MULTIMEDIA
We support the plan to add a new multimedia course to the core curriculum. Combining the History of American Journalism course with the Cross-Cultural Journalism course would allow this class to be added without altering the credit requirements for graduating.
The curriculum committee proposed a fundamentals of multimedia course that was passed by the faculty in November. We agree with this proposal and envision the class as follows: The course would be geared for sophomore-level journalism majors and would introduce students to DreamWeaver, Photoshop, Final Cut and other multimedia software. It would be taken parallel to news writing. In this class, students would begin the creation of their online portfolios. They would also learn what makes a good audio story, a good online hub for a certain news topic or a good video story. The course would be made up of labs of students as opposed to a 600-person lecture. Students would have the option of purchasing cameras and software or using equipment and software available at the school. Labs would be determined based upon proficiency so that students with previous web experience or video editing experience would still be challenged by their lab and their instructor.
One thing we want to stipulate is that the journalism school must remain a professional school. Students do not need to learn specific software as much as they need to learn to think about journalism through a visual and multimedia frame.
