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The importance of blogging in journalism education
Thompson writes:
"The real point of getting a journalist blogging at this early stage in his or her career is that the bloggers, in all their variety, with all their different skills and abilities and interests and biases, are reshaping the world in which professional journalists operate just as much as the telephone shook up the profession in the first half of the 20th Century."
When I ask students how many have read the newspaper or watched TV news within the past day, few hands go up. But every students acknowledges having gone online within the day to read the news. Even if few have considered a job in online journalism, in my experience, today's students implictly understand that medium better than they do print and broadcast.
What we as journalism educators need to do is help these students understand how to connect old media commitment to sourcing and truth-telling with new media techniques for discovering and sharing information.
Thompson concludes:
"The growth of internet use and the emergence of easy-to-use publishing tools could well be the best thing that has happened to journalism since radio and then television offered new ways to reach people, but that requires a certain degree of modesty and a great willingness to learn on the part of a profession that is not noted for either attribute."
This was the final week of classes for the fall term here at Annenberg. And in the spirit of this post, I wanted to share with you a few of the final projects submitted by students in my undergraduate Introduction to Online Production/Editing class. Each year I teach this course, I grow more encouraged about students' potential to help make journalism better.
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