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| Photo by Claude Cookman |
| Brian Storm (in monitor) shared advice on multimedia documentary-making with students in J360 during a Feb. 6 videoconference. |
During spring semester, Cookman’s students are responsible for five major projects: an enhanced podcast, complete with images and a soundtrack; a slideshow with sound; a video edited in Final Cut; and a computer animation created with Flash. The students also are building Web sites with Dreamweaver software. The Web sites will host their other four multimedia projects.
Cookman is quick to note that his course is not a technology class, and that the students are responsible for seeking out stories and reporting.
A nut graph is still a nut graph, Cookman said, each story has a beginning, middle and end. He encourages students to find multiple sources in their reporting.
The students are graded on how effectively they tell their stories using visuals and sound. They also evaluate their own projects as well as their peers’.
“I think the way it works and the way it should work is that what goes on in this elective will percolate out into some of the other courses,” Cookman said. “And I believe that’s happening already.”
“What we want and need is a baseline for every major to have certain skills, certain experiences to build on,” Cookman said of the need for multimedia learning, given rapid technological and economic changes in the world of journalism.
Previously, Cookman introduced a desktop publishing course and an informational graphic class to the journalism program.
And in the spirit of advancing his students into the new multimedia world of journalism, Cookman introduced his students to one of the visionaries of the field. In a February video conference, J360 students talked with Brian Storm, who created the multimedia production studio MediaStorm, featuring documentary storytelling on the Web.
Cookman scheduled the videoconference with Storm because “I really believe he is at the top. He’s doing the best right now in terms of real journalism.”
Storm told the class the impetus for MediaStorm was creating a sustainable profession for his fellow photojournalists. “I’m tired of watching photojournalists starve,” he said.
During that videoconference, Storm offered the following advice from his Manhattan apartment:
- Stay away from Flash. Final Cut is the purest storytelling software tool out there.
- New multimedia journalists need a sense of entrepreneurial spirit. They need to be active in creating new products that are financially viable.
- The stories he selects for his Web site are “timeless” in that they display the human condition and show where the human race is headed as a whole. Stories on his Web site from 2004 are “still in play now” because they retain “value over time.”
Cookman agreed. “It’s something that we all preach all the time, that students have to learn how to teach themselves.”
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| Photo by Claude Cookman |
| J360 student Anne McElherne asked Storm a question. He’s shown on the computer monitor from his office in New York City. |
Knowing their work will be presented on the Web is a great motivating factor for students, he said.
“But they should come out of here with the confidence level that they can do this,” he said. “That will enable them when they do encounter new technology in the future, which they will.”
Senior Mariel Price said learning new media is vital to her journalism job searches in the future.
“I know that as a journalism major, you need to have a broad scope of skills, and learning to make projects in this class gives me that,” she said in an e-mail. “Professionally, I’ll know how to use more forms of multimedia, and that makes me more marketable to the journalism community.”
Cookman is learning, too. When the semester ends, he’ll make adjustments in the class syllabus to prepare for the fall course.
“This is the first time I’ve taught the course and the first time they’ve done it, so we’re all limping along together,” Cookman said. “I tell them they should sign up and take it again next fall. We can all do better, and we will.”
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