Frigid February doesn't slow us down

Despite the subzero temperatures, the J-School is steaming along at full strength.

We’ve had four interesting speakers in the past two weeks—Daniel Grossman and Jeff Alexander were guests of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism and Bill Emkow and Shawn Smith, producers at MLive, were guests of the J-School talking to the digital reporting class. This Friday, February 23, at 10 a.m., Jonathan Morgan from detnews.com will be speaking. Stop by to hear him.

Dave Poulson, J-School faculty member and associate director of the Knight Center, along with Cliff Lampe from TISM, launched the Great Lakes Wiki and triggered a storm of controversy by some journalists and environmental groups. One critic even chastised the J-School for allowing the wiki to exist. You can check out the wiki at www. greatlakeswiki.org . For an explanation of what the project, funded by a grant from the J-Lab, is, check out http://greatlakeswiki.org/index.php/Rethinking_Great_Lakes_journalism

We are in the midst of an information revolution. Where better to experiment than at a university? We need to try different things as the media industry is changing. Citizen journalism may frighten some, but news organizations are no longer the gatekeepers.

Our faculty is struggling with ways to provide the new skills on reporting for multiple platforms to our students. It will require all of us to learn these new skills. I learned a little bit on Final Cut Pro last week. It was fun, and I was confused for awhile, but then I started catching on. We should never stop learning!

It’s a heck of a lot easier than when I taught myself html hard coding with a couple of books and a lot of aspirin! When I tried Front Page, it was amazing. Dreamweaver is just that, a dream to operate. But I had to make time to learn it and stick with it when I hit roadblocks. I still run into issues, on occasion, but there are great books out there that help, and our faculty have a lot of expertise in different areas.