By Mark Tarnacki

YouTube’s impact on society was one of the critical examinations going on in Jon Hyde’s Documentary Film class this semester. Hyde’s journalism students formed groups to create films from conceptualization to storyboards, script-writing, creating animations, editing and producing. As part of their learning experience, the YouTube group posted several clips of their final product on YouTube itself, and other groups shortly followed suit with student documentaries that examined children’s literature, food politics, mental health, alcohol abuse, gender identity and environmental topics.

In Hyde’s Global Media class, his students work with the Web-site-building software Dreamweaver, with each student creating his or her own site describing media issues in a selected nation.

Photojournalism students recently practiced editing sound clips to use with their digital photos for Web-based slide-show stories, which is common fare for modern multimedia reporters. After discussing readings and professional examples with Professor Jerry Swope, all 13 students signed on to computers in a large classroom/lab of Jeanmarie Hall and used the Adobe program Audition to blend and shuffle sample clips of interviews, music and ambient noise.

Only a decade ago, many of the media platforms that professional journalists, and journalism students at Saint Michael’s depend on today didn’t even exist. When today’s academic or industry insiders discuss the future of media and news, they speak of old schools and new schools, revolutions, dying newspapers and dynamic technologies that are reshaping how we tell and hear stories.

Right on top of this discussion, and for many years ahead of its moving-target job market, have been the professors and students of the Saint Michael’s journalism department. World-wise, articulate and tech-savvy journalism graduates are consistently landing good jobs in traditional venues like newsrooms as always, but also recently in corporate suites or hip new-media salons that document such popular phenomena as fashion or board and skate sports. International clients are increasingly common too.

Recent journalism graduates say that mastering their widely sought technical skills with hands-on practice, all within a broader liberal arts education, helps them think fast on their feet (or keyboards), understand important ethical and legal issues and move comfortably in the typically sophisticated cultures of their workplaces. Employers seem to like the combination.
In Demand

Consider the case of Christine Danyow Rivers ’06, who beat out 90 highly qualified applicants, some with 10 or 20 years of public relations experience, to become the communications representative for Central Vermont Public Service, the state’s largest utility.

The man who hired her, CVPS Public Affairs Director Steve Costello ’86, said the top two candidates both were Saint Michael’s journalism graduates who stood out for their comprehensive Web-based skills, solid demonstrated ability to write and their personal poise.

“Let me be clear that we were only looking for the best people, not necessarily to hire a Saint Michael’s graduate. But Christine brought skills in three or four areas that were important to us, even though we would have been happy with two or three,” Costello said.

This ability to build a Web site and then write concise and interesting copy while creating compelling video images to place on that site is a common resume item for somebody successfully completing the journalism sequence at Saint Michael’s, says department chair Kimberly Sultze, who came to the college in the late 1990s along with Hyde precisely to help the department keep pace with emerging “new media.” It was part of the prescient vision of then-chair Dianne Lynch, who became communications dean at Ithaca College and is now the new president of Stephens College.

A challenge for every member of the department, which includes five full-time faculty and four visiting or adjunct professors, is the fast pace at which media technology changes. They must continually self-educate on new hardware and software to stay at least a few steps ahead of today’s tech-centric students.

Even then, recent graduates in jobs on the cutting edge of new media can be hard to keep up with. Sultze and Hyde stay in touch with many of them and say it’s gratifying to see how seamlessly Saint Michael’s graduates are transitioning into the working world with the skills they picked up in college.

Jonah Kessel ’06 is such a graduate. He showed a special interest in photography while a student working for the department’s Defender student newspaper and Echo online student magazine. After graduation he was a stringer for the Burlington Free Press while applying to hundreds of papers in search of a hard-to-come-by traditional staff photographer position.
“Finally, my way in was to take a job near the one I wanted, then work from the inside, up,” said Kessel, who rose fast once he was “in” at the Tahoe Daily Tribune in California, where he is visual director.

“I am an interactive art director,” he explained. “I run the photography, design and multimedia components of the Tribune, am a Web administrator and online content manager and the acting photo director for a growing number of subsidiary publications.”

“It may not very easy for most people in the newspaper industry to describe exactly what it is they do anymore,” said Kessel, who already has made enough of a mark professionally to be tapped by an international press organization group to teach Algerians about media skills for several weeks late this spring, now that Algeria is loosening constraints on the press. “I’ll be going to redesign newspapers and train photographers and promote ethical journalism in the developing world,” he said.

Kessel recalled how Hyde required every member of his Global Media class to learn the location of every country in the world and to know something about its media environment. “I never thought the information would be useful, but here I am packing my bags for the Sahara,” he said. “And I think I have actually relived some of Professor Traci Griffith’s hypothetical situations from her Media, Law and Ethics class in my job.”

He said having skills that cross a variety of media platforms has “protected me from the corporate ax” that threatens many journalists these days. Coworkers and colleagues at other outlets with decades of experience, but who lack multimedia skills, have not been as fortunate, he said. “Those who leave Bergeron Hall (home of the journalism department) have a collage of skills which can make them essential to any newsroom,” said Kessel, who has won several press association awards for his work.

Most important to Kessel is that Saint Michael’s gave him “the skills to seek out knowledge and keep up with technology as it changes.” He thinks a broad liberal arts education is “absolutely essential” to properly understand the range of topics and people that journalists must routinely engage.

Hyde said he recently heard from Will Graham ’03, who works in Los Angeles, primarily doing media and Web site work for Volcom, a clothing manufacturer for the skate/surf/snowboarding market. He told Hyde that he is working on the company’s site for girls and has full creative control, makes commercials, and helps film surf and snowboard contests. Meanwhile he freelances and pursues other independent projects relating to media technology. He has shot video for fashion and sport events around the world, Hyde said.

Stefan Botchev ’04, who attended Saint Michael’s as an international student from Bulgaria, stayed in the college’s vicinity after graduation and now is a production manager for Media Solutions Incorporated in Colchester, a marketing/advertising agency where he began as an intern while a student.

He said his work is based on communicating with both American and international clients, and he uses many of the computer and social skills that he learned at Saint Michael’s. He’s most grateful to Saint Michael’s for helping him become fluent enough in English to do his present work. Like Kessel, Botchev’s job demands are diverse, including creating ads for TV, print and radio, managing video shoots on locations around the country, and dealing with clients in such industries as healthcare, automotive and marine. “How could this ever get boring?” he said.

At CVPS, Rivers said one of her first projects was designing the company’s “Cow Power” Web site to explain methane as a renewable energy source on dairy farms, which involved developing educational animations that she knew how to do from her classes. She said that while graphic and Web design is her passion, she also enjoys being media spokesperson during outages and storms. “I really do feel like I am making use of almost every course I took at Saint Mike’s,” she said.

Mark Gould ’08 became the Burlington Free Press multimedia reporter after an internship at the paper while a student. The job title is brand new, so he’s helping define the duties as he goes, reflecting a direction at more and more papers. “I really liked everything I did in my Saint Michael’s classes and always thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to get a job where I can do all these things?’ but I thought I’d have to specialize,” he said. “However in this job I’m shooting video, taking photos, doing a little writing and Web development. There really is no typical day, and that’s what makes it so exciting.”

Swope said he believes the analytic skills students develop in their classes are at least as important as the technical side. “Having that foundation in critical thinking gives them a step up on people who just had a skills class maybe,” he said.

Though he teaches photojournalism, all student work is completely digital now, unlike when he was in journalism school just over a decade ago and everybody shot film. Swope said this is the first year he has added an audio-editing component to his photojournalism class, emblematic of the way the world is changing for visually-oriented journalists.

He thinks those who profit most from the Saint Michael’s program today are “students who are curious about the world and curious about people, and who are interested in making a difference — journalists have a responsibility in our democracy.” The deeply human stories that his friend Travis Fox shared in his campus talk illustrate the value of good story-telling whatever the medium, he said.

Good writing remains the foundation of good journalism even in a highly technological world, says Professor David Mindich, who, with his colleagues, tries to assure that reporting basics are never diminished in the present “converged curriculum.” That term means that all students learn the full range of journalism skill instead of having “tracks” for print or broadcasting as in earlier eras.

“New media and basic journalism values and skills are not incompatible,” Mindich said. “In fact, they complement one another and strengthen journalism and related media.”

Said Sultze, “I don’t’ want to downplay the emphasis on writing skills, since they are essential whether you’re working with Web or digital video. We’ve also been trying to offer more upper-level writing electives, like magazine writing.”

Hyde and Sultze said the department is working on a curriculum revision to emphasize even more than now the department’s distinguishing strengths in new media, digital media arts, media studies and international media. Explains Hyde, “This really is an evolution of where we’ve been going. In order to keep up with changes, we’re having to revise what we started to always keep current and push students on the critical and theoretical side as well as what they need to learn technically.”

Hyde said the YouTube group’s work in his documentary film class “kind of epitomizes what we try to do with our curriculum – that is, combine media production with analysis of new media forms and what impact it has on society.” He said department members are “working hard to make strong connections with liberal arts” at the college too.

“Our notion from the get-go has always been that in order to be liberally educated in today’s culture, you need to have really strong focus and understanding of how media operates on so many different levels,” he said. For that reason journalism majors are required to have a minor in another discipline, allowing many to bring their new media skills to projects in disciplines like psychology, history or gender studies.

Sultze said at the start of fall semester the department counted 150 journalism majors and 25-30 minors, which according to the registrar makes it the fourth most popular major at the college after business, education and biology. Alongside the converged curriculum concept, she said, “another aspect we’ve been developing in the last decade is the international media side and encouraging students to study abroad.” Rivers spent a junior year in Ireland while Kessel studied in New Zealand and Australia.

“We toss them right into the thick of things right off the bat,” Hyde said of first-year journalism majors. A first-year course called “New Media” is “a critical look at the impact of new media on our environment.” From just their first-year required courses, students will know something about production, Web design, digital imaging and digital illustration, he said.

The department attracts more and more students who are not journalism majors, but might want to shoot video of Wilderness Club activities like kayaking, skiing or ice-climbing, and be able to place it on the Web, Sultze said.

Hyde, Sultze and Swope all said they are surprised how ahead on technology Saint Michael’s seems to be compared with many top journalism programs when they go to professional conferences and hear about what students do elsewhere. Hyde said a centerpiece of the Saint Michael’s curriculum is what might be called “media literacy” or “technological fluency,” which in today’s world necessarily complements literacy in language.

Sultze said she recognizes there being a “gee whiz” aspect to keeping up with new media production skills that students will find attractive, “but we’re also asking them to step back and think critically about how this new communication technology is shaping the tools we use as a society for conversation.”

Hyde said current technology is so essential in today’s media world that to not keep up with it is not really an option. “It would be like someone trying to teach Hamlet to somebody who has never read Shakespeare,” he said.