Tag Archives: journalism education

Launching an environmental news website – four weeks in

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As you have probably worked out, this year’s Online Journalism students have been building up towards launching an environmental news website. This week the site went public, and I thought I’d take the opportunity to reflect on the lessons learned so far…

The Background

The site is the final year project of two final year journalism degree students – Azeem Ahmad and Rachael Wilson. The decision was made to launch an environmental site because of the increase of investment in this area from a number of news organisations, and also because of a local connection – more of which later.

Azeem is responsible for the more technical side of the site, which he has built from scratch using the open source content management software Joomla.

Azeem has been blogging his progress with the software, including the frightening experience of having the site hacked into by the creator of a theme Azeem installed.

Rachael has the responsibility for editorial, which means writing for the site herself, but more importantly managing 14 second year students on the Online Journalism module as they try to build a news site on a subject most have never written about. She’s also been blogging her experiences.

Week One: Choosing a name, assigning beats, making connections

After some cheesy brainstorming, the very literal name ‘Environmental News Online‘ was chosen for the site for the simple reasons of search engine optimisation and domain name availability. The abbreviation ‘ENO’ lent it more character. Continue reading →

Online Journalism Atlas: Norway

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The Online Journalism Atlas continues, with Kristine Lowe looking at online journalism in Norway, where some newspapers make more money online than in print. Got any information about your own country’s online journalism? Add it here.

Norway is one of the most newspaper-reading in countries in the world, a fact also reflected in the country’s online media environment. In contrast to many other countries, Norwegians seem to prefer news-driven sites with journalistic content to all others. 

Early starters

Early adoption has put Norwegian online media at a great at advantage, some of the online players even earn good money.   Continue reading →

Students make mobile phone news

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[Keyword: , , , ]. News editors, meet the graduate journalists of 2017 (caveat/shameless plug: students on the journalism degree I teach on will have these skills too when they graduate in 2008, but judging from what I hear of online journalism education I’m assuming they’re the exception rather than the rule. Controversial? Well, the beauty of a blog is, you can pull me up if this isn’t the case. So, if you teach on a journalism degree please let me know – via comments – what new media/multimedia skills your students gain. Conversely, if you’re a journalism student, I’d also like to hear what skills you’re gaining and what you think you should be learning. Parenthesis over.)

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Paul Bradshaw lectures on the Journalism degree at UCE Birmingham media department. He writes a number of blogs including the Online Journalism Blog, Interactive PR and Web and New Media

Note to journalism schools: give us new heroes

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[Keyword: , . Martin Stabe may well be able to add curriculum design to his CV after his latest post, which bemoans the fact that journalism students still seem to be unaware that the ‘print-only hack’ is not a viable career option any more. “Teach some new heroes,” suggests:

“You know, the people out there doing impressive stuff with new technologies right now. The war reporters traveling the world doing solo multimedia reporting; the investigative reporters using sophisticated software to take on the CIA, the laid-off print hacks going it alone to build successful online publications, the people bringing software development skills into journalism.

“Need a recent journalism film to dislodge Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford? Try Shattered Glass — a story where the fraudulent titular hack is found out by an online journalist. The hero there is Adam Penenberg, then of Forbes.com. A key part of the story is Penenberg’s scepticism about the phoney website the technologically-unsophisticated Glass had set up to disguise his made-up stories for the New Republic, er, magazine.”

I’ll certainly be passing on these examples in my Online Journalism module this coming semester, as well as suggesting that we communicate these career options during Induction Week (the first week of a student’s university course).

And as I happen to be speaking at the Association of Journalism Educators conference this Friday on a very similar subject, the timing of Stabe’s post couldn’t be better. Bring on the new breed of journalists!

PS: Mindy McAdams once had some similar thoughts at her blog.
PPS: Looks like this is a hot topic, with Andrew-Grant Adamson posting on the same topic here.

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Paul Bradshaw lectures on the Journalism degree at UCE Birmingham media department. He writes a number of blogs including the Online Journalism Blog, Interactive PR and Web and New Media