A terrific project called News21 — sponsored by two major foundations to help figure out the future of journalism education (and maybe journalism itself) — is under way. This is an important initiative, bringing in students and faculty from five major universities in a multi-year effort that involves some serious journalism about the intersection of security and liberty. I’m proud to be assisting them in developing citizen-media components for their projects, which vary by school and media types.
One of the early pieces of this many-moving-parts project is a blog by students (including recent graduates) from the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, which is one of the two major affiliations of this Center. Their project (in their words):
The American military is in the midst of a profound shift in strategy that is reshaping the military’s presence, and in many cases, its mission, around the world. Older, permanent bases are downsizing or being restructured; newer, smaller and more flexible bases, in places new to American troops, are being created. We are looking for ways to tell stories—cultural, economic, political and environmental—about the nearly half million men and women serving the security interests of the United States overseas.
The students have fanned out across the globe for their on-the-ground reporting, which ultimately will be used to produce broadcast-quality journalism. But one way they’re learning to tell this story is through a blog, US Military Abroad, on which you’ll find a good example of group blogging. And (update) don’t miss their Korea blog.
Other project blogs include:
- Privacy, Civil Liberties and Homeland Security (Medill School, Northwestern University)
- Immigration Outpost (Annenberg School, University of Southern California)
- Homeland Security Money Trail (Columbia University)
Seems to me that traditional media organizations could learn something from this, too.
on Jun 25th, 2006 at 7:18 pm
There was one blog that was left out: the South Korea part of US Military Abroad: http://news21usmilitaryabroad.typepad.com/news21rokers/
This is the blog from the most cutting-edge of the groups, the fellows at Berkeley who are taking a multimedia approach to their reporting. They’re spending a month in South Korea to do an in-depth look at the U.S. military in that country. They will do multimedia stories first (combining video, photos, audio, text, graphics in a non-linear format in which the information in each medium is complementary, not redundant), and from those, will be able to spin off stand-alone video, podcasts, or text pieces for print.
on Jun 25th, 2006 at 7:35 pm
I’ll add it…
on Jun 28th, 2006 at 5:15 am
[…] Link […]
on Jun 28th, 2006 at 10:24 am
[…] From Dan Gillmor of the Center for Citizen Media: A terrific project called News21 — sponsored by two major foundations to help figure out the future of journalism education (and maybe journalism itself) — is under way. This is an important initiative, bringing in students and faculty from five major universities in a multi-year effort that involves some serious journalism about the intersection of security and liberty. […]
on Jul 3rd, 2006 at 12:52 pm
[…] The project was recently blogged at Dan Gillmor’s Center for Citizen Media, at Boing-Boing and also at Utterly Boring, though the interesting stuff is yet to come, once the story packages are completed by the fellows and we wrap up the CMS. […]