What happens as distinctions between print and broadcast media fade away and a single reporter must combine video, audio, text and images to tell a story? What's the role of a journalist when anyone can report and publish?
All of our students explore these questions while creating new forms of journalism demanded by an era of digital communication.
In the advanced multimedia course, students work on their own multimedia projects, which have included stories on a "ghostrider" robotic motorcycle, the FM pirate radio movement, the struggle to protect California's national forests, an environmental campaign for a "green Los Angeles" and a Flash presentation that details who profits from rising gas prices. Other student projects have been published on the "FRONTLINE/World" Web site, with which the J-School has a close partnership.
Students also set up Weblogs and other interactive online sites to learn what the role of professional journalism is in a world where everyone owns the digital equivalent of a printing press or broadcast station. Classes have produced the China Digital Times Weblog, "moblogs" on the presidential campaign and local sports, in which students used cell phones to post audio clips and photos for their stories, and an online video game in which people can re-live Oakland's famed Seventh Street jazz and blues club scene from the 1940s and 1950s.
We take advantage of our location at the heart of the new media revolution in the San Francisco Bay Area to bring in journalists from Wired, Yahoo!, MarketWatch.com, CNET, InfoWorld, Macworld and the online editions of publications such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal to teach courses. Students also interact with pioneers in online journalism at regular new media lecture series or conferences we've sponsored since 1998, and at several multimedia training workshops we conduct each year for mid-career journalists. Our program is part of a campus-wide Center for New Media that brings together many different departments for multidisciplinary courses and research projects on how new media is changing every aspect of human experience.
