Well, again, it's only my second semester, but I've been able to get around to many of the intro classes to talk about the need for students to develop multimedia skills, and my first class today had an overflow of about six students trying to get in, so I think the students are getting it.
But, during a faculty curriculum meeting last semester, I tried to make the point that the magazine writing class needs to be more than just writing -- that much long-form writing out there these days is accompanied by pieces of multmedia. It was an interesting discussion because there was a belief that the focus needed to be on writing. Admittedly, it's a tough balancing act. Later in the semester I assigned students to cover a speaker as part of a multimedia assignment. In this advanced class, the video pieces turned out well enough but no one knew how to write a speaker lede -- I got a bunch of "Steve Fox spoke to a class of 20 students last night" as ledes -- which kind of put me in the spot of reminding everyone of the importance of being able to write.
Anyway, kind of a long way of saying that I'm now trying to get an "intermediate writing and reporting" class as part of the curriculum so that students learn the basics -- like how to write a speaker lede...
chrs, Steve
__________________
Steve Fox
Lecturer/Multimedia Journalism Coordinator
Journalism Department
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003-9313
