Using the Web to showcase our teaching

Poking around the World Wide Web, I came across this homepage (linked in the headline above) for a seminar series on networks at MIT.

It is a simple example of how to use the Web to welcome people into our school and let them see – and learn from – what we’re up to in our classes.

Imagine this display as a course syllabus. The first column is the meeting date. The second column refers to the guest speaker or, more typically in a course, the author of a key reading or the subject of an example/case study that will be discussed that day. (This column links to that person’s biography or other background material.) The third column is a mug shot of the speaker; more generally, it could be some visual representation of what the class will address on any given day (including mugs of speakers or authors of key readings, etc.). The fourth column is the topic of the class. The fifth column links to notes from the session, in this case supplied by the guest speaker; in the more usual case these could be a “story” or report on the day’s discussion posted by a student in real time to the Web during or after the class session.

So imagine a line for a class session in a "Media Ethics" course in which students discuss reporter-source relationships, using the film “Absence of Malice” as a fictional case study.

COLUMN I: Sept. 13

COLUMN II: "Absence of Malice"

COLUMN III:








Sally Field, a.k.a. reporter Megan Carter

COLUMN IV: Ethical boundaries in reporter-source relationshps

COLUMN V: Class report by Annie Flanzraich (this links to another report by Annie; I'm just illustrating the idea)

It seems to me this ought to work in any “non-methods” courses: media ethics, First Amendment/media law, journalism history, JOUR 101, etc., and could work in writing, photography and other journalism methods courses with some adaptations. Our students could post reports each day the course meets; we could promote the most interesting reports daily from the homepage of our RSJ Web site.

I think this would be a great way to prepare, and share, our syllabi and then to share with the world what actually happens on any given day in any given course. This is one way to capture, in Jean Trumbo's conceit, the "beautiful noise" that is the Reynolds School of Journalism.

What do you think?

Outsourcing term papers

The New York Times engaged in a quality control experiment, purchasing English literature papers from three online sources. The results are disturbing, humorous and worth some consideration.

"For $9.95 a page [a student] can obtain an 'A-grade' paper that is fashioned to order and 'completely non-plagiarized.' This last detail is important. Thanks to search engines like Google, college instructors have become adept at spotting those shop-worn, downloadable papers that circulate freely on the Web, and can even finger passages that have been ripped off from standard texts and reference works.
"A grade-conscious student these days seems to need a custom job, and to judge from the number of services on the Internet, there must be virtual mills somewhere employing armies of diligent scholars who grind away so that credit-card-equipped undergrads can enjoy more carefree time together."

My question: How might an instructor craft the kind of assignment that demands a product one can't possibly buy online (or grab from a dorm-mate)?

"CBS Evening News with Katie Couric" debuts

I had hoped to watch Katie Couric's debut live -- meaning at 3:30 p.m. PDT -- on the CBS News Web site as it streamed her East Coast broadcast. But life happened, and I ended up watching it on the same site at 9:30 p.m. -- three hours after it aired on the West Coast and six hours after it aired originally back East.

So the best thing about the new CBS News for me so far is the time shift allowed by the video streaming on the Web.

As for the broadcast itself, what was good and bad had little obvious connection to the (alleged) $15-million-a-year anchor. But she's the reason I watched, so here are a couple of observations about her debut.

Couric seemed to try very hard to be accessible and neighborly, with such useless lines as "As many of you know, next Monday is the fifth anniversary of 9/11" (or some such -- I'm paraphrasing more than quoting exactly here). As many of us know? Not all of us? Which of us? Why divide the viewers into those who are in the know and those who are oblivious? Why not: Next Monday is the fifth anniversary of 9/11 -- a simple statement of fact to orient us to her next point?

She also pitched the CBS News Web site repeatedly, as a kind of claim to with-it-ness -- anchor as Web star. She invited viewers to submit possible sign-off lines -- thereby subverting whatever authorial signature effect such a signoff might have to some kind of populist participatory sloganeering. It tells us something about Dan Rather than he chose to exhort "Courage" at the end of each newscast. It tells us something entirely different about Katie Couric that she is outsourcing her signature.

Finally, she concluded the broadcast by saying, again in a bid to be accessible and neighborly, something to the effect of "I hope to see you tomorrow night." Sorry, Ms. Couric, it's a one-way see-through mirror. We see you, but we're invisible to you -- except in the imaginary space you are trying to create to comfort us all.

RSJ student writing via J101 blog?

J Faculty: Our writing group at the retreat talked about getting J students writing right off the bat--in Jl0l. So, a question is:

What about having Jl0l students be assigned to create their own blogs, then write papers in the class (all? some?) in their blogs? This would result not only in their writing immediately upon entering a journalism course (l0l) but in their publishing for fellow students and, of course, the profesor who would grade the papers in a private response to the students.

Too intimidating for brand new freshman students? A realistic introduction to them showng the RSJ is serious about writing from the very beginning of their experience with us?

I am not personally advocating this but thought about the idea as a follow through from our good retreat.

Any thoughts?

Warren

Objectivity and activism on the environmental beat

Here's a pertinent read:

Grist Magazine interviewed leading environmental reporters about how they deal with issues of global warming, biodiversity loss, peak oil and other "looming" environmental problems.

"Do they report the facts dispassionately or shift to advocacy? ... To find out, we asked a few."

Those interviewed include Felicity Barringer, The New York Times; Michael Grunwald, The Washington Post; Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker; Andrew Revkin, The New York Times and Ross Gelbspan, author and retired journalist.

Sparks political reporter's blog raises ethical questions

Sparks Tribune political reporter Tom Darby writes a personal political blog that involves many of the subjects he covers for the daily paper.

This was brought to my attention by the person who writes the Nevada blog, Dullard Mush. While the Dullard Mush writer feels that Darby's two forums reflect a conflict of interest and are downright unethical, I maintained that reporters are entitled to their opinions along with the freedom to express them. Because Darby is being open about his opinions, he's allowing readers the kind of insight that will better allow them to sift his newspaper reports and decide for themselves what perspectives or biases might have impacted the reporting process.

Transparency is a good thing, right?

RGJ reporters Anjeanette Damon and Ray Hagar also write a blog, "Inside Nevada Politics," though it runs on the newspaper's Web site and is clearly under the RG-J's editorial control.

YouTube and the Blog-ocracy

Interesting bit "The YouTube Election" on citizen journalism or rabid Internet campaigning disguised as such. The article's in the New York Times, Sunday.

Writes Ryan Lizza: "YouTube may be changing the political process in more profound ways, for good and perhaps not for the better, according to strategists in both parties. If campaigns resemble reality television, where any moment of a candidate’s life can be captured on film and posted on the Web, will the last shreds of authenticity be stripped from our public officials? Will candidates be pushed further into a scripted bubble? In short, will YouTube democratize politics, or destroy it?"

On a side note: One of our "Daily News & The Daily Show" students posted the end montage of his group's mockumentary "Obey Gibbons" on YouTube. It's getting some attention from the Nevada bloggers, including Las Vegas Gleaner and UpNorth.

Journalists on war

Hendrik Hertzberg's piece about the sea change of media opinion regarding the war might start a useful if heated discussion with students about media roles. Hertzberg references Walter Cronkite's famous 1968 broadcast upon the anchorman's return from Vietnam.
One notable current shift--Thomas Friedman's column "Time for Plan B" from the Aug. 4 edition of The New York Times.

Writes Hertzberg: "Among foreign-policy élites and the broader public alike, it has become the preponderant conviction that George W. Bush’s war of choice in Iraq is a catastrophe.
'It is now obvious that we are not midwifing democracy in Iraq,' Thomas L. Friedman wrote..... 'We are baby-sitting a civil war.' Friedman may not be another Walter Lippmann (just as any number of Stewarts, Olbermanns, O’Reillys, and Coopers don’t quite add up to a Cronkite), but he is the most influential foreign-affairs columnist in the country, and from the beginning he has been a critical supporter of the war."

A highlight from the Friedman column:

"When our top commander in Iraq, Gen. John Abizaid, tells a Senate Committee, as he did yesterday, that 'the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I've seen it,' it means that three years of efforts to democratize Iraq are not working. That means 'staying the course' is pointless, and it's time to start thinking about Plan B -- how we might disengage with the least damage possible."

On the other hand, nothing seems to daunt the pro-Iraq War Economist. A piece "The Case for Staying On" in this week's issue uses some familiar words that work in its subhead: "Despite Iraq's relentless gloom, the United States should resist the temptation to cut and run."