Two new panelists for teaching abroad panel at NCMC

Unfortunately Dan Reimold is stuck in Atlanta and won't be able to join us for the Thursday morning panel on International Teaching/Research Opportunities for Journalism Educators at the Associated Collegiate Press/College Media Advisers National College Media Convention in Louisville.

But two globe-trotting CMA members have stepped in to fill the void.

Come hear how Brian Steffen of Simpson College has led a number of study-abroad programs, including an intercultural communication tour of England, France, Austria, Germany and Switzerland for 37 students.

You'll also hear from David Arant of University of Memphis, who has taught two three-block seminar courses for the Johannes Gutenberg University,  U of Memphis' sister school in Mainz, Germany. He'll offer some suggestions on how faculty can explore new relationships with overseas schools where partnerships already exist.

We'll miss Dan but this should still be a terrific Professional Development panel for journalism educators interested in teaching abroad.

National College Media Convention sessions on study/work abroad

Hope to meet many of you at the Associated Collegiate Press/College Media Advisers National College Media Convention in Louisville later this week.

Journalism educators and students who are interested in studying or working abroad should know about two sessions -- one geared toward advisers and one for students. Dan Reimold of College Media Matters, who has taught in Singapore, and I will present at both sessions.

I'll be presenting information about the Institute for Education in International Media (ieiMedia)'s summer programs in Istanbul, Turkey; Perpignan, France; and Urbino, Italy at both sessions. Students in these four-week programs not only study media skills and the local language and culture but they produce online and sometimes print publications about the communities they are living in.

Please tell your students, friends and colleagues and refer them to the ieimedia website (http://ieimedia.com) for more information.

Thursday, Oct. 28
9-9:50 a.m.
International Teaching/Research Opportunities for Journalism Educators
Collins, 2^nd Floor

Many journalism educators dream of teaching or doing research abroad. Where do you find these opportunities? Is there funding? How difficult is it to step away from your regular life -- and then step back in?  Bob Bergland of Missouri Western University, Dan Reimold and I will share tips on breaking into the world of international education.

Saturday, Oct. 30
1:30-2:20 p.m.
Study/Work Abroad Opportunities for Students
McCreary, 3rd Floor (Conservatory/Skywalk Level)
Do you fantasize about becoming a foreign correspondent? Do you hope to study abroad? Representatives of several international programs for students will describe opportunities to study overseas, with a focus on media-related internships and field-study programs. Patrick Armstrong, a student who participated in ieiMedia's Urbino Project in 2009, will share his experiences studying in Italy.

IeiMedia, which has been co-sponsoring programs with San Francisco State University for the past two years, is expanding this year and forging partnerships with Iowa State University, James Madison University and other schools. The organization is also hiring instructors for summer programs abroad. Read more about these job and institutional partnership opportunities.

Interested students and journalism educators can contact me by leaving a voicemail message in my room at the Galt House (502) 589-5200 or contacting me on Twitter @ieimedia.

Teach videojournalism in France this summer

IeiMedia is looking for an instructor to teach videojournalism in Perpignan, France, for a month this summer. Instruction will be in English to mostly North American college students (although English-speaking students from other parts of the world are welcome to attend).

The instructor will train students to produce short videos for the Web. You can view student work from the summer of 2010 at inperpignan.net.

Find out more about the job and ieiMedia programs for summer 2011 at the ieiMedia website.

Contest for student photojournalists

I'm looking for a photo for the cover of the second edition of The Student Newspaper Survival Guide, so I'm organizing a contest. The winner will get a $50 prize, two copies of the book -- one for the photographer and one for the student newspaper of his/her choice -- and the satisfaction of knowing he or she is inspiring the next generation of student journalists.

You can see the image from the first edition of the book here.

What I'm looking for this time around is a photo that says: STUDENT JOURNALIST AT WORK. Ideally this will be a shot of a photographer or reporter (or multiple student journalists) covering a campus news event. It could be a rally or a speech or a crime scene but it should look like a news event on a college campus. Ideally I'm looking for a horizontal, but a vertical shot might work.

I'd also consider the approach of the original cover -- a campus news event without the student journalist in the photo. In that case I would want a great shot of something that says: NEWS EVENT ON A COLLEGE CAMPUS.

It can be something that's already been shot or something that is shot for this purpose. The photo should look natural and candid -- nothing staged or posed, no smiling for the camera. It should look real.

Deadline: Nov. 15.


Please email submissions to me at kanigel at sfsu.edu.

Thanks. I look forward to seeing your entries.

Note: If no appropriate image is submitted, no prizes will be awarded.

NPR: What's the Point of Journalism School, Anyway?

NPR has an interesting piece on why students spend thousands of dollars to get a degree that prepares them for what many believe is dying profession.

Several people in the report question the conventional wisdom that journalism is on the skids.

"It's a renaissance, a re-creation," says Geneva Overholser, director of journalism at the USC Annenberg School, where NPR based its story. "I don't mean to sound blithe about this," she says. "It's unsettling, but my favorite word for it — and I'll carry this one all the way – is promising. And these students know that they're going to re-create it."

What do you think? If you're a journalism major, why do you go to j-school? What do you expect to do with the degree when you graduate?

Study media in France, Turkey or Italy this summer

As many of you know, when I'm not blogging or teaching journalism at San Francisco State University I'm directing a summer media study-abroad program sponsored by the Institute for Education in International Media (ieiMedia).

ieiMedia programs are open to English-speaking students from colleges and universities all over the world, who gather to study media skills, as well as the local language and culture, and spend four incredible weeks reporting on the city. Students create a website or print magazine about each community. Participants earn 3 transferable credits from a university.

We've just announced the programs for summer 2011:

Urbino, Italy

(Section 1: Multimedia Reporting or Section 2: Magazine Publishing)
June 9-July 7, 2011

Urbino lies in the northern part of central Italy’s Marche Region, nestled between the Apennine Mountains and the Adriatic Sea. Many say the Renaissance started here under the patronage of Duke Federico da Montefeltro, whose twin-turreted palace still houses an outstanding collection of period art. Other attractions include a unique botanical garden and the boyhood home of the Renaissance artist Raphael. Lively beach towns are a bus ride away. Students will live and learn at the University of Urbino, with all meals included. Students who sign up for the magazine publishing project will produce Urbino Now, a digital English-language magazine. Those who sign up for Multimedia Reporting will study photography, international reporting and video and produce a website about the city. The programs include full room and board in a recently renovated, air-conditioned dormitory.

Perpignan, France

June 23-July 23, 2011

Study multimedia storytelling and French language and culture in this charming Catalan city near the Spanish border. Students will study blogging, shooting and editing video, and international reporting and create a multimedia website about the community. Perpignan lies in the Languedoc region of southwestern France, 8 miles west of the Mediterranean Sea and 19 miles north of the Spanish border, within sight of the Pyrenees. The city features a charming, pedestrian-friendly historic quarter; a daily market; numerous summer arts festivals and lively night life. Many attractions in France and Spain are only a short train ride away. Students will live in air-conditioned studios in a modern hotel and study French at respected language academy.

Istanbul, Turkey

Dates TBA

Come report on this exotic yet sophisticated city, the only major metropolis that straddles two continents, Asia and Europe. While steeped in history, Istanbul is an energetic modern city where people from around the world still come to make a future. You can explore it easily by public transportation and on foot. Students will cover street life, politics, culture and the arts, while learning about blogging, basic multimedia techniques and Turkish language and culture. Stories will be published in a digital magazine and considered for inclusion in a book about the city.

Find out more at our website, ieimedia.com.

Students newspapers should take mobile-first approach

You’re at a major intersection near the entrance to your campus and you see that a car has collided with a motorcycle. An ambulance is on the scene. What do you do?

If you don’t have a conventional camera, whip out your cell phone and snap a picture. Send it back to the newsroom with a text message reporting the basic details of the accident. Within seconds you can have a brief news report up on your news website. If the accident is causing a traffic jam you may want to send out a news alert via Twitter or short message service (SMS).

That’s mobile journalism.

Mobile technology puts the basic tools of multimedia journalism into every journalist’s – really every person’s -- pocket.

The trick is knowing when and how to use these tools.

While some journalists carry a backpack of equipment – a digital camera, a video camera, an audio recorder, mics, cables and tripods -- with them at all times, others rely on their cell phones to help them capture the news.

But to be a true mobile journalist, you don’t just need the right equipment, you need the right mindset. You have to think: There’s news here. I’m a reporter. I need to cover this. Now!

Report what you know

Mobile journalism means not waiting to get the complete story, the verification from police, the quote from the official source. You need to go with what you have. That doesn’t mean spreading groundless rumors. But if you see fire crews in front of a building with smoke coming out of it or you witness police arresting a man outside the Humanities Building, you can report that and get additional facts and details later.

Steve Buttry, director of community engagement for TBD, a local news operation covering the Washington, D.C., area, says news organizations need to take a “mobile-first” approach at every level. “Reporters, editors and visual journalists need to think first about how to package and deliver news for mobile devices,” he wrote in a post for his blog, The Buttry Diary. “Information technology staffs need to work first on development of mobile applications for popular devices.… Designers need to present content that is clear and easy to read on the small screen (even if this means spending less staff resources on design of print or web products).”

As Buttry notes, mobile technology isn’t just changing the way journalists collect information, it’s changing the way they distribute it. You no longer can assume that readers are looking at your site on a wide computer screen; they may be checking you out on their cell phones or iPods. That means you need to optimize your site for mobile devices, simplifying your pages so they are easy to read on a 1- or 2-inch screen.

Devise a mobile strategy

If your news organization doesn’t already have a mobile strategy, it may be time to craft one. Think about who your readers are and what will be useful to them. Keep in mind that mobile readers tend to be more local than online readers. In that way, they’re more like your print readers.

But they also tend to be younger and more technologically savvy – more students, less faculty and staff. And they're constantly plugged in. You want to be one of the sources they scan regularly, whether it's on Twitter, Facebook, SMS or your website.

Think about what your audience wants. “Mobile users like local information, video, breaking news and weather,” Regina McCombs, who teaches multimedia at the Poynter Institute, writes in a column for PoynterOnline. “Mobile users are socializing, multitasking, and passing time. And they're conscious of data rates and battery life, so they want it fast.” Check out McCombs' "10 Questions to Help You Craft a Mobile Strategy (Before it's too late)."

What do readers care about?

College news organizations should consider what their readers care about: on-campus activities, sports, building or campus closures, traffic conditions, disruptions in public transportation, crime, bargains.

If you're at the on-campus farmers market and a merchant is offering everything half off for the final hour, snap a picture and tweet it. If you're on the train to school and the driver announces a 20-minute delay, let your readers know.

The more you use mobile technology to report what's happening, the more your readers will look to your news organization as the definitive, can't-live-without-it source on the information they care about.

How is your news organization using mobile journalism? Respond to this post and I may use you in an example in a future column.

College newspaper or college media organization?

Do you work for a college newspaper that has a website or do you work for a college media organization that produces a 24/7 news website, a newspaper and perhaps other media products (such as a magazine, TV broadcasts, radio programming, etc.)?

If you’re living in the 21st century, you should be working for the latter.

No matter how small your school is or how tiny your staff may be, you should think of your print publication as part of an integrated news operation that’s ready to cover news about your campus community at every hour of the day and night.

How do you know if you work for a news media operation?

• You publish content to your website first, not waiting for the daily, weekly or monthly deadlines of your print publication.
• You post new content to your website every day – or pretty close to that.
• You cover news, including sports, arts and cultural events, as it breaks.
• You use multiple media – audio, video, text, graphics, photos – to tell stories.
• You use social media, now vital component of all media, to find, report and distribute the news.

With the Web there’s no reason to "save" content for your print publication or limit yourself to what works best in print.

Some journalists worry about cannibalizing their print publication by posting to the Web first; they think people won’t pick up their newspaper if it includes information that’s already been published online. But they have to understand three fundamental truths:

1) Audiences for print and online are different. While your print newspaper strictly circulates on campus and in your community, your website goes to the world where alumni, parents of students, prospective students and random people searching for information will find it.

2) Print and online products are different. Print publications offer after-the-fact news accounts of the day, week or month in text and images. Online publications report news as it happens in text, video, audio, tweets, photos, interactive graphics and other media. They can be updated at a moment’s notice.

3) Consumers now expect to read about news as it happens. Your readers don’t want to wait for your next print publication to find out what the college president said at the press conference or who won the last basketball game. They want to know as the news unfolds.

The Web offers a host of opportunities for covering news as it breaks. Unfortunately, even now many college news organizations fail to take full advantage of the medium. An amazing number of student newspapers still simply “shovel” stories and photos from the print paper without updates or enhancements, remaining slaves to their fixed newspaper deadlines.

I'm not just talking here about "breaking news," the major events that force publications into Web-first publishing mode. I'm talking about game stories, crime reports, theater reviews, news accounts of routine speeches and events.

The good news is it doesn't take a major overhaul to move to a Web-first publishing model. You can do it today. Now. Right this moment.

Take that game story you're holding onto for next week's newspaper and publish it to your website. Tell the music critic reviewing tonight's concert to file the piece right after the event and then have the editor edit and publish it immediately. Better yet, have her tweet her comments and tell readers to look for the review on the website.

This is not to say student journalists should disregard their paper newspapers. Print is not dead and many student publications still get most of their advertising revenue and readers from their print edition. Online and print must work together, each serving their audiences as best they can.

But the more you start to think of yourself as a round-the-clock news source, the more your readers will see you that way and come to look to your website as the go-to destination for news about your community.

Poynter: Students prefer print college papers to online

In case you didn't see it, Poynter.org has an interesting column today about how students prefer to read their college papers in print than online.

"I talked with several college newspaper advisors (sic) across the country, and they all said their print newspapers are much more popular than their online versions," Bill Krueger wrote in the column. Krueger interviewed advisers and general managers from The Daily Tar Heel at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Indiana Daily Student at Indiana University, The Shorthorn at the University of Texas at Arlington, the College Heights Herald at Western Kentucky University, the Daily Trojan at the University of Southern California.

Virtually all of them said that while traffic to their Web sites is going up, print beats online readership, hands down.

In a Spring 2010 study, Student Monitor, a New Jersey college market research company, found that 63 percent of students surveyed classify themselves as frequent or light readers of the print edition of their campus newspaper.

How about your school -- are students more likely to read your news product in print or online? What can college news organizations do to encourage students to read their online products? Or do you think it's kind of quaint that tech-savvy, iPhone-toting, wired-to-the-max students take a few minutes every week to sit down to read a dead tree?

Localizing national and international stories

An earthquake strikes Chile, killing hundreds of people and displacing thousands. The federal government passes new health care legislation that will extend coverage to millions. Israeli and Palestinian leaders gather at an Egyptian resort in an attempt to forge a peace plan. A gunman takes 15 hostages at a college campus halfway across the country.

Every minute, important news stories break around the nation and around the world. Is it the job of your student news organization to cover them?

It depends. Certainly, your primary responsibility is to cover your campus and immediate community. But there are times when you should localize national and international news, putting it into context for your readers. There’s no clear answer on when your news organization should step in, but here are some guidelines and some examples of how student news outlets have covered national and international news.

What kinds of national and international stories should you localize?

Stories that have an impact on your readers. How will the new health care legislation affect your readers? How do students feel about a proposed increase in the federal minimum wage? What do your readers need to know about a national recall of eggs?

Stories that break on another college campus. When a student at California State University, Chico died in a hazing incident, student newspapers around the country took a hard look at fraternity pranks on their own campuses. Suicides, campus shootings, and drinking deaths are other news events that may be worth localizing because such stories are likely to resonate with your readers.

Stories that people are talking about. When Michael Jackson died or Sarah Palin resigned from her position as governor of Alaska, college campuses were abuzz with the news. If a lot of people are talking about an issue, you probably should cover it.

Stories with a local angle. If a current or former student or faculty member makes news, that’s grounds for coverage, even if the story breaks thousands of miles away. When a big story breaks check to see if members of your campus community are planning service or political activities in response.

Stories that affect a particular political, ethnic group or special-interest group on your campus. If you’ve got a sizable LGBT community, there’s likely to be heightened interest in gay rights issues. Does your campus have a large number of immigrants from Mexico, China or another country? Keep a special eye out for news from home that might interest them.

Stories similar to major events that have happened on your campus. When there’s a campus shooting anywhere in the United States, The Collegiate Times pays special attention because such events may spur memories of the shooting at Blacksburg, Va. campus.

What can your news organization add to the coverage? When deciding whether to localize a story think about what your news organization can contribute to the discussion. Will experts on your campus be able to provide analysis or context for what has happened? Will you offer an opportunity for community members to vent on an issue they feel passionate about? Can you report the news in a way that will make it more meaningful to your readers?

How do you find local sources for a national or international story? Social media tools are a good way to start. When a major earthquake struck Haiti in January 2010, Emily Stephenson, then community manager for The Daily Tar Heel, posted a Facebook message asking if anyone from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill community had been affected. She didn’t expect much response. “As it turned out, the School of Public Health had a student there who was trying to get home, and another student had just returned from a mission trip,” she says. “The second student wound up in the lede of the story.”

Suzanne Yada of The Spartan Daily also struck pay dirt with social media tools after learning that John Patrick Bedell, who had been shot to death after firing at two guards in front of the Pentagon, had attended San Jose State University. Yada, then the online editor for the paper, scoured social media sites looking for information about Bedell and his connection to San Jose State University. “Bedell was quite tech-savvy and had accounts on LinkedIn, Wikipedia and Amazon that mentioned SJSU and revealed more pieces of his character,” she says.

Another strategy for finding sources is to search for campus experts. If a coup breaks out in a distant land, look for professors who have done research on that country and its politics. If a major earthquake strikes, ask your geology department for someone who can explain the science behind seismic activity. Many university public information offices list professors with expertise in particular issues who can speak to the media.

Campus ethnic, religious and service groups may also be good sources for commentary and reaction to national or global news. Leaders of Jewish, Palestinian and Muslim student organization groups will often have comments on new developments in Middle East politics, for example. Think, too, about whether any individuals or groups on your campus may help in rescue efforts or take political action in response to a news event. College service groups often plan fundraisers or service trips to help survivors of natural disasters. Campus political groups may stage political activities in response to an important court ruling, crime or other news event.

If a major newsmaker has a connection to your campus – an alum is appointed to a high-level position or a former student engages in a high-profile crime – try to find professors, students and alumni who knew the person. When Elena Kagan was nominated to the Supreme Court, The Daily Princetonian provided extensive coverage of the Princeton alum, providing insights about her political activities and beliefs as an undergraduate. Reporters didn’t have to look too far to find evidence; Kagan had been a news writer and editorial chairman for the “Prince” and had penned a number of unsigned editorials, “many of which took decidedly liberal stances on national and campus issues,” The Daily Princetonian wrote.The Daily Princetonian even republished a column Kagan wrote after the national election of 1980.