J-School blogs the CNN/YouTube debate

MSU Journalism students packed two classrooms to listen to the Wednesday CNN/YouTube debate by the Republican Presidential hopefuls.

There were the bloggers, the clicker crew, the truth squad and others. All this was the brainchild of J-School faculty member Bonnie Bucqueroux ably assisted by her TA Robin Blom. Bonnie is smiling in the photo at CNN’s mention of her favorite canine candidate, Schmoopsie. The participating students, most from the Intro to Mass Media class, all cheered when Schmoopsie’s picture was in the CNN opening.

No matter what else this experience may teach them, I guarantee this group of 140 plus students will be better informed of at least the GOP candidates than most other college students and, sad to say their elders, as well. I hope it inspires them to explore the positions of the Democratic hopefuls, as well.

Great job Bonnie, Robin and the crews! And thank you to the editors of The Detroit News for being savvy enough to want student bloggers for the debate. Who knows more about YouTube than this generation?

Post-T-Day happenings at the J-School the last week of November

With a mere two weeks left in the term until finals, two major events are scheduled in the J-School the last week of November.

Documentary photojournalist Rania Matar will arrive on campus Monday afternoon. She is slated to talk to students in classes and make a presentation of her work at 7 p.m., Tuesday, November 27 in Studio D, CAS Building. She has spent much of her career covering the Middle East and especially the impact of the violence on women in the region. For more on Matar, visit her website at www.raniamater.com.

On Wednesday, November 28, approximately 80 students, mostly freshmen and sophomores currently taking the JRN 108 Introduction to Mass Media course, will participate in a live blog on The Detroit News web site (www.detnews.com) during the CNN/YouTube Republican Presidential Primary Debate, from 8-10 p.m. The J-School site for the debate will be www.msujrn.com/liveblog.

This link takes you to three of our students talking about the upcoming debate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jia-kiO0wXo

A dozen students will be the bloggers, posting information, commentary and analysis. Multimedia content will be provided by other student teams as the debate unfolds. The goal is to keep a continuous flow of text, images and video clips posting to the blog page that The Detroit News has built specifically to house the student output during the debate. The News’ own political bloggers will also post to the web site. It will be dueling bloggers with the students providing a unique college perspective.

Students will be using electronic “clickers” to instantly capture their reactions to the debate. The “Clicker Response Team” of 60 or more students will watch the debate and be interrupted periodically to answer questions on their impressions.

“The team assigned to generating those questions will take the results of this instant focus-group response and use IM (Instant Messaging) to send the results to our live bloggers, so they can use the results in their postings,” says MSU Instructor Bonnie Bucqueroux who developed the event on the MSU side with assistance from MSU doctoral student Robin Blom.

Another student team will track the amount of airtime each of the eight Republican candidates receives. Another team will monitor how often the candidates mention specific issues or the names of their rivals. The “truth squad” group will try to check facts in real time, and the video crew will solicit student comments and then post them on YouTube for immediate inclusion in the live blogs.

This is a prelude to the 2008 Presidential election. More and more of political activity is moving online as politicians and their handlers have discovered, it’s a great way to capture a new generation of voters in one of the hottest arenas out there—YouTube. Watch it and see!

Upcoming highlights for the end of November

With a mere two weeks left in the term until finals, two major events are scheduled in the J-School the last week of November.

Documentary photojournalist Rania Matar will arrive on campus Monday afternoon. She is slated to talk to students in classes and make a presentation of her work at 7 p.m., Tuesday, November 27 in Studio D, CAS Building. She has spent much of her career covering the Middle East and especially the impact of the violence on women in the region. For more on Matar, visit her website at www.raniamater.com.

On Wednesday, November 28, approximately 80 students, mostly freshmen and sophomores currently taking the JRN 108 Introduction to Mass Media course, will participate in a live blog on The Detroit News web site (www.detnews.com) during the CNN/YouTube Republican Presidential Primary Debate, from 8-10 p.m.

A dozen students will be the bloggers, posting information, commentary and analysis. Multimedia content will be provided by other student teams as the debate unfolds. The goal is to keep a continuous flow of text, images and video clips posting to the blog page that The Detroit News has built specifically to house the student output during the debate. The News’ own political bloggers will also post to the web site. It will be dueling bloggers with the students providing a unique college perspective.

Students will be using electronic “clickers” to instantly capture their reactions to the debate. The “Clicker Response Team” of 60 or more students will watch the debate and be interrupted periodically to answer questions on their impressions.

“The team assigned to generating those questions will take the results of this instant focus-group response and use IM (Instant Messaging) to send the results to our live bloggers, so they can use the results in their postings,” says MSU Instructor Bonnie Bucqueroux who developed the event on the MSU side with assistance from MSU doctoral student Robin Blom.

Another student team will track the amount of airtime each of the eight candidates receives. Another team will monitor how often the candidates mention specific issues or the names of their rivals. The “truth squad” group will try to check facts in real time, and the video crew will solicit student comments and then post them on YouTube for immediate inclusion in the live blogs.

This is a prelude to the 2008 Presidential election. More and more of political activity is moving online as politicians and their handlers have discovered, it’s a great way to capture a new generation of voters in one of the hottest arenas out there—YouTube. Watch it and see!

Roberts talks tough about corporate owners

Gene Roberts did a fantastic job taking a impassioned look and changes in the industry and the unholy devotion to profit margin and staff cutting to artificially keep those profits up in his speech, “The Ethical Dilemma of the Money Changers in the Temple and the News.”

It was tough talk from a man often described as a reporter’s editor. And you can see why he was loved by his staff at the Philadelphia Inquirer, leading the paper to 17 Pulitzer Prizes in his 18 years at the helm.

Roberts also signed copies of his Pulitzer Prize winning book, “The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation,” co-authored with Atlanta Journal Constitution Managing Editor Hank Klibanoff.

While on campus, Roberts reconnected with former Philadelphia staff writer Jim Detjen, now the director of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism on campus, and a part of the J-School. In the photo taken after the lecture by Darcy Greene, J-School faculty member, Roberts is talking with Detjen and me.

More than 120 students, faculty and members of the public came to here Roberts’ lecture on Wednesday, November 14 for the 7th annual Neal Shine Ethics lecture. Neal’s wife Phyllis was there as well as two of his six children, Judy and Dan and two grandsons. Phyllis also signed copies of the recently released memoir by her late husband. "Life with Mae" is already into its second printing since its release in October.

The next big event on the calendar is the visit of documentary photographer Rania Matar, a photographer who has spent most of her career shooting the painful images of the hardships in the war torn Middle East. Matar will be speaking to journalism classes and will give a public presentation at 7 p.m., Tuesday, November 27 in Studio D in the Com Arts and Sciences Building. Her visit is being sponsored, in part, by the School of Journalism. To get an advanced look at her impressive work, visit http://www.raniamatar.com/.

Neal Shine book's is a terrific read, and legendary Gene Roberts to give this year's Shine Ethics Lecture

Read any good books lately? I’ve got one for you.

The book is “Life with Mae” by the late Neal Shine, retired publisher of the Detroit Free Press and longtime friend of the J-School and me. I adored him.

The book is about Neal and his brothers growing up in Detroit with his irrepressible mother, an Irish immigrant, named Mae, or to those of us who knew her, Ma Shine. The book is pure Shine, funny, clever and warm. For those who knew Neal, I recommend it. For those who never had the chance, buy it as a gift for yourself.

Then on a sleepy Sunday afternoon, when Michigan’s winds are howling, put on a pair of sweats, curl up in a chair with a cup of hot cocoa and treat yourself to the wit and wisdom of Neal Shine.

This is also a perfect segue into next week’s Neal Shine Ethics Lecture by Pulitzer Prize winning author and editor Gene Roberts. He is a legendary newsman, one of the most storied and influential of the 20th Century. And he’s coming to campus to speak. Roberts’s talk on “The Ethical Dilemma of the Money Changers in the Temple and the News,” is set for 4 p.m., Wed., Nov. 14, Big Ten C in the Kellogg Center. Ask your journalism teacher if you can cover it for extra credit.

Roberts is best known for his leadership of The Philadelphia Inquirer, where, during his era as executive editor from 1973-1991, the paper won 17 Pulitzer Prizes.

In April 2007, Roberts, a professor of journalism at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, won another Pulitzer, this time for his history book, “The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation,” co-authored with Atlanta Journal Constitution Managing Editor Hank Klibanoff.

Prior to his 18 years at the helm of the Inquirer, he covered the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War for the New York Times. He joined the Times staff after working as a staff writer for the Detroit Free Press where he worked with the late Neal Shine.

Roberts left newspapers in 1991 to teach at the University of Maryland but returned to the New York Times as managing editor from 1994-1997. He returned to the University in 1998 and teaches journalism courses on writing the complex story, the press and the civil rights movement, and newsroom management.

The lecture is free with a reception (and food) for the audience. Hope to see you there!