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Words of Wisdom: Chad A. Stevens on learning important multimedia skills Posted by Jessica Stuart, October 1st, 2009 No Comments » We're kicking off a new series on the blog, talking with educators and journalism students about the value of Journalism school and the multimedia skills students need to start their careers. There has been a lot of discussion lately on whether it's worth it to go to Journalism school, and whether students are learning the multimedia skills they need to be successful in a pretty rough market. As the school year gets back underway, we're getting more and more questions from students wondering what skills they need to acquire to land jobs. Obviously, there are no simple answers to these questions, but we hope to offer up some words of wisdom for students and others interested in the profession, especially during this time of transition. Chad2 We're going to kick it off with Chad A. Stevens- a former MediaStorm Producer, who is now an Assistant Professor at UNC Chapel Hill.

Words of Wisdom: Chad A. Stevens on learning important multimedia skills Posted by Jessica Stuart, October 1st, 2009 No Comments » We're kicking off a new series on the blog, talking with educators and journalism students about the value of Journalism school and the multimedia skills students need to start their careers. There has been a lot of discussion lately on whether it's worth it to go to Journalism school, and whether students are learning the multimedia skills they need to be successful in a pretty rough market. As the school year gets back underway, we're getting more and more questions from students wondering what skills they need to acquire to land jobs. Obviously, there are no simple answers to these questions, but we hope to offer up some words of wisdom for students and others interested in the profession, especially during this time of transition. Chad2 We're going to kick it off with Chad A. Stevens- a former MediaStorm Producer, who is now an Assistant Professor at UNC Chapel Hill.

How to Teach Yourself About Social Media When J-Schools Fail Roland Legrand by Roland Legrand, April 14, 2009 Tagged: communities of practice, connectivism, journalism school, learning, networked learning, social media Journalism is changing rapidly due to social media, and these changes can be bewildering as people wonder how to keep up. I recently gave a social media workshop for journalism students, and I soon realized that many students were still unaware of social media other than Facebook. They were shocked to hear about feed readers, blogs, or micro-blogging and asked how they could learn about all those developments. It seems that we should rethink not only journalism, but also journalism education: Tomorrow's journalists will need to take the initiative to teach themselves about rapidly changing technology. To that end, here are some ways that students can become their own teachers in regards to social media. Bewilderment

It's an anxious time to be graduating from journalism school. The economy is in the tank and newsrooms are being decimated. But yet, it is also a great time to be a journalist, with more news and information available than ever before and more ways than ever to reach audiences. At the recent International Symposium on Online Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, I asked a range of professionals what advice they had for journalism graduates entering the job market. There was broad agreement that students should leave journalism school being able to work across print, broadcast and online. At the very least, they should understand the new tools available to reporters and be continually learning. As one professional said, school is just the beginning of learning. At the core is good writing and reporting, regardless of the medium. But to stand out from the crowd, journalism graduates should follow their passions, develop an area of specialization and master that area.

One might say that Andreas Gursky learned photography three times. Born in 1955, he grew up in Düsseldorf, the only child of a successful commercial photographer, learning the tricks of that trade before he had finished high school. In the late 1970s, he spent two years in nearby Essen at the Folkwangschule (Folkwang School), which Otto Steinert had established as West Germany's leading training ground for professional photographers, especially photojournalists. At Essen, Gursky encountered photography's documentary tradition, a sophisticated art of unembellished observation, whose earnest outlook was remote from the artificial enticements of commercial work. Finally, in the early 1980s, he studied at the Staatliche Kunstakademie (State Art Academy) in Düsseldorf, which thanks to artists such as Joseph Beuys, Sigmar Polke, and Gerhard Richter had become the hotbed of Germany's vibrant postwar avant-garde. There Gursky learned the ropes of the art world and mastered the rigorous method of Bernd and Hilla Becher, whose photographs had achieved prominence within the Conceptual and Minimal art movements.

"On the Internet, everybody is a millenarian. Internet journalism, according to those who produce manifestos on its behalf, represents a world-historical development-not so much because of the expressive power of the new medium as because of its accessibility to producers and consumers. That permits it to break the long-standing choke hold on public information and discussion that the traditional media-usually known, when this argument is made, as "gatekeepers" or "the priesthood"-have supposedly been able to maintain up to now. "Millions of Americans who were once in awe of the punditocracy now realize that anyone can do this stuff-and that many unknowns can do it better than the lords of the profession," Glenn Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor who operates one of the leading blogs, Instapundit, writes, typically, in his new book, "An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government and Other Goliaths." The rhetoric about Internet journalism produced by Reynolds and many others is plausible only because it conflates several distinct categories of material that are widely available online and didn't use to be. One is pure opinion, especially political opinion, which the Internet has made infinitely easy to purvey. Another is information originally published in other media-everything from Chilean newspaper stories and entries in German encyclopedias to papers presented at Micronesian conferences on accounting methods-which one can find instantly on search and aggregation sites. Lately, grand journalistic claims have been made on behalf of material produced specifically for Web sites by people who don't have jobs with news organizations. According to a study published last month by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, there are twelve million bloggers in the United States, and thirty-four per cent of them consider blogging to be a form of journalism. That would add

I like telling stories. What sort of stories do I like to tell? Stories about days at school, life in the ANZ Bank, stories my father told me, historic sagas and the like.

I like telling stories. What sort of stories do I like to tell? Stories about days at school, life in the ANZ Bank, stories my father told me, historic sagas and the like.

"I asked the Polis Summer School students to finish their 12 day course by giving me a code for the road. Tell me, I said, what should be the guiding principles for journalism about people who are suffering or are from other countries. Here are the ideas from different groups of students for some ethical guidelines."

The New York Times is running a slideshow by photographer Jan Grarup about life in the Daadab, reportedly the oldest refugee camp in the world. "The strength of the project rests within its immediacy," Mr. Grarup said. "It has an honesty to it." I was in Daadab not so long ago myself. I may not have been there for long but I was there long enough to notice that life in the camp wasn't one you would wish on the  worst of your neighbors -Kenyans and Somalis from Somalia aren't the best of neighbors. In the camps there is of course suffering but I would also have loved to see images of the children that were playing in the camp, images of the schools set up, images of the street with all the shops where refugees who've refused to be victims of circumstances are taking charge and rebuilding their lives. Where are the photos of the weddings that happen in the camp and where are the photos of people who despite their many tribulations, still observe prayers without fail? Where are the photos telling the other side of the story?

The Panoramic Photograph Collection contains approximately four thousand images featuring American cityscapes, landscapes, and group portraits. These panoramas offer an overview of the nation, its enterprises and its interests, with a focus on the start of the twentieth century when the panoramic photo format was at the height of its popularity. Subject strengths include: agricultural life; beauty contests; disasters; engineering work such as bridges, canals and dams; fairs and expositions; military and naval activities, especially during World War I; the oil industry; schools and college campuses, sports, and transportation. The images date from 1851 to 1991 and depict scenes in all fifty states and the District of Columbia. More than twenty foreign countries and a few U.S. territories are also represented. These panoramas average between twenty-eight inches and six feet in length, with an average width of ten inches.

With its vibrant oversized photographs and minimalist design, the Boston Globe's The Big Picture weblog launched on June 1 to instant global acclaim. It's designed, programmed, and written by Alan Taylor, an old-school web programmer and blogger, in his spare time while working on community features at Boston.com. (You might know Alan from his popular MegaPenny Project, Amazon Light, or his other projects.)

Bruce Gilden (born 1946) is a noted street photographer, known for his work in New York City. While studying sociology at Penn State, he saw Michelangelo Antonioni's film Blowup in 1968. Due to the film's influence, he purchased his first camera as a result, and began taking night classes in photography at the School of Visual Arts of New York. He routinely uses his camera's flash, alerting his subjects to his presence, unlike most street photographers. Fascinated with normal people on the street and the idea of visual spontaneity, Gilden turned to a career in photography.[1] A member of Magnum Photos, he shot images of Japan's Yakuza mobsters, the homeless, prostitutes, and members of bike gangs between 1995 and 2000. According to Gilden, he was fascinated by the duality and double lives of the individuals he photographed.[2] Gilden is also the subject of Misery Loves Company: The Life and Death of Bruce Gilden, a documentary produced in 2007.[3]

Street Level was founded in 1989. From its inception it has provided artists and the public with the opportunity to produce and participate in photography and lens-based media. It aims to make artistic production accessible, both physically and intellectually, to a wide audience. Recognised for its integrated practice, the organisation promotes the work of artists through exhibitions, commissions, residencies, and publications; an education programme; community collaborations; open access facilities and training courses for the public. The exhibitions programme supports both emerging and established artists from local, national and international sources. Earlier exhibitions have included such diverse artists as Ian Breakwell, Chila Kumari Burman, Peter Kennard, Daniel Reeves, Maud Sulter, Andrew Stones, David Levinthal, and Elizabeth and Iftikhar Dadi. Critical ideas are also fostered through talks, symposia, and publications. Exhibitions and projects from the past five years are being listed on the archive section of the website. The education programme involves a range of collaborations in the community, with schools and with agencies working across areas of inclusion, social justice, and equalities. It aims to enable the creativity of non-artists, increase involvement by under-represented groups, and assist the artistic programme by engaging participants. A chronological list of projects will be listed on our education archive.

Through the Lens of Time: Images of African Americans from the Cook Collection is a digital collection of over 250 images of African Americans dating from the nineteenth and early twentieth century, selected from the George and Huestis Cook Photograph Collection at the Valentine Richmond History Center. The digitally scanned images on this site are of prints from glass plate negatives or film negatives taken by George S. Cook (1819-1902) and Huestes P. Cook (1868-1951), primarily in the Richmond and Central Virginia area. The Cook Collection consists of over 10,000 negatives taken from the 1860s to the 1930s in Virginia and the Carolinas. The lens of a camera can both reflect and refract reality, and it is important to understand that a photograph, like any work of art, can tell us as much about the photographer as the photographed. These photographs of African Americans provide an interesting combination of examples of African American life and the white photographers' perceptions of that life, often at least tinged by stereotypes. While some photographs more obviously represent one or the other, it is an interesting exercise to attempt to determine which photographs were taken in a completely spontaneous manner and which ones were posed or staged by the Cooks. These photographs of African American life in turn-of-the-century Central Virginia are valuable both as conveyers of unique historical information and as examples of the nascent art of photography. Their preservation by the Valentine Richmond History Center and their digitization by VCU allows everyone from historical researchers to school children to access and learn from this fine and rare resource.

Every year renowned photographers are invited to speak at the School at ICP as part of The Photographers Lecture Series

Multimedia journalism is one of those terms often used to refer to a wide range of online content. Recently, I began a discussion with my students at the UBC Graduate School of Journalism to define exactly what the term means and how we can harness the many forms of online media to produce quality journalism. We started by first asking what a multimedia story is not. After all, go to any news website and you are certain to see stories being told using a combination of media. But just because an online story has multimedia elements does not mean that it is a multimedia story.

Every year, National Geographic Photocamp travels around the US and the world touching young people's lives through the power of photography. In 2007, NY edition of the 'camp was realized in Queens, with NG photographer Ed Kashi and students from Newcomers High School, a NYC public HS dedicated to serving kids who have been in the US for less than one year.

We live in a world where we can watch disasters and suffering unfold around the world. New technologies mean that every war, every famine, every hurricane can be covered live and direct. But do we actually notice what is happening to those involved? Polis Summer School student Andrea Abril has been thinking through the moral dilemmas. This is her report: Hannah Arendt, the German political theorist, wrote about the "Politics of Pity". Firstly , she made the distinction between those who suffer and those who do not. She also wrote that 'seeing' and 'looking' are considered as different concepts because sufferer and observer are physically distant - despite the closeness that modern media brings. This creates the "spectacle of suffering", unfortunate people are observed by those who do not share their suffering, who do not experience it directly and who, as such, may be regarded as fortunate people. This theory can be applied to sufferings representation in media. Audiences are observers of the misery of the unfortunate but within a distance, which is not just geographical, but also emotional.

"Here is a link to New York Times photographer Damon Winter's photo series, "A Grunt's Life", which won the third place award in the Pictures of the Year International "Feature Picture Story - Newspaper" contest. No one seems to be questioning the quality of Winter's work; rather, there was been a stir of debate regarding the series' lack of objectivity in capturing the "reality" of the War in Afghanistan. Does the old school, discolored, oversaturated, plastic toy camera feel of the photographs, which was created through the Hipstamatic app on Winter's iPhone, detract from their validity? "

Eye on Image-Making: Eight Tips for Aspiring Photographers By David WeintraubdavidweintraubcloseAuthor: David Weintraub See Author's Posts (37) Recent Posts * Eye on Image-Making: Eight Tips for Aspiring Photographers * Notes from the VisCom Classroom: Teaching Video * Eye on Image-Making: Five Ways to Tell if a Photographer Is Really in Business * Eye on Image-Making: Portraiture Now * Notes from the VisCom Classroom: Is It Better to Teach Full Time or Part Time? David Weintraub is a writer, editor, photographer, and educator based in Aiken, SC. He is the author of eight travel books and many articles for publications such as Photo District News, Outdoor Photographer, and Hemispheres. David has a master's degree in journalism and mass communications from the University of South Carolina, where he is a full-time instructor teaching visual communications and writing. in Business of Photography on April 7th, 2009 I almost don't recognize Shawna Simmons when she appears in my office doorway. A 2007 graduate, Shawna has returned to the University of South Carolina's School of Journalism and Mass Communication to give several presentations as part of the school's I-Comm Week, an annual exploration of the latest trends in mass media. While an undergraduate, Shawna majored in visual communications. She was my student in our two photography courses, Photovisual Communications and Advanced Photovisual Communications. Now here she is, dressed in a stylish outfit capped by a black leather jacket, having just flown in the night before from New York.