 |
| Courtesy photos |
| The Summer in London students, led by associate professor Owen V. Johnson, spent eight weeks as interns at British media companies. They also took a class on British media and culture. |
Associate professor Owen V. Johnson led these honors students, who worked at newspapers, magazines, public relations firms or Web companies. They also took a course in British media and culture, learning more about the history, social context and politics of the media system in which they worked.
And they took in the culture of London and Europe with trips to the theater and the Tower of London, excursions to Stonehenge and Bath, Dover and Canterbury, and Oxford.
During free weekends, students traveled on their own to places such as Paris, Amsterdam and Dublin.
Read student reports:
Learning in London: Media visits
The Guardian and the BBC
By Owen V. JohnsonJune 2, 2009
Indiana University journalism students participating in the Summer in London program visited two of Britain’s most important newsrooms May 29 when they met with staff and journalists at The Guardian newspaper and BBC Radio and Television.
Harriet Sherwood, head of international news for Guardian Media, was still dressed in jeans after an overnight flight from the U.S., where she had reviewed plans for evolving coverage of the American life during the Obama administration, when she welcomed the students to the Guardian and ushered them to a staff meeting led by Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief.
At that meeting, Rusbridger handed out plaudits to various staffers for parts of that day’s content and asked section editors to run through the main stories they were working on for the next day’s issue. Then he invited discussion of two major topics of British press attention in recent weeks: the parliamentary expenses scandal and YouTube singing sensation Susan Boyle.
After the staff meeting, Sherwood sat down with IU students on the same goldenrod couches where the staff meeting took place to discuss the evolution of The Guardian, particularly in the area of foreign coverage.
The Guardian aspires to be the leading liberal newspaper in the world, Sherwood said, but it’s still feeling its way about how to get there. Just last December, it moved into a specially-designed building just up the street from King’s Cross railroad station.
The newsroom, centered on an octopus-shaped central editors’ desk that staff members call the “knuckle duster,” is designed to foster cooperation among people working with various media at The Guardian, Sherwood said as she led students through the newsroom. A multimedia hub at the paper is a work in progress as it finds out what works and what doesn’t.
Even Sherwood’s job has been affected by the organization’s developing multimedia focus. When she became foreign editor six years ago, 80 percent of her job was devoted to the newspaper and 20 percent to the Web. That has changed.
“You must play to people’s strengths,” she said. “Some reporters have embraced multimedia more easily and do it well, but some people are fantastic writers and you don’t want to change that.”
The Guardian is owned by the Scott Trust, which means it doesn’t have to turn a profit, but the economic downturn has forced The Guardian Media Group to curtail for the time being its plans for expansion.
Sherwood pointed to a front page story about life in Mogadishu, Somalia, by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad as an example of where The Guardian is trying to go. The paper invested considerable revenues in putting together a story that is important but has been ignored by other media, she said.
Abdul-Ahad, an Iraqi journalist, represents an increasing number of non-British reporters on the Guardian staff. The paper paid a great deal of attention to costly security concerns in putting the story together.
Sherwood sought the IU journalism students’ opinions about the climate of opinion in the U.S., especially among the younger generation.
Later, at the BBC College of Journalism, head of coaching Fiona Anderson introduced students to the developing Web-based instructional system in a session held at the BBC Television Centre.
The College was created three years ago following the Hutton Report, an investigation of the BBC’s work that followed a controversial assertion by a BBC reporter regarding the British government’s entry into the Iraq War.
“The core values of the BBC are accuracy and independence,” Anderson said. “We must get it right.”
The BBC College Web site offers lessons in law and ethics as well as developing various journalistic skills. The College also offers workshops, seminars and one-on-one training sessions. The Web site offers the training in 33 languages so far, reflecting the breadth of BBC broadcasts to the rest of the world.
The goal, Anderson told the students, is to share best practices, not to tell people how to do things.
The greatest interest recently has been in how social network resources such as Twitter can be used for newsgathering, Anderson observed.
The BBC receives significant funding from an annual license fee of £140 ($225) that each household must pay. This has helped it avoid cutbacks in the current economic downturn, but commercial media complain that the license fee gives the BBC an unfair advantage.
Anderson and Susan Blackburn, another BBC College staffer, led the students on a tour through the newsroom, which produces news for a variety of different channels on both radio and television.
 |
| Photo by Alex Farris |
| Staffers at The Guardian talk about upcoming projects and stories. The students met with editors after the meeting. |
After the staff meeting, Sherwood sat down with IU students on the same goldenrod couches where the staff meeting took place to discuss the evolution of The Guardian, particularly in the area of foreign coverage.
The Guardian aspires to be the leading liberal newspaper in the world, Sherwood said, but it’s still feeling its way about how to get there. Just last December, it moved into a specially-designed building just up the street from King’s Cross railroad station.
The newsroom, centered on an octopus-shaped central editors’ desk that staff members call the “knuckle duster,” is designed to foster cooperation among people working with various media at The Guardian, Sherwood said as she led students through the newsroom. A multimedia hub at the paper is a work in progress as it finds out what works and what doesn’t.
Even Sherwood’s job has been affected by the organization’s developing multimedia focus. When she became foreign editor six years ago, 80 percent of her job was devoted to the newspaper and 20 percent to the Web. That has changed.
“You must play to people’s strengths,” she said. “Some reporters have embraced multimedia more easily and do it well, but some people are fantastic writers and you don’t want to change that.”
The Guardian is owned by the Scott Trust, which means it doesn’t have to turn a profit, but the economic downturn has forced The Guardian Media Group to curtail for the time being its plans for expansion.
Sherwood pointed to a front page story about life in Mogadishu, Somalia, by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad as an example of where The Guardian is trying to go. The paper invested considerable revenues in putting together a story that is important but has been ignored by other media, she said.
Abdul-Ahad, an Iraqi journalist, represents an increasing number of non-British reporters on the Guardian staff. The paper paid a great deal of attention to costly security concerns in putting the story together.
Sherwood sought the IU journalism students’ opinions about the climate of opinion in the U.S., especially among the younger generation.
 |
| Photo by Alex Farris |
| BBC’s College of Journalism coach Fiona Anderson told students about the network’s strategies to "get it right." |
The College was created three years ago following the Hutton Report, an investigation of the BBC’s work that followed a controversial assertion by a BBC reporter regarding the British government’s entry into the Iraq War.
“The core values of the BBC are accuracy and independence,” Anderson said. “We must get it right.”
The BBC College Web site offers lessons in law and ethics as well as developing various journalistic skills. The College also offers workshops, seminars and one-on-one training sessions. The Web site offers the training in 33 languages so far, reflecting the breadth of BBC broadcasts to the rest of the world.
The goal, Anderson told the students, is to share best practices, not to tell people how to do things.
The greatest interest recently has been in how social network resources such as Twitter can be used for newsgathering, Anderson observed.
The BBC receives significant funding from an annual license fee of £140 ($225) that each household must pay. This has helped it avoid cutbacks in the current economic downturn, but commercial media complain that the license fee gives the BBC an unfair advantage.
Anderson and Susan Blackburn, another BBC College staffer, led the students on a tour through the newsroom, which produces news for a variety of different channels on both radio and television.
A visit to Al-Jazeera
By Owen V. JohnsonMay 27, 2009
“A global news organization needs to cover the world. And that’s what we do,” Rebecca Lipkin, an executive producer at Al-Jazeera English, told journalism students Monday during a visit to the London Al-Jazeera studios.
The students are in the IU School of Journalism Summer in London program, which sends them to England for eight weeks to work as interns at local media groups. They also take a class and meet with professionals at several news organizations.
Lipkin, who worked as an ABC producer for such programs as World News Tonight and Nightline for 20 years before joining Al-Jazeera English, said Al-Jazeera’s role has grown even more important as newspapers, magazines and U.S. broadcast channels like ABC, CBS and NBC have cut back their international coverage. Al-Jazeera produces six documentaries a week at a time when ABC might broadcast only four full-length documentaries in a year.
She dismissed charges by the Bush administration that Al-Jazeera is a terrorist channel and said that it never has broadcast any beheadings. In Arabic countries, Al-Jazeera (The Island), which is funded by the Emir of Qatar, has been a force for openness and good journalism, she said. Its Arabic-language broadcasts have been banned in some Arabic-speaking countries because they are considered too liberal.
The channel is available on cable TV systems throughout Europe and in many other places in the world. In Africa, it broadcasts over the air. But in the United States, it only recently has become available on a few cable channels. U.S. viewers can also watch the channel via YouTube.
“More people watch Al-Jazeera English on the Web than live,” said Lipkin. The 24-hour news channel is anchored from a rotation of cities around the globe, including Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Doha, Qatar; London; and Washington.
Al-Jazeera consists of two sister channels. The original Al-Jazeera broadcasts in Arabic, while Al-Jazeera English aims for “people who think and who care,” according to Lipkin.
She said she has more editorial freedom at Al-Jazeera than she did at ABC, where, particularly during the last years she was there, she was under pressure to do reports that would bring in viewers. At Al-Jazeera, she doesn’t have to do that.
Neil Cairns, a producer of the documentary series People and Power, joined Lipkin in the discussion. Since his program went on the air, it has broadcast 280 stories, many of them showing the perspective of the world’s South (known during the Cold War as the Third World).
“We are giving voice to the voiceless,” he said. The channel tries to concentrate on being ahead of the news or follow underreported aspects of current news themes, he said.
Cairns, who came to Al-Jazeera from Television New Zealand, where he was a producer and news executive, said 90 percent of the programs are prepared by independent producers who follow Al-Jazeera guidelines.
Lipkin and Cairns said one of the challenges of producing news and features on the network is that different parts of the world have different storytelling modes. That is reflected in the different approaches of the Arabic and English-language channels.
“There’s a way to tell a narrative that we’re used to,” she said. It has a beginning, a middle and an end.
“This channel will be useful for those who want to see beyond themselves,” Lipkin said. “We’re trying to get people to say, ‘I never knew that.’ “
Later in the week, the IU students will meet with the foreign editor of The Guardian newspaper and tour the news facilities of BBC.
(Note: Lipkin spoke to the class despite fighting a losing battle against breast cancer. She died less than two months after speaking to the class.)
Lipkin, who worked as an ABC producer for such programs as World News Tonight and Nightline for 20 years before joining Al-Jazeera English, said Al-Jazeera’s role has grown even more important as newspapers, magazines and U.S. broadcast channels like ABC, CBS and NBC have cut back their international coverage. Al-Jazeera produces six documentaries a week at a time when ABC might broadcast only four full-length documentaries in a year.
She dismissed charges by the Bush administration that Al-Jazeera is a terrorist channel and said that it never has broadcast any beheadings. In Arabic countries, Al-Jazeera (The Island), which is funded by the Emir of Qatar, has been a force for openness and good journalism, she said. Its Arabic-language broadcasts have been banned in some Arabic-speaking countries because they are considered too liberal.
The channel is available on cable TV systems throughout Europe and in many other places in the world. In Africa, it broadcasts over the air. But in the United States, it only recently has become available on a few cable channels. U.S. viewers can also watch the channel via YouTube.
“More people watch Al-Jazeera English on the Web than live,” said Lipkin. The 24-hour news channel is anchored from a rotation of cities around the globe, including Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Doha, Qatar; London; and Washington.
Al-Jazeera consists of two sister channels. The original Al-Jazeera broadcasts in Arabic, while Al-Jazeera English aims for “people who think and who care,” according to Lipkin.
She said she has more editorial freedom at Al-Jazeera than she did at ABC, where, particularly during the last years she was there, she was under pressure to do reports that would bring in viewers. At Al-Jazeera, she doesn’t have to do that.
Neil Cairns, a producer of the documentary series People and Power, joined Lipkin in the discussion. Since his program went on the air, it has broadcast 280 stories, many of them showing the perspective of the world’s South (known during the Cold War as the Third World).
“We are giving voice to the voiceless,” he said. The channel tries to concentrate on being ahead of the news or follow underreported aspects of current news themes, he said.
Cairns, who came to Al-Jazeera from Television New Zealand, where he was a producer and news executive, said 90 percent of the programs are prepared by independent producers who follow Al-Jazeera guidelines.
Lipkin and Cairns said one of the challenges of producing news and features on the network is that different parts of the world have different storytelling modes. That is reflected in the different approaches of the Arabic and English-language channels.
“There’s a way to tell a narrative that we’re used to,” she said. It has a beginning, a middle and an end.
“This channel will be useful for those who want to see beyond themselves,” Lipkin said. “We’re trying to get people to say, ‘I never knew that.’ “
Later in the week, the IU students will meet with the foreign editor of The Guardian newspaper and tour the news facilities of BBC.
(Note: Lipkin spoke to the class despite fighting a losing battle against breast cancer. She died less than two months after speaking to the class.)
A visit to Reuters
By Professor Owen V. JohnsonMay 15, 2009
David Schlesinger, editor-in-chief of Reuters, gave Ernie Pyle Scholars and other students participating in the Summer in London program a tour through the company’s newsroom May 15.
 |
| Photo by Alex Farris |
| David Schlesinger, editor-in-chief at Reuters,gave students a tour and answered their questions about the worldwide media organization. He said the company has been hiring new staff in spite of global financial hardships. |
While some budget tightening has occurred in recent months, Schlesinger said, Reuters has been hiring new staff.
The editor stressed the importance of an objective, global outlook in his organization’s staff because it serves people and clients throughout the world.
He also addressed technology’s affects on news gatherers such as Reuters. While data on how readers react to Reuters news is lacking, Schlesinger said he thinks that 70 percent of readers come upon their stories through searches on Google or other search engines.
Schlesinger had some career advice, too. eveloping a specialization is the key to getting a good job in journalism, he said.
“Being a good journalist isn’t good enough,” he said, nor is writing ability or other qualifications.
A specialist on China and Chinese politics, Schlesinger used his master’s thesis as the basis for his first published stories. He began the climb up Reuters’ administrative ladder when he became director of Reuters China coverage.
“The key is not a journalism background,” he said. “It’s how you see the world, how you synthesize.” Reuters hires most of its reporting staff from media organizations.
Even though his job is administrative, Schlesinger keeps his hand in journalism, either through interviews with government and political leaders, by writing his blog or by conducting discussions in Web chats.
Recently, he said, a chat on China drew more than 500 participants, a couple of dozen of whom participated in a discussion that generated several ideas for Reuters stories.
“The age of the omniscient editor is over,” he said.
For eight weeks, students in the London program are working at internships in a variety of London media organizations and are taking a course on British and international journalism.
Still to come are visits to other media organizations in London, including The Guardian newspaper and the BBC.
