Welcome!

This course is designed to equip journalists with the techniques needed in assembling and producing stories that can be published and distributed across integrated media platforms. Students are learning to write and edit reports for online media in ways that add value to stories and encourage readers to drill down into these news narratives for information worth knowing. Students are also developing an understanding of how newsgathering practices are evolving through digital media and the role of teamwork in disseminating these stories to an informed citizenry.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Brittany and Co.: Why do we Care?

On Tuesday, Sept. 11, the Chicago History Museum hosted a panel dicussion on the news media's coverage of celebrities. The panel featured Walter Jacobson, a longtime Chicago TV anchor, and Mark Caro, an entertainment writer for the Chicago Tribune.

The standing room crowd heard a lively debate, moderated by Laura Washington, a professor at DePaul University.

Several journalism students at DePaul were in the audience and asked astute questions about journalism careers and the over saturation of celebrity coverage of every news organizations to from CNN to TMZ.com.

Jacobson, a former Chicago Cubs bat boy, has won more local and national awards than every other Chicago TV journalist combined, according to Washington's introduction.

Still, he admitted that he knows nothing about the Internet and doesn't not even know how to find a blog.

Caro, who writes a daily blog, "The Pop Machine" on the Chicago Tribune's web site, said that blogging has brought him new readers; the blog attracts a different readership than the one that reads his work in the Tribune's print edition.

Everyone on the panel agreed. however, that it is important that all journalists, whether on line or not, uphold journalistic standards like accuracy, balance and ethical conduct.

No comments: