The Health of Ethnic Media

January 12th, 2009

Funded by the McCormick Foundation, “The Health of Ethnic Media: Needs and Opportunities”:  A must read for students and instructors seriously interested in journalism and media. That goes for practitioners as well because …

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My Ford Foundation Grant: Lessons Learned – 4 & 5

January 12th, 2009

Lesson 4. Instructors need to beware of the mesmerizing power of platforms like YouTube. It is becoming so easy for students to produce material for the internet that they can lose sight, for example, about the importance of writing skills to tell their stories. That naivete can lead to students eschewing reputable journalistic practices as well as the traditions of reputable ethical practices and news media responsibility.

Lesson 5. This instructor must consider revising his journalism syllabi often for the foreseeable future. 

My Ford Foundation Grant: Lessons Learned – 3

January 10th, 2009

Lesson 3. YouTube and other platforms like it are excellent tools for teaching students about multimedia news dissemination.

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My Ford Foundation Grant: Lessons Learned – 2

January 9th, 2009

Lesson 2. Journalism in order to develop at Hunter needs to eschew filmmaking techniques and aesthetics and develop its own methodology.

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My $30,000 Ford Foundation Grant: Lessons Learned – 1

January 8th, 2009

Lesson 1. Paltry technical support that was not anticipated required this writer to draw upon technology workshops on and off campus as well as from online and off-line tutorials plus support from the CUNY graduate journalism program to acquire sufficient technical expertise to supervise students for audio, video and visual news dissemination. Thus this lesson: Instructors interested in teaching multimedia news dissemination have to have sufficient technical expertise in new media and broadcast-type software and hardware because many college undergraduate programs are still rooted in old traditions and that goes for their technical staffs. 

My $30,000 Ford Foundation Grant: Grant Proposal Excerpts

January 7th, 2009

I was awarded a $30,000 Ford Foundation grant to develop a multimedia ethnic reporting class. I emailed a final report to Ford December 31. I am publishing some excerpts from the report. Here’s the first:

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Final Grades, Fall Semester – Basic Reporting (So-called)

January 5th, 2009

This was one of the most talented classes I’ve had in a few years. However, two students who could have achieved at least a B flunked because they seemed to believe they could bluff their way through the course and get a C  without completing the assignments (that’s my impression), and one was very late-late several times and in one conversation conveyed that she was hoping to bluff – again, my impression – her way to a passing grade that she could get without doing the homework.

The other attended class regularly but … refused to turn in assignments or refused to turn in assignments on time.

Because of the internecine war with my department about my classes and how I want to teach, final grades is always serious manner. The usual attrition rate – F’s, D’s, W’s and WU’s – is one-third.

I’m expecting that the two INCs eventually become passing grades.

 

A — 2
B+ — 3
B — 3
B- — 1
INC — 2
W — 1
WU — 1
F — 2

I Pinged F/M December 10, 2008

December 20th, 2008

This is an esoteric post. It most likely will be abstruse and cryptic for anyone unfamiliar with my postings on the Hunter College Listserv known as Hunter-L, the f/m listserv of the Department of Film and Media Studies, the SENATE-FORUM@LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU or the CUNY UFS Discussion Forum as well as numerous inter-department emails and postings and memos and Fatwas. So, I asked the big question at December 10 department meeting. Quotation marks for effect: “Don’t you think this ongoing conflict can harm the department’s image?”

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The [!@#$%&!!*] O’Reilly Factor

December 6th, 2008

This is a lazy man’s blog post, but I’m trying to wrap up classes and get to work on some projects that have been idling on the back burner far too long, so here is a column from Media Matters bloggers: Eric Boehlert and Jamison Foster:

Despite falsehood after falsehood, O’Reilly reportedly claimed canceledRadio Factor 

According to a December 4 New York Daily News article, in confirming that he would no longer host his nationally syndicated radio show, The Radio Factor, Bill O’Reilly said, “I knew my show couldn’t be ideological. … So I was doing a show that was fact-based.” However, far from being “fact-based,” The Radio Factor, like The O’Reilly Factor, frequently featured “fact-free” claims and falsehoods by O’Reilly, as Media Matters for America’s extensive collection of Radio Factor items demonstrates: Read More Here

The WORD & UWIRE

December 2nd, 2008

I’m just getting the hang to posting my students’ stories in UWIRE. So, the plan, beginning near the end of the week, is to start re-publishing some of my students’ stories about Hunter clubs. I believe, because of Hunter’s diversity, that it might make interesting reading — across college campuses in the country. One already published is, Roosevelt Institution Begins Its Second Term, also published at UWIRE.