The Blog for the WORD

This is amusing. After reviewing and then publishing on the WORD their Youtube production about the gay rights rally in New York City November 15,  I told Jonathan Mena & Jacqueline Fernandez that they were doing too much breaking news and that they should focus on more in-depth stuff for their YouTube broacasts (and for their portfolios).

And guess what? New America Media put their production efforts on its front page.* This is exciting. I, with several years of journalism experience and two books and tons of related experience, told two student journalists that I thought what they did was good but they could do better and NAM decides what they did was front-page news.

I love it.

And will address “it” in subsequent posts.

*This hit NAM’s first page November 16. By tomorrow, it might be in the archives.

They say the blame lies not with them but with shoddiness in the traditional news media and especially the blogosphere.

The above quote was extracted from a November 13 New York Times story headlined, “A Senior Fellow at the Institute of Nonexistence,” written by Richard Pérez-Peña. It’s the kind of story that student journalists should be required to read. Many, I think, would regard what the pranksters did as cool.

The headline-quote is from a staff member of the Poynter Institute during a five-day workshop in St. Petersburg, Florida, October, 2008. It has, for me, a lot to say about the J-curriculum undergoing review in my department at Hunter. 

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A writer for Hunter’s alumni magazine is working on an article about my students trip to Denver to report on the Democratic National Convention. I’m not sure when it will be published but I thought I would publish the questions she asked of me via email and my responses. I’m still working to document the trip so responding to the query was beneficial for me. And it might be a decent reading for anyone interested in innovative ways of teaching undergraduate journalism, especially in light of this economic crunch that could seriously defer students’ plans to attend graduate journalism schools.

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