2008 Poynter Educators Forum

The J-school recognizes that it needs to change curriculum to adapt to new reality in the industry. A task force, which I am on, is examining how the curriculum should change. Meanwhile, the director has pushed for quick change. A one-credit "band-aid" class has been approved (reporting for online news) that exposes students to storytelling on multi-media platforms. It includes writing for the web, editing and shooting video, and working with soundslides. It has been offered a couple of times and continues to be tweaked. Starting next year, it will be a graduation requirement for incoming journalism freshmen. We've also tried to incorporate some online aspects into reporting courses. Students in both the beginning and advanced reporting classes blog. They also learn to write scripts for video and talk stories into a video camera. (Unfortunately we don't have enough equipment to have them actually shoot video).