I don't work on as many teaching project as I used to. So, when offered the opportunity to get involved and my schedule cooperates, I jump at the chance.
Recently, I was in Elkins, West Virginia working on a training project called "West Virginia Uncovered." Students from the journalism school at West Virginia University partner with a small town newspaper and spend a long weekend reporting and producing multi-media stories
In the build-up to the project, I spoke with Mary Kay McFarland, project coordinator for West Virginia Uncovered and asked her about the whole point of the exercise. According to her, "it's about process. And, students need to learn early how to work with other people."
That's almost exactly what I did when I lead projects for NPR. I paired a competitively selected student with a working journalist and the two of them had to learn how to go through every step of finding, reporting, editing and producing a story. And, they had to do it together on a three day deadline.
On this project, McFarland has students work in teams. It's an effort she says will combat the prevalent pressure of the deadline driven "one-man band" where no one is learning how to exchange ideas, negotiate difficulties or agree on approaches, As I type this posting, Paul and Trevor, two of the student's here, are talking through every single second of audio and collaborating on not just the slide itself, but how it's represented within the timeline.
In my career at NPR as a producer and director, the best part of my experiences involved being teamed with others to produce stories for shows. Together we spent hours and hours talking about the words, the sound and the images the sound created. Not all conversations were pleasant, not all decisions were easy. Still, it was our process that made those stories come alive. The result of our intense brainstorming was a story we could talk about openly and proudly.
"West Virginia Uncovered" (@wvuncovered) is a project where the art of journalism, content creation and storytelling is discovered through conversation. It's the conversation that's kneaded through an interview and then mixed the experience of a project partner, producing a story told with images and sound. The experience begins and ends over the span of a weekend--not an entire semester-- creating a realistic assessment for those who want to be tomorrow's journalists.
Still, the financial pressure on old media and the uncertain sustainability of new companies remains heavy, even while working in these laboratories.
A Washington Post article by it's departing Ombudsman openly criticized the paper for not living up to it's reputation of the past. The author noted The Post's business model is broken, causing forced and voluntary departures which in turn dissolves institutional memory, experience and leadership. The Post is not alone, as all media are seeing this trend, justified or not.
Still, I strongly believe that as long as our incubators (colleges, universities, foundations) continue to support what I'll call "obsessive learning," the future of journalism is well in hand.
doug@knowledgewebb.net
*Chantal de la Rionda edits this blog
