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Graduate schools and media rooms have been debating the role of journalism and journalists since the beginning of the discipline. More recently, the convergence of different outlets for news (print, broadcast, multi-media) has entered the mix.
Now, Anoka-Ramsey Community College English Faculty member Richard Broderick is training community college students to enter the new world of interactive news media by offering the first-of-its-kind online journalism course in the spring 2008 semester: “Reporting, writing, and editing for online publications.”
“This class will put Anoka-Ramsey at the cutting edge of what is being taught in regard to online media,” says Broderick. “News coverage is changing. People need to become citizen reporters instead of media consumers. And, obviously, the Internet is becoming the preferred outlet.”
News reporting, as well as news outlets, are shifting in a world of corporate consolidation, coverage as presenting opposing points of view instead of objectivity and facts, collaboration between professional journalist and the general public and contrasts and comparisons between print and digital publication-often a combination of both.
As part of Broderick’s course, students will be introduced to the new technologies that are making it possible for citizens to become more active and powerful participants in the news production process as well as how to deal with citizen journalist.
Broderick defines a citizen journalist as someone who:
* is engaged in the creation of media content
* relates his or her own story from his or her particular place in the community
* offers a critical perspective both of their own contributions and those of all media
“Just look at blogging. It is real-time reportage and commentary from a writer’s personal point of view. Often the blog reporting is fragmentary and tends to be more subjective. This does not enforce the journalistic tenet of objectivity, but it does not negate the reporter’s responsibility to accuracy and fairness.”
Along with immersion in the understanding of the citizen journalist, students in Broderick’s course will be engaged in the entire news process from story ideation through final editing, receiving hands-on experience in online reporting, writing, blogging and editing for online publications.
Finally, their edited work will be posted on the Twin Cities Daily Planet (www.tcdailyplanet.net).
The course is more than half-full already, so interested people should visit the college’s Web site at www.AnokaRamsey.edu to register. For more information about the class or the future of news coverage, contact Broderick at rich.broderick@anokaramsey.edu.
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