IMHO, this has been a watershed year for college news media and college NEW media mindsets. But what do I know? I’m just sitting out here watching all these great student journalists learn video, audio, soundslides, hyperlinking, blogging, etc. and trying to share the wealth with others.

Far more important on a day-to-day basis is what you think about your news organization’s new media efforts. This is finals week for a lot of folks, and the publication schedule has ended. In the next couple of weeks, I want to encourage each and every one of you - advisers and student journalists - to sit down and reflect on the past year from a multimedia standpoint. Are you further along now than you were 9 months ago?

• Have you got your news org. online?
• Do you have a content management system?
• Have you posted any videos online?
• Have you included any audio soundbites in a story?
• Have you done a photo slideshow?
• Have you put up an audio slideshow (perhaps using Soundslides)?
• Have you done a map?
• Have you used weblogs on your site?
• Have you uploaded source documents (PDFs, excel spreadsheets, etc.) to accompany a big story?
• Have you used social media (Facebook, MySpace, YouTube) to market your stories?
• Have you tracked what others are saying about you via Technorati or Google Blogsearch?
• Have you used the web site to post breaking news online FIRST?
• Have you moved the online editor out of the back office and into a position of authority?
• Have you allowed comments on your stories?
• Have you encouraged writers to write for the Web and include hyperlinks in their stories?
• Have you tried something experimental?

This is not an exhaustive list, but each and every one of these bullet points can be a starting point. The first one is absolutely crucial at this point in time - if you’re not online, you’re doing a grave disservice to your student journalists. The others can be added gradually, but they need to be added. The future of news is going to be a mixture of media (New York Times people have taken to referring to their product as “platform agnostic”), and today’s journalists need to know how to work across media.

So before you pack up the car to head off for summer vacation, take stock. I’m not saying you necessarily need to make your big plans for next year just yet. But thinking about this year now will put the seeds of inspiration in your head while you’re enjoying the beach or the mountains. When you come back to prepare for next year, then you can talk about what next steps to take.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 30th, 2007 at 8:59 pm and is filed under Learn, Multimedia views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.