Category — Thoughts

At the end of June, I joined the faculty of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. They brought me on board as director of the 21st Century News Laboratory and a lecturer. I’ll also be working closely with the Center for Media Innovation and Research.

I’m looking forward to the things coming up for this gig and the school. In the next 12 months we’ll:

• Finish design, start construction and open a brand-new converged newsroom. This two-story renovation/addition of the building will have nearly 20,000 square-feet of new and renovated space. We’re hoping to be in for the start of Fall ‘12 semster. Going to be an awesome space (although it makes me wish I took a class in reading construction documents, as this is my second major construction project in three years)
• Redevelop and launch of a new WUFT.org, the online home for the public radio and television stations. I’m expecting us to build a robust local news ecosystem around this site. A lot of potential, and going to be a major focus of mine in the coming semester.
• With any hope, launch of a professional master’s degree.

Oh, and it looks like my first course will be an in-depth, multimedia capstone experience. My students will follow what it takes to move a major SEC for home and away games. Fun, fun…

Way back in February, I started playing around with a new Tumblr blog focused on stories and squibs on the news industry. I’m hoping to use it now as a teaching tool, if it doesn’t become obsolete by the use of Google+ (which I’m looking forward to experimenting with for the classroom use).

It’s neglected. Be Warned.

…other sites to update this one. Call it a work in progress. meanwhile, check out some of the latest work: The New Voters (launched 8/3/2009), Merrill College Home (launched 4/18/2010), and the opening of Knight Hall (opened 1/23/10).

Fractured/dislocated patella. repaired with surgery and two pins. Long road of physical therapy ahead.

On March 30, 2009, more than 150 journalists and media executives gathered at the Newseum in downtown Washington, D.C. for the first NewsVision conference. The conference was brainchild of Leslie Walker (Knight Visiting Professor in Digital Innovation at Maryland) and myself. Check out video and photos from the event.

[originally posted on Merrill on Multimedia blog]

One of the biggest questions that keeps cropping up at the ONA convention is certainly not new: how do we make journalism sustainable?

Tina Brown, in her keynote Friday, was double sided when evangelizing that our industry needs innovation, and journalists should not be afraid to start new ventures. But when asked specifically about her own project’s business model, her demurred answer seemed predicated on the fact that she’s part of a very large media conglomerate — and that’s how she says her venture is going to survive.

I’m sure Leslie will share her own thoughts on this, as she and I have been kicking this idea around for a bit, but we need to remember who is in the best position to be leading this innovation movement: our current media companies who are so under fire today. [Read more →]

[originally posted on Merrill on Multimedia blog]

The Online News Association annual conference is kicking off this weekend in Washington, D.C. and one of the pre-conference workshops was J-Lab’s J-School Entrepreneurship workshop. Listening to the presenters from other journalism schools and organizations started me thinking about our own curricular discussions at Merrill.

We have been working over the last few years to infuse multi-platform and multimedia skills throughout the curriculum and not segregate these skills/mindsets into just the “online” classes. But let’s take a step back: why do we even have “online” classes? [Read more →]