The beat goes on in the summer

Hi all. Though many of our students have left campus for the summer for internships, jobs, study abroad, etc., the J-School is busier than ever as we pull together the data and information faculty have been assembling all year as we work on our reaccreditation with ACEJMC. The accrediting report deadline is September 1 and the accrediting team will be visiting the J-School on campus October 14-17.

We have three Study Abroad programs ongoing this summer, two in the U.K. and one in Australia. Faculty leading the courses report the three groups are fantastic, diligent and eager to learn.

In other news, the J-School along with six other colleges and universities received a $230,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to foster creative thinking by students towards solutions to digital news problems.

It’s good for MSU to be part of this innovative endeavor and helps position us as a leader in digital news education. The goal of this project is to create leaders in new media.

Associate Professor Darcy Greene, (also J-School associate director, visual design expert and web guru), will work with five journalism students who have been selected to help generate ideas and develop digital news solutions. The five students are: Jonathan Oosting, Katie Rausch, Steve Patterson, Megan Hart and Jordan Barnes.

The opening session begins with three full days of training on partner Ithaca College’s campus beginning June 7. The five students will work with students from the other campuses in different teams to develop innovative ideas for media. The seven teams will meet again to present their product ideas in August. These ideas will be synthesized and refined down to three. The teams will then combine down to three and final presentations will be made at the October Online News Association meeting in Toronto in October.

In other news, the J-School co-hosted a day-long seminar for newspaper executives from across the state and the region on Newspaper Next. The School partnered with the American Press Institute and the Michigan Press Association on the event that attracted news executives from as far away as St. Louis. Dave Poulson and his JRN 200 summer class also attended as did Cheryl Pell, Perry Parks, Sheila Schimpf and me.

In May, 19 faculty members went back to school themselves in two days of training in online skills in photo galleries, video and audio. Faculty were trained by a team of experts: Bonnie Bucqueroux, Darcy Greene and Serena Carpenter. We also brought in Brendan Watson, online editor of the St. Petersburg Times to help.

A two-day training session for professional media in video shooting and editing will be held later this month.