Lemke Ledger

Eric Gorder, professor of photojournalism.

New technology is changing the way journalists can report and illustrate stories to their viewers, and UA journalism faculty are finding different ways to help their students adapt to new media.

“One of the things we need to do as a department is to make sure we’re giving students the kind of experience that will get them jobs—and that involves technology,” said Dale Carpenter, journalism department chair and a broadcast professor. “But our most important goal is to make sure that people understand what is to be a journalist, understand how to write, understand how to research and be a reporter, how to value accuracy and fairness. Those sort of values that journalism has had forever don’t change just because the technology changes.

“That being said, there are all kinds of new ways to be a journalist and report, so in all our classes we’re responding to that,” he said.

Eric Gorder, a photojournalism professor and the MultiMedia Resource Center operations manager, is having his photojournalism II students post their work on a blog.

Students have to complete slideshows with audio and post them with a treatment and reflection on their work.

“This will give people some insight and what they [the photographers] thought about,” Gorder said.

Posting onto a blog makes it easier to store and track changes over time, he said.

The blog is hosted at posterous.com, but is not yet available to the public.

Gorder also contacted Stephen Farrel, who oversees the New York Times “At War” blog, to ask if Farrel would speak to his class over video-conferencing software like Skype. Skype is a program allows users to videoconference over their computer or cell phone.

The New York Times issued iPhones to its Middle East reporters, to help decrease their risk of being attacked.

“It started basically in an effort to avoiding standing out,” Gorder said, because reporters traditionally walked with large cameras and equipment, and using an iPhone gives them “immediacy and portability.”

“The technology is changing everything,” Gorder said.

Photographers can take photos and automatically send them to the photo editor for a newspaper, or upload them to the web.

“The immediacy of the deadline [has changed],” he said. “If you attend an event you can upload it immediately.”

Gorder is also setting up a videoconference between UA journalism students and students in Moscow, because of a student in his photojournalism II class.

“Hopefully we’ll be able to get that set up and have a discussion about journalism and freedom of the press,” he said.

Broadcast students are also facing changes because of technology.

“In broadcast classes we’re now starting to ask students to use Twitter and social media to do their reporting,” Carpenter said.

Students are also writing print versions of their television packages to go onto a website, he said.

Writing a story for broadcast is different from writing a story for a newspaper because the story has to correspond with their video segment, Carpenter said.

An advantage that broadcast students could have over print students is their ability to shoot and edit videos.

“That’s a specialized skill, you don’t just pick a camera and start looking like a professional,” Carpenter said. “It takes our guys two to three semesters before they even start looking like they know what they’re doing.”

Despite the changes and the amount of information that could be “overwhelming”, Carpenter stressed that the basic principles haven’t changed.

“I edited on film, then we moved into videotape, and now shoot on SD cards and edit on a computer,” he said. “Though I’ve gone through three or four technological changes, the essence of what we do is still the same.”

Story Credit: Jordain Carney, News/ Editorial ’11

Photo Credit: Laurel Pelton, Broadcast ’12