What does the future of journalism hold?

Note: This is written for AEJMC’s call for responses to the question of what the future holds for journalism and mass communication. Submit your own entry by following this link, and win free registration to the convention in Boston.

The future of news is just fine. It’s the future of journalism that is so unsettled.

Since Walter Williams founded the first school of journalism at the University of Missouri in 1908, we’ve seen a lot of technological advancements that have thrown journalism, the system by which we produce news, into states of change and upheaval.

Journalism itself is undergoing change, but the basic unit of that product – news – is at its core unchanged in terms of the value it brings society. The modes of production have changed in the past 100 years, but our basic charge to teach storytelling is still central to what we do. This part of human communication is as old as time and probably won’t go away any time soon, but the ways in which people are willing to pay for it is undergoing what some call change, others call assault. Read more

Enlarging the world I’m about to enter, one visit at a time

During this academic year I’ve been involved in a fantastic program here at MU called Preparing Future Faculty. It is what the title describes, a program that prepares doc students for faculty life and the challenges they will face. It’s run by Dr. George Justice through the Grad School and has a lot of different facets, including monthly classes on different topics (tenure, teaching vs. research loads, etc.) as well as professional development seminars (hiring, negotiating job offers, etc.).

One of the unique things we do in the program is mentor visits. We are required to do at least one visit per semester and Dr. Justice tries to match us with people at institutions near MU who also do similar work in our field. Last semester I had a great visit at Kansas with Mike Williams, who is the chair of the news/information track. I learned a lot from him about the places career can take you as well as the challenges of teaching vs. administration. The visit also took place right before Lehigh offered me the position in December, so it gave me a lot to think about.

Today I went on my second visit. I spent the day shadowing Dr. Dan Kozlowski at Saint Louis University. This was a different experience. Whereas KU is a large public Research I institution in profile, SLU is more in the profile of what I’ll be experiencing as a member of the faculty at Lehigh. SLU has a strong commitment to both research and teaching, and it was evident throughout the day as I observed Dr. Kozlowski in his normal duties. Read more

Teaching standards without killing their spirit

I’ve been teaching a large lecture class this semester, my last one here at MU before I start at Lehigh in the fall. It seems like the lessons I’m learning as an instructor are much different than mid-size classes, and I’m not sure if it’s because a 200-student course means different challenges or if I’m just noticing issues more because the problems are being multiplied by 10.

I should preface anything here by saying I love being a teacher and enjoy being in the classroom. I know I’m not great at it yet, but I’ve learned a lot in six years of doing it and relish those moments where you feel like you’re breaking through with students and helping them develop as thinkers. A great question in class yesterday, for example, where a student on their own connected free speech issues to the Jena Six problem (showing curiosity and application) was one of those moments that gets you high.

Still, I’ve struggled with one part of the class, and that is enforcing standards. The students are required to do five participation events in the semester, which entails them going to an approved event (a lecture or civic meeting of some sort) and writing an essay that is pretty wide open in terms of format (personal reflection, recap, news style, etc.). The one thing we’re asking is the essay quotes someone who was at the event and that they list their contact information on the essay. We do this because we are verifying the students actually attended. Read more

“Forcing” technology in the classroom

An interesting discussion broke out on my Twitter feed today when MU RJI fellow Jenn Reeves (one of our brightest new media minds here) tweeted the following:

interesting- i’m seeing a number of students joining twitter and saying they were “forced” to join. Probably not a productive use of twitter

The tweet perked up my virtual ears as well as a number of others who follow her. Apparently several professors have forced students to join and register tweets as part of class material. It’s understandable from a professor perspective, because it’s a way to get students introduced to a wider media world and see the uses of technology. Read more

Viva La Revolution

I’m a longtime WordPress user in my blogging, but I finally found a little time to mess around with one of Brian Gardner Media’s Revolution themes.

Holy. Cow.

I used the Metro theme to redesign my professional site and integrate it with a professional blog for a more seamless look. What you see as of today took about three hours to set up. I could’ve designed this all by code and it would’ve taken a week for me (I can do it, but I’m not fast with PHP). Obviously I have more of the deep links to fix, but I pretty much configured the front page and got it to look how I wanted in a few hours. Read more