Catch SpartanTV coverage, speakers and the future

Whoa—what a busy few weeks it’s been.

We have so many exciting events coming up in November and important matters to deal with this month, as well. Check out all the highlights at jrn.msu.edu and look under News and Events.

The two biggies are the Green on the Screen Environmental Film Festival, November 13-15 and the Neal Shine Ethics Lecture with the Detroit Free Press team that uncovered the Detroit Mayoral scandal. Reporters M.L. Elrick and Jim Schaeffer and videographer Brian Kaufman will be discussing their work at 4 p.m., Thursday, November 20 in 145 CAS.

Next year’s schedule of classes is pretty much decided. Students won’t get to register until April, and there is still some wrangling to do over lab space, but we have tried very hard to provide students with the courses they need to graduate on time.

We are also doing a search for a new tenure system faculty member in Digital Journalism. This new position will continue our reinvention of journalism education.

Task Force members on the faculty have resumed work on reinventing the undergraduate curriculum and we hope to unveil our ideas to colleagues he near future.

We will have J-School students in a lot of different venues on Election Day. Our highly skilled journalists are much in demand by media outlets inside and outside Michigan.

Be sure to check out the live web election coverage on www.mogulus.com/spartantv. And also be sure to vote.

And way to go Spartans. They creamed our in-state arch rivals last Saturday. Those poor Wolverines from “southern” Michigan University are having a tough year. They will recover. I just hope our Spartans continue their winning ways.

J-students swarm campus to cover Obama

Busy day on campus with the visit and speech by Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama.

J-School students are on high alert and are swarming Adam’s Field on campus to cover the event for various classes and doing some live video streaming on http://www.mogulus.com/spartantv. Our Focal Point staff is in the thick of things. The State News is twittering on its website at www.statenews.com. We also have students blogging for the Lansing State Journal.

Read, see and view all the coverage. This is what makes the J-School such a great place to learn how to "commit" journalism.

Michigan is a swing state that both candidates need to grab.

It’s great to have Obama on campus, and, I hope, GOP nominee John McCain makes MSU a stop, as well.

Then there’s the vice presidential debate tonight! This is democracy as it should be happening.