Hot time, summer on and off campus!

J-School faculty member Karl Gude is off in Spain with students on his pioneer Study Abroad class on design. Faculty member Cheryl Pell will be joining him in mid-June. Follow Karl’s exploits and those of his students on his blog. I’ve included one of the photos he has sent so far of MSU students working with their Spanish peers and a video from the group's recent trip to the Guggenheim Museum.

The Detroit News and the J-School is beginning work on executing the Tandem project, one of three developed by students as part of an Innovation Incubator project that received a Knight Challenge grant last year. Programming being developed will hopefully seed grassroots efforts by media across the country in this unique experiment in community journalism

The State News and student projects or publications from the J-School’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism national finalists announced Monday in the annual Society of Professional Journalists student journalism contest. Translation--that means they were second or third in the nation.

The State News was ranked as on of the Best All-Around Daily Student Newspapers in the nation. Many of our majors works as editors, reporters, photographers and designers on the daily newspaper.

Knight Center winners were:

Online In-Depth Reporting for “Pine River Superfund Site” published on the Great Lakes Wiki. Andy Balaskovitz, John Allison and Ian Walker.

TV In-Depth Reporting for “Dying to be Heard” which was broadcast on WKAR and other public broadcasting stations. Ben Phillips, Karly Pence and Kevin Wilt. (This was the first project of the environmental documentary film class.)

Best Student Magazine to the staff of EJ Magazine.

Each of these award winners placed first in the same categories at the regional level to be considered in the national contest.

Congratulations to one and all!

In other J-School news, Louis D’Aria and his video documentary students have completed their second film in the Knight Center's on going "environment" series. This program, based on a story written by J-School alum Alicia Clarke and published in EJ, documents her experiences as a student researcher on one of four icebreakers in the Arctic.

Her story was expanded to include MSU faculty and student research on global warming.

The documentary is the output of the JRN 408 / 808 class and involves students from the J-School and from TISM, theater, zoology, music, and fisheries and wildlife.

The program is set to air at 9 p.m., Tuesday, June 17 on WKAR and again at 11:30 p.m. on Thursday. June 19. The hope is the program will be rebroadcast by other PBS stations in the state and the nation. Great work, Lou and students!

Hot time, summer at the J-School

Summer term may have started, but a dozen J-School faculty members spent three intense days learning video shooting and editing for the web.

We came in with vastly varying skill levels, but, by Wednesday afternoon, every one of us had crafted a video we uploaded to YouTube.

Robb Montgomery from VisualEditors.com did the training. We brought him in from Chicago. Despite a bad head cold, he showed us the basics and put us to work. J-School faculty members Bob Gould and Karl Gude, who had taken advanced training the previous week, pitched in to help faculty as we were put through our paces. The editing, on iMovie (though likely simple for many of our students!) was challenging for some of us. But Karl and Bob showed us some terrific tips and shortcuts. Also helping were Lucinda Davenport, Dave Poulson and me—we had taken beginning training the previous week.

At the end of the training, we viewed our maiden efforts of web storytelling. Faculty participants were given Journalism Survivor t-shirts and Flip video cameras to practice with for the summer. By fall, everyone of us should come back as sharp shooters.

What’s ahead in the fall?? Expect the first Flip Flicks contest at the J-School. Stay tuned. And check out my video.

In more J-School multimedia news, Nick Dentamaro won 10^th place in the Multimedia Competition in the 2007-8 Hearst Journalism Awards Program. Congrats, Nick!!

J-School earns reaccreditation on graduation day

Finger tapping, with almost minute to minute checks of my watch, the reaccreditation process last Friday in Arlington, Virginia dragged on.

Initially, the J-School was 20 on the list (second to last) in the process--which is why I was sitting in a hotel meeting room in Arlington rather than on stage at the Breslin Center for commencement on May 2.

This was the first commencement I have missed in my five years as Director of the J-School, but making sure the J-School jumped through this final hoop for its reaccreditation had to be the priority.

The meeting began at 9 a.m. and was supposed to end at 4 p.m., but by the lunch break only nine schools had been discussed and reviewed by accrediting council members. The J-School is among an elite group of programs across the nation accredited by the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (ACEJMC). The J-School was among the original group of programs accredited back in 1949. We have had an unbroken string of reaccreditation every seven years since then.

It is a time consuming process that took us almost two years. It began with a year-long faculty self study of the J-School and everything about it. A report, with a frank dissection and appraisal of our strengths and weaknesses loaded with supporting data, was submitted to ACEJMC in early September. The self-study process was exhausting but really allowed us to probe, poke and dissect the curriculum and everything about us.

A four person team came in October for a two-day inspection. We passed on all nine standards ranging from curriculum through assessment. But that was just the first of a three-step process.

In March in Chicago, the accrediting committee of ACEJMC (not the Council!) spent two days reviewing programs. We were near the top of the list then since we had an early visit in October and passed that process with just a couple of questions from committee members.

The home stretch was the May meeting. But, to have it occur, literally, during our commencement ceremony on May 2 was a bummer. I so wanted to be on campus shaking the hands of our grads. Instead, I was text messaging Professor Geri Zeldes giving her updates on the meeting.

Finally, at 4:58 p.m., long after our graduates were announced by Dr. Zeldes to the dean, long after terrific senior Alexandra Bahou gave her speech to the assembled graduates and their families, we were unanimously approved for reaccreditation.

Whew—I am glad that’s over!

What’s next?—Reinventing journalism education. Stay tuned. We’ve been hard at work on this all spring term. Just wait until next year.

This week, six faculty were or are in Chicago for video training on storytelling for the web. Next week, a dozen faculty will be taking three-days of on campus training from the same folks—Robb Montgomery of Visual Editors.com. We digital immigrants are doing everything we can to provide the best 21st Century journalism education to the J-School.

Happy summer to those of you heading home or off to internships and various jobs. For our summer students, welcome back. And to the new crop of students (freshmen and transfer) who will be arriving on campus for orientations, it’s going to be a terrific 2008-9 academic year.

What a great day it was

My favorite day of the school year was on Sunday (Aril 27). It’s the day of our J-School Awards Program. Students, parents and faculty gather in the Kellogg Center Auditorium to honor student successes.

Among the awardees this year were:

• Julie Goldsmith, Outstanding Doctoral Student
  


• Three Outstanding Master’s Students: Sarah Crespi, Jessica Knoblauch and Jonathan Oosting
  


• Outstanding Senior, a gal who has scored terrific internships and now a job already, Alexandra Bahou.

Check out the Awards Program itself at jrn.msu.edu and see what great successes students are having winning awards, scholarships and landing prestigious internships.

We also said good-bye to our Visiting Editor-in-residence, Sue Burzynski Bullard. She’s done a tremendous job for us this past year teaching media management, editing and news reporting II. Sue is heading off to Cornhusker territory as an associate professor of journalism at the University of Nebraska. She made the transition from the newsroom to the classroom and made it seem effortless.

Also leaving us (thought she missed the awards program since she was down in Florida at her niece’s graduation) is Sandra (Sam) Combs. Sam has been the coordinator of the Reporting I and II courses since her arrival on campus in Fall 2003. She’s done a terrific job, and we will miss her. She is heading to a tenure track appointment at Arkansas State University in the fall.

We also had a terrific time after the ceremony at the 23d Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame banquet and induction ceremony.

Sunday was truly a day for journalism to shine!

I head off early tomorrow morning to the ACEJMC meeting in Arlington, Virginia for the final step on the J-School’s reaccreditation. I will be missing commencement—the first time in the five years I’ve been here. L But, faculty like Geri Zeldes, Lori Anne Dickerson, Bob Gould, Sue Burzynski Bullard and Folu Ogundimu will be there cheering our students on!