Use twitter to find jobs – journalism, social media, pr, etc.

I have put together this list for my students to help them find work and internships. If interested, you can select one or more of these Twitter ids to follow. If you want to follow all of these Twitter users, I have also created a list to follow on Twitter. Don’t forget to submit your resume to Twitter at twtjobs.

@themediaishirin
@media_pros
@journalism_jobs
@lostremotejobs
@cwjobs
@socialmediajob
@prwork
@prnewsjobs
@PRSAjobcenter
@GetPubRelatJobs
@seojobs
@GetFreJournJob
@FreelanceSw
@uxdesignjobs
@TechwebJobs
@queryfreewriter

Arizona Jobs
@PHXmarketing
@tmj_phx_adv
@PhoenixStartups
@IABC_Phoenix

Fall 2009 Online Media students complete their portfolios

I thought I would share with you portfolios from my Online Media class this semester. They just completed them today. They had only a few weeks to complete them. I am very proud of their hard work and creative energy put into their sites. Here are the portfolios from my Spring 2009 group as well.

April Stolarz
Jackie Angel
Mallory Kydd
Dayne Ventrone
Zach Fort
Jake Harris
Shannon Beaver
Danee Garone
Hyatt Romeo
Monique Wilson
Gardenia Coleman
Lacee Wentworth
Julia Bender
Dan Neligh
Lindsay Dove
Patrick O’Malley
Sheila Burns

SYLLABI: Teaching Online Journalism and Communication

Online Journalism Review aggregated syllabi in 2004, however this list needs to be updated. In an attempt to aggregate this information, I have begun a list of syllabi dedicated to online journalism, online communication and social media. I found that results from Google do not showcase all of the best available syllabi online.

This section highlights faculty syllabi that focus on skills, theory, online communication, and journalism. The selected sites featured interactive, timely, and great resources for students, educators, journalists, and people with a desire to learn. I have also highlighted some useful features that I believe may be useful for educators.

Mindy McAdams – University of Florida
Mindy McAdams shares her syllabi focused on the teaching of multimedia, animation, and reporting for online users. Her sites are designed simply and feature possible assignment ideas and online resources for educators and students.

Dave Stanton – University of Florida
Dave Stanton has a broad background, which enables him to teach web consulting, design and XHTML/CSS. I really like that Dave gives his students video tutorials to help them process information outside of class.

Serena Carpenter – Arizona State University
My class is the foundation class for all things concerning online media. It is divided into three sections: 1) social media, 2) visual communication, and 3) Web site creation. The focus throughout the semester is on online communication. I provide ideas for class assignments as well. I also provide tutorials on my blog.

Leslie-Jean Thornton – Arizona State University
This is an online reporting course for students in a Masters program. The resources page also provides some useful tutorials.

Carol Schwalbe and Nancie Dodge – Arizona State University
The Advanced Online Media class builds upon skills taught in previous basic online media classes.

Cindy Royal – Texas State University
Cindy Royal’s site contains useful ideas to include into lectures.

Don Wittekind – University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
I am impressed by Don Wittekind’s ability to teach Flash, based on my experience from a past seminar. Don provides a list of classes that he teaches in the left-hand navigation section. He provides some lectures and handouts as well.

Ryan Thornburg – University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Ryan Thornburg shares his online reporting syllabi. His assigned readings page is interactive.

Alfredo A. Marin-Carle – Ball State University
The New Media Journalism concentrates on web design. The reference section offers a list of useful sites for people teaching such courses.

Tracy Rutledge – University of Tennessee at Martin
Intro to Multimedia focuses on creating multimedia websites. She provides some tutorials as well.

Donica Mensing – University of Nevada-Reno
Donica Mensing shares her syllabus for her online reporting course, which covers multimedia reporting, social media and HTML/CSS. She provides helpful videos as well.

Laura Ruel – University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Laure Ruel teaches design and multimedia storytelling. She has a great downloads section that features storyboarding and usability execises.

Chris Harvey – University of Maryland
I like that this instructor’s Online Journalism class schedule is interactive and detailed.

Sean Mussenden – University of Maryland
His Online Journalism course has screencast tutorials teaching others how to use WordPress.

Gaurav Mishra -  Georgetown University
The Social Media in Business, Development and Government course concentrates on social media literacy.

Henry Jenkins – Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program
The New Media Literacies course site shares resources related to online participation and communication.

Alice J. Robinson – Arizona State University
The Digital Cultures and Social Media course is a doctoral seminar. There is a list of thought-provoking pieces on her schedule and on her Delicious page.

Corinne Weisgerber – St. Edward’s University
The Social Media for Public Relations class offers useful material for anyone teaching social media including how to reach online users.

David Carlson – University of Florida
He teaches an Applied Interactive Newspaper course and an online communication class. I like that student projects are shared.

Tim McGuire – Arizona State University
The Business and Future of Journalism class encourages students to reflect on the journalism industry by having them write about business models. Tim also provides links to suggested readings.

Siva Vaidhyanathan – University of Virgina
This Introduction to Digital Media instructor encourages students to take a critical look at new media and its impact on culture. The reading list is a useful resource.

Jeffrey Michael Heer – Stanford University
Research Topics in Human-Computer Interaction is a graduate-level course focused on HCI. He also includes links to student articles.

Vin Crosbie – Syracuse University
The course examines how new media differs from traditional media. Crosbie provides a list of books that may be useful for other instructors.

To add your course to the list, email me or provide your syllabus in the comments section including background information related to the course. I hope that these examples are useful for educators designing their classes for future semesters and for those looking for resources to learn more about the online media environment.

Look who’s back

It is a new semester. I have decided to rejoin the social media sphere (at least on a professional level) again. I am teaching online media this semester. If you would like to view my syllabus, please do. I break the semester into three parts: social media, visual communication and site creation. Feedback is always welcomed.

Also, Dave Stanton shared his syllabus with me. It is definitely worth a visit.

Visual Toolkit of Freebies – Step by step instructions

I spent the day working on my visual toolkit. I am in awe of how much easier it is today to share and embed beautiful elements on your Web site. I believe that anyone can use and follow this handout. Have fun!

*Thanks to @chrishogg for the tip on Scribd

Some newspaper bloggers don’t get blogging

Recent research conducted by Larry Daily, Lori Demo, and Mary Spillman in the Newspaper Research Journal shows that professional journalism newspaper political bloggers rarely post and do little to interact with their readers. The study showed that a quarter of bloggers did not post within the sampled week and the median number of posts were four for that time period.

The results also show that the political bloggers did little to engage their readers. The purpose of the comment is to build community, however 80% of the blog authors in the study did not post one comment, and the average number of comments received readers was one a day. In the blogging world, bloggers typically respond to their readers via comments or email.

The authors offered some advice on areas of reflection for newsrooms:

• Placing comments on a separate page increases page views, but hinders conversation
• Ask your blogger whether they are truly committed to increasing civic conversation
• Few comments means that the blogger may not understand the culture of blogosphere

Online journalism classes to consider adopting

There are several controversies related to teaching newer media and journalism, one of which is that schools focus too heavily on teaching skills. I can teach a student online and broadcast skills that give them an edge when applying for a position. However, have I prepared them to become a leader in that changing field? Journalism graduates burn out quickly because pay is low and hours are long. This means that there is a good chance that future graduates will question their future.

I believe that we should teach them enough skills to understand how to use technology to engage people through words, social media, and visuals. However, we must also cultivate leaders who continually inspire change. I don’t just want to teach them a skill so they can emulate it. Because all they will know is how to follow, not lead. The abilities to think, be flexible, and problem-solve are traits that make employees invaluable to an organization. I want my students to be creators, not consumers. If they lose a job, I want them to think about starting their own companies or be wise enough to look to other types of organizations for work. I want to train my students to adapt and think of journalism as a career for life. This is why I believe journalism programs should expand beyond skill-building to provide classes that connect technology to bigger issues. So I spent this evening instead of grading thinking of ideas for new undergraduate classes not always found in journalism programs.

Digital Sandbox (freshman)
The class encourages students to express their creativity by using whatever digital technology they have to tell stories in text and in visuals for online display. Friend and colleague Bonnie Bucqueroux invented this class concept as a way to encourage learning through structured play, before students are exposed to rigorous journalism school training. De-mystifying technology by focusing on fun also helps reduce pressure and stress on students.

Online Multimedia Journalism (sophomore/juniors)
This class teaches students to understand how to communicate visually, how people process information in the visual and online realm, and how to create visual content for the web. If the digital sandbox class was adopted, students would learn to express the skills they acquired at a professional level.

Entrepreneurship and Online Journalism (juniors/seniors)
Prerequisite: Online Multimedia Journalism
This class teaches students how create a Web site, develop a business plan for that site and use social media tools to market the site. The class would encourage students to work together to launch one or more Web sites into the marketplace.

Online Organizational Behavior and Change (juniors/seniors)
Prerequisite: Online Multimedia Journalism
This class teaches students to view journalism from an organizational perspective. Students would be teamed with information organizations to identify the problems they face and develop a plan to address those problems. Students would not only have the opportunity to job shadow, but they would be participant observers in helping organizations make the most of the online environment.

Citizen Journalism (sophomores/juniors/seniors)
Students in this class would each be assigned to cover one community.  Students would use online media to report on a community and would also recruit members of that community to contribute content to the site on issues facing that community.

Data Mining, Creation and Visualization (juniors/seniors)
Students in this class learn how to mine the internet for information. They not only learn how to find, evaluate, and aggregate sources of information and data, but they also learn how to present information graphically and visually. The class encourages students to do more than present information visually, but to also think critically, select samples, and to use social science research methods. This class reflects some elements of a class designed by Phil Meyer called Precision Journalism.

Defining and Envisioning Journalism (juniors/seniors or masters)
The class would address fundamentals such as the history of journalism, how journalism has evolved, how journalism functions to promote or limit democracy, what journalism is and who journalists are, news quality, and constraints on journalism. The class would also encourage students to envision how the field can retain the best from the past as we move into a digital future.

Journalists may increase participation

A common complaint that I hear from journalists and academics is that the public simply does not care about important issues facing the nation and the world. To respond to this issue, news professionals should critically analyze how they can alter content to potentially encourage civic participation.

This post derives from the arguments of several researchers, whom are cited below. The authors argue that journalists cannot realistically expect citizens to be politically active by simply disseminating information from the mouths of sources. Instead, journalists should provide details that inform citizens of participation opportunities such as how they can get involved, where they can go to voice their concern, or whom they can contact. These researchers found that journalists rarely explain issues or provide information on how citizens can get involved with issues of direct concern to them. In the past, research has shown that journalists did not include this information because they viewed these details as a violation of the objectivity standard and there was simply not enough room to include them on-air or in print.

However, space is not as much of an issue online. Mobilizing or enabling information could be added in an information box adjacent to almost any type of story. Here is an example of how one news organization provided information to the public on how to participate. Look at the end of the story.

Gans, H.J. (1998). What can journalists actually do for American democracy? Press/Politics, 3(4), 6-12.

Lemert, J. B., Mitzman, B. N., Seither, M. A., Cook, R. H., & O’Neil, R. M. (1977). Journalists and mobilizing information. Journalism Quarterly, 54(4), 721-726.

Keefer, J. D. (1993). News media’s failure to facilitate citizen participation in the congressional policymaking process. Journalism Quarterly, 70(2), 412-424.

Hoffman, L. H. (2006). Is internet content different after all? A content analysis of mobilizing information in online and print newspapers. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 83(1), 58-76.

To what extent should we embrace multimedia?

More news organizations are buying digital video cameras for their reporters asking them to gather video for their stories. I am supportive of this practice, however it is important to understand how people process visual information.

Research conducted by Mendelson and Thorson featured in the Journal of Communication argues that there are two types of learners: visualizers and verbalizers. Visualizers process information more quickly by viewing images, while verbalizers prefer to learn by reading text. In the experiment, participants read two stories: one with a photo and the same story without a photo. Their results showed that the presence of a photo hindered high verbalizer’s recall of the story, while moderate to low verbalizers were aided by the presence of the photo.

This study is interesting because newspapers are a predominantly textual medium, and thus a potentially significant portion of newspaper readers may be high verbalizers. Could newspapers be losing their loyal readers if they provide a photo or video adjacent to every text story? It would be interesting to find out whether the “typical” newspaper reader is a vebalizer and if the move online may affect the liklihood that they continue reading the publication online. Or could online news organizations package information differently, meeting the needs of both verbalizers and visualizers? Perhaps, a site could provide two separate links to a story presented in two different ways: one textual and one visual.

MIT Video Game Program

MIT created a somewhat simple program to create games. The program is called Scratch, which can be installed on both a Mac and PC. The use of games on news and information sites would likely become more prevalent if the process did not involve so much time, resources, and technical knowledge. Bonnie Bucqueroux gave me the tip about this program. Like YouTube, you can create your own projects, save your favorite projects, and friend other Scratch enthusiasts. The bulk of the material on the site is created by young people using the program to blast meteorites or dragons. I found other Scratch creations such as an imperial-metric converter and calculator.

One of the issues with the use of this program is that you can embed the image on your site, however it can be misleading. If you push the button/image, you can only play the game on the MIT site, which took more than five seconds to load on my computer before I could play the game. Test it on yours by playing the piano.

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