College Media Review

Research (Vol. 54) — The Digital Generation Gap

How Student Journalists Transition from Personal to Professional Uses of Mobile Devices and Social Media

By Jean Reid Norman
Weber State University

Introduction: Current college freshmen have never known a world without cell phones and the Internet. For them, mobile devices, such as smart phones and tablet computers, and social media, such as Twitter™ and Facebook™, are highly personal and an extension of themselves (Dover, 2012; Heverly, 2007; Turkle, 2005, 2011). At the same time, mobile devices have changed the way both professional and student journalists do their jobs, untethering them not only from their offices but also from their laptops and even from the need for a plug and an Internet connection (“Articles,” 2014; Walck, Cruikshank, & Kalyanko, 2015). Along with new technology that makes an office optional, journalists are now expected to engage readers through social media. (Spyridou, Matsiola, Veglis, Kalliris, & Dimoulas, 2013; Mico, Masip, & Domingo, 2013).

New staffers have not yet adopted the culture of the journalism profession (Mensing, 2010), and their experience with digital media (Turkle, 2011) and expectations for how to get and interact with news (Enda & Mitchell, 2013) differ both from professional journalists and from the college media advisers who are teaching them to become professionals. These students reside on the consumer side of the news-making process and represent the trend of how consumers seek news: socially and through multiple platforms (Enda & Mitchell, 2013; Miller, Rainie, Purcell, Mitchell, & Rosenstiel, 2012; Pew Research Center, 2016).

The position of college news media staffers as deeply interested, young consumers who have not yet internalized professional biases presents an opportunity to research the integration of digital media into journalistic practice and the new paradigm in news-making that digital media have created. This study explores these in the context of a practicum-style lab in which eight undergraduate students created content for a student news website at a Western university.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the experience of college journalists who are learning to transform digital media from a personal mode of expression to a professional one. It can help college media advisers understand what type of training in social media and mobile devices may be needed as they bring newcomers into their organizations. It may also make advisers sensitive to a digital divide among students coming to their institutions. Continue reading “Research (Vol. 54) — The Digital Generation Gap”

The Nitty Gritty About Networking

From the editor’s desk…

Perhaps now, more than ever in a highly competitive print, web and broadcast news industry, it is important for journalism students to network in order to land the internships or full-time jobs they seek.

But do they really know how to network, and do they realize its importance?

Journalists can’t be shy on the job, and the same applies to getting one,” says the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism on its website.

To read more about what the CUNY school says and other websites, visit the following sites.

Continue reading “The Nitty Gritty About Networking”

New Voices brings First Amendment issue to New Jersey

Student press rights topic at NJ statehouse

Holly Johnson and Tom McHale’s compelling essay first appeared in New Jersey as a guest column in the Times of Trenton.

Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center, aptly called it “inspiring” and said it “resoundingly sets forth the challenges that students and advisers are facing up against by image-obsessed institutions and howstate legislation can make all the difference.

Johnson and McHale remind us that legislation protecting free high school and college presses involves protecting First Amendment rights—and the rights of students to grow and learn as independent thinkers and decision-makers.

New Jersey educators push for student rights as reprinted in CMR.

The authors write, in part: “When administrators act as editors, speech is chilled; students learn to self-censor rather than exercise their constitutional rights responsibly.

The result? Students lose an opportunity to develop into the ethical, inquisitive citizens their administrators had hoped to nurture.”

The Student Press Law Center offers guides that can help advisers navigate what can be, as the center notes, “a tightrope.”

Among the many resources on the SPLC website are these guides:

SPLC tip sheet for student media advisers — A guide to fighting (and surviving) censorship.
Student media advisers and the law — A legal help guide for surviving what is often the toughest job in school.
Also advocating for free speech rights for students is New Voices USA, a group of students, educators and professionals from around the country working to protect student speech rights through legislation. Here is a link to New Voices USA and the New Voices Campaign: New Voices USA | Facebook

Want to develop better news consumers and citizens? Protect student journalism

New Voices aim: expand protection in New Jersey

By Holly Johnson and Tom McHale

Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth, but these days we see legitimate news organizations being called liars on the one hand, and shadowy organizations spreading fake news stories on the other. We need a generation of citizens with a heightened aptitude for telling the difference between fact and fiction. Our democracy depends on it, and those of us who teach journalism to the next generation are doing all we can to ensure our students have that capacity. Our lessons emphasize research, fact checking, ethics and professionalism.

Student journalists who are trusted to make editorial decisions about what their readers need and want to know, and how best to handle controversial topics, develop a capacity to communicate effectively and to think critically. They foster a culture of civic discourse amongst their peers.

Unfortunately, many administrators, worried about the image of their school, have opted to exert editorial control over student newspapers. While their intentions may be good–to cast the school in the most favorable light, to ensure students don’t read about topics that may seem too sensitive for some–the results are often calamitous for all involved. The pedagogical process is undermined, and the administrators open themselves up to criticism from all quarters.

Continue reading “Want to develop better news consumers and citizens? Protect student journalism”

From Writing for the College Newspaper to Multi-Media Journalism

Originally titled “Writing for the College Newspaper,” a Harford Community College class has transformed to “Multimedia Journalism.” (Photo:Stephen Smith)

The Evolution of a Classroom Approach to MC 208

By Claudia Brown
Harford Community College

In nearly 15 years of teaching at the college level, I have developed a successful formula for most of my classes that may be adjusted based on the student population, current events and a variety of other factors. However, MC 208, a class I began teaching in 2010 at Harford Community College, near Bel Air, Maryland, has proven the exception.

I have taught this course 10 different ways and plan for a new approach next semester.

Changing trends in the field have mandated these modifications, which have proven successful with students and led to national recognition for our college’s publication.

I started teaching MC 208: Writing for the College Newspaper in the spring semester of 2010. I had just taken over the position of newspaper adviser to “The Harford Owl,” a monthly newspaper at Harford Community College. Students wrote articles, took photos and sketched out newspaper design on paper. About half of the newspaper’s content was generated by faculty and staff contributions and the other half produced by students with the adviser/course professor writing headlines, taking photos and designing the publication in InDesign.

Continue reading “From Writing for the College Newspaper to Multi-Media Journalism”

2017 more like ‘1984’ than 1984

Survey details collision in classrooms between literature and reality

By Bradley Wilson
CMR Managing Editor

Lynn Neary with National Public Radio said George Orwell’s 1949 novel, 1984, again topped the Amazon bestseller list and had become, in her words, something of a political barometer.

Neary reported, “A spokesman for Signet Classics, which currently publishes 1984, said sales have increased almost 10,000 percent since the inauguration and moved noticeably upwards on Sunday. That’s when Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway appeared on Meet The Press. When host Chuck Todd challenged the Trump administration’s assertions about the size of the Inauguration Day crowd, Conway responded with a phrase that caught everyone’s attention.”

“Alternative facts,” Conway said.

Kellyanne Conway, Counselor to the President, tells Chuck Todd that the Press Secretary used ‘alternative facts’ in his first statement to the Press Corps.

Washington Post reporter Karen Tumulty on CNN’s Reliable Sources said the phrase reminded her of phrases from Orwell’s classic: doublethink, ignorance is strength, war is peace, freedom is slavery. Continue reading “2017 more like ‘1984’ than 1984”

Diversity includes recruiting and retaining a diverse staff

Covering stories of interest, relevance to diverse readers, viewers builds an audience

Including multiple voices on college and professional media staffs and the stories they cover should be part of a commitment to diversity.

As college media look to increase diversity in their staffs and cover diverse stories with accuracy and balance,

look to Readings and Resources page on the CMA Diversity Summit website and www.diversitystyleguide.com, edited by Rachele Kanigel, immediate past president of the College Media Association.

The style guide website notes it is a project of the Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism, based at the Journalism Department at San Francisco State University, and says, in part: “The center’s mission is to make journalism more inclusive from the classroom to the newsroom. An earlier version of The Diversity Style Guide was produced in the 1990s by CIIJ’s News Watch Program with help from many journalism organizations.”

The website includes the updated Diversity Style Guide, as well as several others:

Readings and Resources pageon the CMA Diversity Summit website.
“Explore campus diversity with effective coverage”in College Media Review.
AAJA Handbook to Covering Asian America
Gender Spectrum Guide to Gender Terminology
GLAAD Media Reference Guide
Media Takes: On Aging Style Guide
NABJ Style Guide
National Center on Disability and Journalism Style Guide
National Institute on Drug Abuse Media Guide
Neutrois: LGBTQ Terms
NLGJA Stylebook on LGBT Terminology
Race Forward Race Reporting Guide
Religion Stylebook
Style Guide: Reporting on Mental Health

From CMR Editor

Maintaining a science writing program

Forest of barren trees. (Public Domain, Creative Commons)

Environmental journalism training ebbs and flows with political fortunes

By Carol Terrracina Hartman
CMR Co-Managing Editor

A professional myth pervades the field of environmental journalism, but likely has some basis in fact: when a Democrat holds the White House, the jobs for environmental journalists evaporate: here come the pink slips. But when a Republican has the White House, it’s major job creation: every media outlet staffs up on environmental and science writers.

The unspoken perception is that the environment is a partisan issue and therefore safe to ignore at certain times, thus requiring less reporting. What that says for journalists, is that it becomes harder to report and publish on environmental issues because editors and media outlets perceive that the environment is “safe”: a crisis can’t occur.

Ethical issues aside, where does that leave undergraduate science writing programs? If opportunity to report potentially ebbs and flows every four years, how do professors plan curriculum and attract students to the programs?

A panel hosted at the Society of Environmental Journalists conference in Sacramento September 2016, addressed the best practices for teaching science and environmental reporting. A common theme emerged among the speakers: interdisciplinary approach.

Continue reading “Maintaining a science writing program”

Campus media focuses on political changes

College views on transition of power

Editor’s Note: This is the second set of links College Media Review is publishing related to Donald Trump’s inauguration, the women’s march, and visits college journalists had with professional journalists while in Washington, D.C. Also included are links from college.usatoday.com to inauguration coverage, including voices from college Republicans explaining why they voted for Donald Trump.

Jan 22, 2017 – Voices: I’m a college journalist who covered Trump’s inauguration. Here’s what I saw. … Related: College students share why they went to Trump’s inauguration … (Photo: Sophia Tulp for USA TODAY College). Protestors …

Jan 20, 2017 – 20, 2017, before the presidential inauguration of Donald Trump. … Sophia Tulp is an Ithaca College student and a USA TODAY College digital producer. … Voices: I’m a college journalist who covered Trump’s inauguration.

Jan 20, 2017 – “We have to hold Trump accountable and actually stay engaged.” … We talked to CollegeRepublicans at Trump’s inauguration — here’s what they said. By Aileen …. This article comes from TheUSA TODAY College Contributor network. ….. Voices: I’m a college journalist who covered Trump’s inauguration.

Quick Links — College media takes on national focus

College media cover inauguration of new president, march and protests

College Media Review put out a call for student coverage of the presidential inauguration of Donald Trump as well as the Women’s March on Washington.

And college media advisers and student journalists responded.

We are pleased to present the following links from The Owl and Baylor Lariet student newspaper as well as the WNYU radio station.

From The Owl student newspaper at Doane University:

From The Baylor Lariat

http://baylorlariat.com/inauguration-2017/

From WNYU, New York University’s student-run radio station:

If other college media covered the historic events and would like to share coverage with CMR, please e-mail links to Debra Chandler Landis, CMR editor, at dland2@uis.edu