graded assignment, so do some thinking about it before you come to class. Some of the best advice you can follow are these guidelines for the student photojournalist.

Crowdsourcing the Civil War

In the video below, George Rable, University of Alabama history professor, discusses the sources of information that newspaper editors during the Civil War used for their reports about battles and the war in general.

One important source was letters from soldiers -- a form of what we could call today crowdsourcing. This means using the accounts of participants at an event to construct an account of that event.

Crowdsourcing the Civil War from Jim Stovall on Vimeo.

Kiffen pre-presser video - last century's journalism

The YouTube video above shows the eight minutes of controversy surrounding Bud Ford, the news reporters, and Lane Kiffen's lack of cooperation with reporters in dispensing information about his resignation as Tennessee's football coach last week.

The video has been racing around the web (more than 175,000 views as of this morning), and lots of folks are getting exorcised about it. The comments I've seen about it tend toward the anti-Kiffen flavor (he's some kind of coward not the face the media); and some are anti-reporters (they should have stood behind Bill Shorey's insistence that Kiffen go on camera).

By my general impression is this:

It was all absolutely unnecessary.

It is, at best, a demonstration of last century's journalistic process.

The first question that springs to mind is: Why were the reporters there at all?

If Kiffen didn't want to talk on camera and if he wasn't going to answer questions, why waste time showing up? If all Kiffen was going to do is make a statement, he could have done that in front of a camera and put it on YouTube. Then everybody could have viewed it, the message would have gotten out, the reporters could have noted it and gotten on with the business of reporting the story.

Instead, they all gathered in a room and waited -- WAITED -- for Lane Kiffen to show up, knowing he wouldn't be answering questions.

Why did they do that?

Because they've always done it that way.

University of Tennessee proposes new curriculum for journalism students

UPDATE: The college faculty just voted to approve, with minor changes, the proposed changes in the journalism curriculum and requirements. (Nov. 20, 2009, 10 a.m.)

The faculty of the School of Journalism and Electronic Media at the University of Tennnesse has proposed a number of changes to our curriculum. These changes are based on the following goals:

• To create an innovative curriculum designed to address the changes occurring in all media.
  
  
• To create a more flexible curriculum in the wake of economic realities at UT and in media industries.
  
  
• To prepare graduates who are capable of working in all media.
  
  
• To eliminate current bottlenecks in the curriculum preventing some students from graduating in 4 years.
  
  
• To simplify the curriculum by eliminating tracks and by reducing the total number of courses.
  
  
• To create a curriculum we can deliver with 17 faculty members, some lecturers, and GTAs.
  
  
• To integrate new media in as many courses as possible.

The proposed curriculum includes a core and upper division electives. The proposed core is designed to ensure that all students should have the following knowledge and skills:

• An understanding of the principles and history of all media.
• An understanding of media law, diversity, and ethics.
• The ability to write, report, and present news and other content in all platforms.
• An understanding of the business of journalism and media and the issues affecting the business.
• Professional experience

CHANGES TO COURSES OF INSTRUCTION

The new curriculum eliminates the "tracks" (magazine, sports, broadcasting, etc.) Instead, all journalism students will be required to complete the following core (22 hours).

JEM 200—Media Writing (3)
JEM 250—Visual Communication (3)
JEM 275—Principles and History of Journalism and Media (3)
JEM 300—Media Reporting (3)
JEM 400--Mass Communication Law and Ethics (3)
JEM 465—Media, Diversity, and Society (3)
JEM 492—Practicum 1-2
JEM 499—The Media Business and Future of Journalism (3)

This is a huge and important change. The faculty of the entire College of Communication and Information is set to vote on this change this morning.

The entire proposal can be found in this Word document (auto download).

Reforming the J-curriculum: beginning at the beginning

• To really reform a journalism curriculum, you have to begin at the beginning.

The faculty of the School of Journalism and Electronic Media at the University of Tennessee decided at its first faculty meeting of the semester in January to make some definite moves toward revising our curriculum to recognize the realities of the changing media environment and to prepare our students for those realities.

During the past few years, the UT faculty had done what other faculties have done -- lay on a couple of extra courses about web journalism. Some faculty members had made some moves within existing courses (including changing the names of the courses) to include more about the web.

We had even taken a step beyond that in starting a student-operated news web site, the Tennessee Journalist (tnjn.com), that is a central part of the curriculum. The site operates independently from any single course and thus is open to being used by all courses.

All of these were steps in the right direction, but they have not achieved the fundamental changes within the curriculum that we have sought. At our January meeting, we resolved to take a big step (bigger, I think, than even most of our faculty realized) and change JEM 200, the introductory news writing course that is required of all majors and taken by many other students as well.

Because I am the coordinator of all JEM 200 sections, the task of rethinking and re-envisioning the course has fallen to me. We offer 11 sections of the course and enroll about 200 students each semester. The sections are taught by lecturers and graduate teaching assistant and occasionally (though not this semester) by full time professors.

In our new plan for the course, the beginning six weeks of the course have not changed substantially. During those weeks we introduce students to the following topics. (The links here take you to the weekly lecture notes for each of these topics that are posted on JPROF.com.)

• Introduction to media writing
• Basic tools: Grammar and style
• Writing in the media environment
• The inverted pyramid
• Basics of reporting and journalistic writing: sources and interviewing

What came next in the old syllabus was two weeks of writing for the web. That has been expanded to four weeks. My draft proposal for how these four weeks will go follows:

Week 7, Feb. 16-20
Writing sections: continue writing in the inverted pyramid form; emphasize efficiency and conciseness. Have the students learn HTML tags with this tutorial and this exercise.
Lecture: Writing for the web I Introduction to the web | The web as a word medium | How readers use the web | Important concepts | Headlines and summaries.

Week 8: Feb. 22-26
Writing sections: Write short (no more than 200 words) but information-packed stories; introduce and practice with writing headlines and summaries using the tutorials and exercises. Assign the preview story reporting/writing assignment that will be due for next week.
Lecture: Writing for the Web II The Tennessee Journalist | Important concepts (continued) | Technology | Writing for the web - the basics | Headlines.

Week 9: March 2-6
Writing sections: Reporting assignment (preview story) due on the first section meeting; upload that assignment to the TNJN server. Practice uploading pictures and writing cutlines as well as sidebar material if possible. Look for live stories on the Tennessee Journalist to show as examples for sidebar material. Pay particular attention to the "related links" function of TNJN and have students find appropriate links for their stories.
Lecture: Writing for the Web III Inverted pyramid | Visual variety | Lists | Summaries | Microcontent | Links


Week 10: March 9-13
Writing sections: Writing assignments should include writing headlines and summaries, creating links and lists, and taking pictures and writing cutlines. A second reporting assignment -- another preview story if you don't think they're ready to do anything else -- would be good.
Lecture: Writing for the Web IV Twitter | Photojournalism | Audio | What you need to do to get ready to work in the web environment.

That will take us up to spring break. During the week after spring break, you should continue doing whatever your lab needs. One idea is to assign them to do a photo story over spring break.

After spring break, we will devote three weeks to "writing for broadcast," but that will change from the broadcast writing section that we once had.

This draft plan has been written for the lecturers and lab instructors of JEM 200, but I am posting it here on the JPROF blog so that anyone who reads it can weigh in and help us with our deliberations. I am especially interested in hearing from anyone who can suggest additional resources -- readings, tutorials, exercises, examples, etc.

Resources:

Writing headlines for the web

Basic HTML tags

Finding links

The art of linking

Writing summaries

Guidelines for the student photojournalist

Audio slide shows

ICONN conference, Day 2 - pictures of session 3

The first session of the morning of the second day of the Intercollegiate Online News Network is underway. Above are some pictures.

The people on the panel are

9:30 – 10:30 a.m.
Professional affiliates

• Tammi Marcoullier, Publish2
• Bob Benz, Radiant Markets
• Michael Marshall, UPI
• Jay Baird, Mochi Media
• Peter Gross, director, School of Journalism and Electronic Media, presiding

ICONN conference, Day 1 - pictures and links

Listen to an audio file of the first session. (Unedited, 57:30)

The first day of the Intercollegiate Online News Network founders conference at the University of Tennessee saw a journalism academics, students and professionals come together to discuss ways to better integrate online journalism into journalism curricula.

Above are pictures from the first day's sessions.

Some people are twittering about the conference with the hashtag #ICONN.

And here are some blog posts about the conference.

• Jim Miller's Menial Musings: Thoughts from the Intercollegiate Online News conference
  
  
• BamaProducer (George Daniels): More pictures from Day 1
  
  
• BamaProducer (George Daniels): UPI reinvents itself with new generation of students online
  
  
• BamaProducer (George Daniels): UT Knoxville students turn out for ICONN
  
  
• BamaProducer (George Daniels): ICONN begins with faculty-student exchanges
  
  
• BamaProducer (George Daniels): A three-day trip to the Volunteer State begins
  
  
• JEM222 blog: ICONN conference discussions how journalism classes relate to work field

Clear and cold -- 10 degrees -- in Knoxville early this morning.

More on the conference later.

TNJN wins regional SPJ awards

The Tennessee Journalist <TNJN.com>, the news web site of the School of Journalism and Electronic Media at UT, has been named as the best independent news web site for Region 12 of the Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence awards. A number of the staffers have received individual awards. I am the faculty adviser for this site and proud as punch. Read more at the Tennessee Journalist and the SPJ site.

Read more about journalism and issues facing the profession at JPROF.com.

The Tennessee Journalist

The Tennessee Journalist is the news web site of the School of Journalism and Electronic Media at the University of Tennessee.

TNJN.com was created in the fall of 2006, soon after I joined the faculty at UT. This news site is part of the curriculum of the School and is operated by a student staff. They make the editorial decisions about what is posted on the site every day. You can find out a little more about the origins of TNJN.com at its About page. And if you want to be entertained, watch a promotional video about TNJN that was produced by one of our students.

The purpose of this news web site is to help the School teach a variety of aspects of web journalism and to give students the opportunity to practice and develop their skills and understanding of this new form of journalism.

TNJN.com, I think, serves as an excellent model for what a journalism/mass communication program can do to get itself into the convergence world. The site cost very little to establish and does not require much out-of-pocket cash for the School to maintain it. The students have taken to it with energy and enthusiasm.

Here are a few facts:

• The site was established in October 2006.
  
  
• The site is a part of the curriculum of the School.
  
  
• The site is run by a staff of students, and editorial decisions rest with that staff of editors. The staff operates independently from any class or course, and anyone may join the staff.
  
  
• The site is operated with a content management system developed specifically for TNJN.com. This system (which the students have named “Ochs”) is built on the Django open-source framework. It was developed by Johnny Dobbins and Staci Wolfe and is owned and can be licensed by the University of Tennessee.
  
  
• Students doing work in any of our courses can contribute their work to the site. Some courses give students the option of completing some course requirements by working with the site.
  
  
• Advertising space can be sold on the site. (We have not done this yet, but we are planning to begin this semester.)
  
  
• The site is equipped to handle almost anything our students produce: news and feature stories, pictures, audio, video, audio slide shows, etc.
  
  
• The site is updated on a daily basis and can be updated immediately when breaking news occurs.
  
  
• A unique and important aspect of the site is that every student who contributes to the site automatically gets a profile page. This page can contain a short biography and picture of the student. It also contains links to all of their work on the site. A good example of a student's profile page is this one.
  

The student staff holds a weekly staff meeting on Thursday evenings, and about 30 students regularly attend these meeting. Probably twice that number (or more) make regular contributions to the site.

TNJN.com is gathering an audience. Through the fall semester, the site attracted about 2,500 unique visitors every day. Since the beginning of the spring semester, the number of unique visitors has averaged more than 3,200 each day.



Read more about journalism and issues facing the profession at JPROF.com.