Aaron Chimbel
Fort Worth, Texas 
Aaron Chimbel, a five-time Emmy Award winner, is an assistant professor of professional practice at TCU, where he earned a B.S. in broadcast journalism.
Before returning to TCU in 2009, Chimbel worked at WFAA-TV in Dallas, where he won five Emmy Awards. He was hired, likely, as the first person at any local television station to produce original video content for the Web. He was the station's "MoJo" or mobile journalist before becoming the station’s online sports editor. He previously was a reporter at KWTX-TV and producer at TXCN. He’s also produced two documentaries.
He was part of the WFAA team that was awarded a prestigious national Edward R. Murrow award. He earned his master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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These articles are the work of their author, and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of nor an assignment by OJR.
December 15, 2011
Maybe the future isn't so bad for journalism, after all. There is hope, mostly because so many young journalists see a bright future for journalism.
It's the end of the fall semester and as I take a breath and take stock of the past 16 weeks I am optimistic. As a professor in the Schieffer School of Journalism at TCU, I have finished classes and turned in grades and feel pretty good, not about the job I've done as much as the excitement I found in 18 students.
The 18 made up an honors section of our Introduction to Journalism class, the first time in more than a decade we've taught an honors class in our program. I'm glad we did and that I had the opportunity to teach the class.
What I found with these high school high-achievers in their first semester of college is that they're excited about journalism and recognize the opportunities ahead. More...
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June 6, 2011
In just about every newscast it has become routine to hear anchors and reporters promote their Facebook and Twitter accounts.
It’s a way for these news organizations to extend their reach and build their brand across media.
Well, in France it’s no longer legal for broadcasters to promote their social media pages.
The Daily Mail quotes a spokeswoman for France’s television regulatory agency, Christine Kelly, saying preference shouldn’t be given to the two popular social media sites.
“Why give preference to Facebook, which is worth billions of dollars, when there are many other social networks that are struggling for recognition?” she asked, according to Mail Online.
“This would be a distortion of competition. If we allow Facebook and Twitter to be cited on air, it’s opening a Pandora’s Box — other social networks will complain to us saying, ‘why not us?'” More...
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March 17, 2011
The publisher of The New York Times,
in a letter to readers, detailed the specifics of their latest paywall attempt Thursday.
The two main points:
1. Users can view up to 20 stories (including video, slideshows and other multimedia content) a month.
2. Stories you are linked to from blogs, social networking sites and the like will not count against the 20 story limit.
The Times is testing this approach on Canadian users now and it will expand to U.S. and the rest of global readers March 28.
"It’s an important step that we hope you will see as an investment in The Times," wrote Publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., "one that will strengthen our ability to provide high-quality journalism to readers around the world and on any platform."
From a business standpoint he may be right. Newspapers’ current model isn’t working and they have to pay for all that great journalism.
Now for the BUT. More...
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November 26, 2010
If you have a cell phone – and I highly doubt you are reading this if you don’t – you can probably shoot video with it and, if you’re into gadgets or have young children, you may have a
Flip Video camera. This is good for journalism.
More of us, which means more journalists and more of our audience, are able to shoot video almost anytime and anywhere.
These small devices allow us to capture news as it happens, allows novices to get acquainted with shooting basic video and allows citizens to contribute, too.
The quality of the video is improving, making it more acceptable for use in journalism.
When I began using a Samsung Blackjack more than three years ago at WFAA-TV in Dallas we were unsure if the video quality was good enough for a major broadcast station, even though we were planning to use the video only in breaking news situations.
We were pleasantly surprised.
Here are my top tips for getting the most out of your Flip: More...
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June 17, 2010
The Millennials in our journalism classrooms are supposed to be wizards of the Web. After all, almost their entire lives have been spent consuming media in a converged landscape, reading newspaper stories and watching TV reports online while communicating with one another via online social networks.
A Pew Research study from February backs this up: "For (Millennials), these innovations provide more than a bottomless source of information and entertainment, and more than a new ecosystem for their social lives. They also are a badge of generational identity. Many Millennials say their use of modern technology is what distinguishes them from other generations."
The study cites technology as the top factor that those born after 1980 say makes their generation unique. At 24 percent, it's twice the rate of that of Gen-Xers. But the twist to all this is that our journalism students are not so different than grizzled veterans of legacy media, at least not in practice.
They know they spend their entire lives connected, but it doesn't mean they automatically default to multimedia and a convergence culture in the classroom or the workplace. They seem to have a hard time translating how they consume news and information to how they should produce it. Many, though certainly not all, of them still see themselves as part of traditional media. It's a sense that's reinforced when campus newspapers and radio and television news staffs remain in separate quarters, rarely (or never) working together.
Bringing them together in the same room was the first step toward converging. Last fall, the Schieffer School of Journalism at Texas Christian University opened a new 2,300 square foot Convergence Center, the centerpiece of a $5.6 million renovation of the facilities for the school. The facility is home to the TCU Daily Skiff student newspaper, the TCU News Now broadcast and Image Magazine. The three were previously in separate rooms and their content kept separate.
"As a print journalism student, just being close to the broadcast students made sharing content much easier," said David Hall, the fall 2009 editor-in-chief of the Skiff. "We'd constantly bounce ideas off of each other and share news content, and sometimes students would do a print and multimedia element to their story, something unheard of back in the day of separate newsrooms." More...
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