Innovation in College Media

Ralph Braseth

Below is a recent e-mail sent by an Ole Miss student doing an internship at Smithsonian Magazine. I've been a bit zealous about multimedia. I've alientated a few students and fellow faculty members. It's an on-going fight.

What the heck should we be doing when no one really knows for sure what is going on?

Ole Miss student media is going to take some financial dings from digital media. We already have. Mission one, though, is giving students what they need to succeed. There is no question in my mind what I need to do to help students prepare for the profession. The future is already here.

Hey Ralph,

I hope your summer is going well so far and everything is okay at the SMC. I just wanted to take a minute and tell you about my internship.

You were right. Online is the way to go. Here at Smithsonian magazine everything is going in that direction. They ask their writers/freelancers to submit multimedia ideas and ask their sources if they have anything they can put on the web. They are now requiring their researchers to submit 3 “web pointers” -Short lines at the end of each piece in the magazine pointing the readers to the web- for every story they work with. They are working on hiring a bigger online staff and are going to increase the online budget next year to four times what it is now! We are also doing a huge re-launch in July that the whole office is focusing on.

Of course, things didn’t go over smoothly at first. My boss told me when Smithsonian magazine first decided they needed to put a bigger emphasis on their website last August the magazine staff was really resistant. They didn’t like the idea of original web content or so much multimedia for the magazine’s stories. She said now though everyone knows they either work with the web or they don’t work here at all. She came from a job at National Geographic as a writer recently and said it’s the same way there – and pretty much everywhere!

So the point is….The DM Online really helped prepare me for my work here - and I mean really. I’m completing my third editorial piece for the website and I get to start working with the video camera next week. It’s like I’m doing the same stuff I was doing at the SMC with DM Online, just on a professional level. It’s crazy. So however online ends up going next year, good or bad, I hope we still get the same experience. It was worth it.

Best,
Haley