With a month already under their belts, dozens of journalism students at The University of Alabama are now used to navigating the halls of one of the nation’s newest digital learning spaces. The Digital Media Center, a $14.6 million, 46,594-square-foot facility on the North End of Bryant-Denny Stadium, is already revolutionizing the way we prepare digitally-minded journalists for newsrooms with “digital first” philosophies.
Along with housing the studios of Alabama Public Radio, WVUA-TV, Crimson Tide Sports Productions and the Center for Public Television, the “DMC” doubles as space for student interaction with working professionals who team up with UA faculty members like me to deliver instruction. In the Department of Journalism, my colleague, Meredith Cummings and I, are using different models to pair traditional classroom teaching with hands-on digital learning. Meanwhile Broadcast News Professor Chandra Clark, who teaches in the UA Department of Telecommunication and Film, is offering a New Media class in the Digital Media Center.
Cross-Media Reporting Across the Parking Lot A parking lot is the only thing that separates our Communication building, Reese Phifer Hall, from the Digital Media Center. But, from Day 1, I wanted to make sure we weren’t bringing students into a new digital space while using the same old teaching techniques. My class is Reporting and Writing Across Media, a course that since its inception in 2003 has always been about teaching traditional journalism students how to tell stories on electronic media platforms.
Over the last decade, the number of those platforms has increased even though the fundamentals of producing an accurate, balanced, ethical news product remain the highest priority. For the first time, working journalists in the Alabama Public Radio newsrooms are teaming up with me to drive home those concepts as they demonstrate the way they go about producing award-winning journalism every day. During this fourth week of the class, the UA students got a chance to see how the local host of NPR’s All Things Considered, Ryan Vasquez, keeps Alabama Public Radio news updates on the air. Familiarizing the students with the NPR format “clock” used during the two-hour program was a lot easier as students could watch how it happens from an Alabama Public Radio production studio in the Digital Media Center. From the Field to the Classroom Meanwhile, a few feet away, Award-winning Features reporter Stan Ingold, showcased the equipment used to gather interviews and natural sound for some of his biggest stories.
While using Veteran NPR Manger Jonathan Kern’s recent book, Sound Reporting as a textbook, this class builds so much on top of what one can read in a book. Instead of just reading Kern’s descriptions of how to report and produce a “two-way” interview or Q-and-A segment, students in this course got to see how Jeremy Loeb wrote and edited three versions of an interview, one of which was just for the APR website. Duggins Makes the Difference We think “Seeing is Believing” when it comes to multimedia instruction in the Digital Media Center. Each of the 105-minute classes in the DMC is designed with minimal “lecture” and maximum engagement with working digital journalists as students learn to produce a series of audio and video stories of their own. The process includes feedback from the professional staff on story ideas, scripts and final product.
Duggins makes the difference.
The “Digital Media Center Difference” is greatly realized thanks to Alabama Public Radio News Director Pat Duggins. On Mondays, he co-teaches the class with me during the months of September and October. Three of the students’ assignments will be submitted both to me and Duggins. He has promised some of the students’ best work will end up on the APR Web site and possibly air during one of the APR newscasts.
Later in the semester, we’ll rotate to other managers in the Digital Media Center who will produce hands-on, interactive learning experiences in their areas. Students will learn not only about the nuts and bolts of news reporting, but also the sales side of the business and the logistics of making a television news set, which WVUA-TV management is still putting in place.
As my class operates on Mondays in the DMC and Wednesdays back in Phifer Hall, Cummings’ Editing and Digital Production course includes lecture in Phifer Hall and laboratory class meetings in WVUA-TV newsroom where students are engaged in doing digital production on the WVUA-TV Website. At least two of my students also take Cummings’ class. So they are truly immersed in the Digital Media Center difference.
Dr. George L. Daniels is assistant dean of UA’s College of Communication and Information Sciences and associate professor of journalism.