Memo to Rob Curley: Kent JMC stacks up pretty good too

The maharishi of convergence, Rob Curley, was at Kent State University recently, preaching the gospel of online and multi-platform journalism.

The director of New Media and Convergence for the Naples Daily News talked about webifying news stories with hyper-local coverage and lots of interactivity, blogs and podcasts. (See earlier blog).

Someone made the mistake, however, of asking him about the state of journalism education relative to the emergence of Curley’s brand of cyberjournalism. His bottom line: although a couple schools were “doing it right,” most were wasting their students’ money.

Most of his tirade echoed comments he had made two years earlier in a blog on his website. “Most J-schools are still churning out the same sorts of graduates that they were 50 years ago,” he wrote then. “Whether it’s good convergence or shitty convergence, J-schools better be preparing students for a new kind of journalism….[J]ournalism programs should be ensuring that students don’t have blinders on – that they are aware of all aspects of media.”

He suggested students might want to think about suing their deans and directors if they hadn’t been introduced to iMovie or Photoshop before they graduate. While at Kent State, he said all journalism students should enter the job market with a solid background in reporting and newswriting (who’d argue against that?) and in Photoshop and its use of layers.

Photoshop and iMovie teach not just practical skills, but also a multimedia mindset, Curley said, correctly.

So, I’m thinking, while he’s ranting, where does my School of Journalism and Mass Communication rank in preparing students for Curley’s world of New Media? After a lot of deliberate thought and consideration, I concluded that Kent State students are gonna be pretty well geared up for the future. Yeah, we’ve got a lot more to do, but we know that, and we’re taking steps to keep our grads ready with practical skill sets, critical thinking abilities, and multi-platform media mindsets.

Evidence submitted:

• Courses offered in Online Journalism, Cybermedia Design, and Public Relations Online Tactics.
• A Collaborative Hour attached to several of our courses, where students from feature writing, photography, and design classes work together to produce a newspaper, magazine, or online package.
• A joint section of Reporting Public Affairs where students produce print, broadcast and online versions of their stories. Last year they covered a capital murder trial.
• A Collaborative Online Producing class where students from print, broadcast, visual journalism, and design team up to produce rich multimedia content for the School website.
• Digital still photography that soon will be wed with Flash animation.
• A forthcoming broadcast producing class that will be Web oriented.
• A requirement of all students to learn the basics of still and video photography, along with the fundamentals of Final Cut Pro and Photoshop.
• Super online versions of traditional student media: The CyBurr, The Online Stater, Black Squirrel Radio, and TV2.

Curley pointed to journalism programs at Northwestern, Berkeley, and Kansas as three he thought were on the right path.

Strikes me that he needs to add a fourth school to his list. Though I might be just a tad biased.

--Fred Endres, Professor, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Kent State University

The witification and wisdomization of Rob Curley

It's gotta be painful, if not impossible, for many traditional newspaper folk to listen to convergence guru, Rob Curley, talk about the future of journalism.

Let alone understand him.

The 35-year-old director of New Media and Convergence for the Naples and Bonita (Fla.) Daily News, brought his traveling one-man Powerpoint show to Northeast Ohio recently.

He spoke to business and media leaders at an Akron Roundtable luncheon and later spent 85 minutes talking to journalism and mass communication students and faculty at nearby Kent State University.

He left folks much like he leaves them everywhere in his wake: energized and mesmerized, or dazed and bewildered.

The former director of New Media/Convergence at the Lawrence (Kansas) Journal-World (http://ljworld.com) is a creative and futuristic thinker, an award-winning Web designer, and a serious threat to any newspaper editors just now trumpeting their moves to 18-hour newsrooms.

His newspaper is alive with video, audio, photo galleries, podcasts, blogs, reader feedback and interaction, and the latest venture, Studio 55, the paper's news vodcast.

New Jargon for New Media

He’s also not the easiest person to understand, employing Curley-speak to explain his views on online and multi-platform journalism.

New Jargon (to accompany New Media) flows from his lips, viz., “webification,” “internization,” “hyper-localism,” or something close to those.

Seemingly, most of his vocabulary is interchangeable as verbs or nouns, i.e., “webify" (to add Web values such as audio or video to stories), “webifier” (one who webifies a story), and “webification” (the process of webifying).

To get much of the grunt information-gathering done, you use internation or you internize (read, you get low paid interns/foot soldiers to do it). We guess that would be to internify the newsgathering process.

It seems like it's all for the emerging Google Generation. For most of us, It’s jargonification amokified.

But, He's Spot On

The guy might talk fast and irritate Webster, but he’s got most of this stuff nailed.

Seeds of wisdom he probably leaves with all his audiences:

• News is spelled l-o-c-a-l. Or, L-O-C-A-L! Actually, Curley's term is "hyper-local" coverage. And, much of his softer news coverage (sports, entertainment) is intense. We're talking about running a calendar with every local third grade Christmas program listed; an up-to-date database where you can find the current batting average of 6-year-old tee-ball star Betsy Jones; or a clickable seating chart of a 16,000-seat arena with a photographic view from each seat.
• News – actually all information – on the websites of Curley’s newspapers also must be repurposed for downloads to iPods and cell phones. Reporters blog and interview each other about news coverage. Podcasting and vodcasting are as common in Naples as the Cleveland Browns selecting busts in the first round of the NFL draft.
• A news organization should "build community through technology," Curley says. Lots of staff, ownership commitment and resources help a lot here we would guess.
• Lots of geek power is needed. Curley's sites are labor intensive and database driven. Interns gather the minute details; computer programmers nerdify it. Animators and graphic artists "ESPN-it."
• Newsrooms should experience "organic convergence." That is, situate online, print and broadcast reporters not by medium, but by beat.
• "Backpack" journalism -- one reporter covers event with notepad, still and video cameras and writes stories for TV, print and Web -- will never work. He invited his competitors to send lots of these "mobile journalists" (MOJOs) down to Naples. "What you normally end up with, instead of one good story, are three crappy ones," he chuckles.
• He only works with non-union newspapers. "I have no idea how these concepts would work on a unionized paper," he declared.

Not surprisingly, Curley had other interesting wisdomifications.

Next blog: Curley says most college journalism students should "bitch to their deans."

Fred Endres, Professor, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Kent State University