Academic pioneers in Virginia set out on multimedia frontier

Drama and disaster can provide the perfect distraction from the slower, more evolutionary change that in the long run shapes the nature of an industry, a country, or even a life.

The slower pace of sociological change requires reflection rather than reaction, and lacks the wonderful adrenaline rush that lots of newspaper folks consider to be as essential to their existence as oxygen.

Perhaps that's why journalists and academics are often at odds over their perceptions of industry practices. And perhaps that's also why, increasingly, perceptive academics and journalists are working together to chart a workable course for the future.

In the near term, newspaper technology managers are caught up in the flurry of worry over possible Y2K technological nightmares that seem likely to be resolved as the arrival of the new millennium echoes around the world from one time zone to the next.

While they deal with a term destined to end Jan. 1, Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va., is laying the groundwork that will prepare the industry for a more evolutionary change in the nature of journalism itself, as technologies and types of journalism increasingly converge into new and unanticipated forms.

VCU's 21st Century News Center is a nexus -- a meeting place for the most farsighted minds from both industry and academia, where journalists are trained for what the center calls "the multiple media era."

Its three-faceted mission, designed to stretch beyond the limits of 20th century communications education, is to train journalists to work as leaders in multiple media companies, to train students in a one-year, total-immersion master's program, and to be a testbed for information technologies that drive the advancement of journalism beyond 2000.

That means that along with addressing ever more pragmatic skills such as computer-assisted reporting, the 21CNC is also providing training in newsroom leadership and change management, and integrating media law and ethics into all coursework.

The center is based at VCU because it is the materialized dream of VCU educator Joyce Wise Dodd. Her vision has been merged with a conceptual model for a 21st century newsroom that was developed by William Ahearn, executive editor and vice president of the Associated Press, graphic designer Robert Lockwood, and a New York architect, Saf Fahim.

Their model, unveiled at a meeting of the Associated Press Managing Editors association early in the '90s, proposed that the symbiosis between journalist and environment would lead to better information products.

Dodd argues that the traditions of journalism education are complicated by a woefully outdated accreditation standard and its attendant curriculum requirements -- which together provide "the barometer of high quality" but lack a provision for innovation.

In this environment, she believes, industry needs come in second to "the balance between professional skills courses and theoretical and conceptual courses." And in curriculum decision-making, professional experience often comes in a far second to a post-graduate degree.

"It is typical of universities that a chasm exists between journalism education and the practice of journalism in all forms," she said.

The resulting center provides both the physical and conceptual space for both dreams to be realized. Dodd, who is the center's executive director, believes that this program is important because it helps journalists build skills across multiple media -- both computer-assisted reporting and digital broadcasting -- in an environment that also emphasizes training (or advanced education or re-education) in law and ethics.

The integrated nature of the program makes it a standout among the plethora of programs offering courses that emphasize technical reporting skills, she contends.

Dodd is well-situated to think about the needs of both journalists and media industries. A journalist since she was 16, she has tried her hand at computer-assisted reporting and taught a decade's worth of broadcast journalism courses. She also directed VCU's School of Mass Communications from 1994 to 1997.

Supporting a dream
Dodd spent both 1996 and 1997 trying to build support for the center.

"I built a strong contingent of believers on the outside," Dodd said, figuring that people from the top stratum of the industry who "can't be ignored if they ask you to help" could help create the public relations network that would give the program a solid foundation.

Among them was Ahearn. By this time, they had met and formed a partnership to work together to persuade both the university and the industry that VCU was the best place to build their model newsroom. The two-phase program is designed to train professional journalists, and, pending approval, will also offer a one-year master's program beginning in 2000. (Phase One was launched Nov. 7.)

They started by persuading the university to provide the seed money for the program so that the communications industry would be less dubious that an experiment of this nature could be realized in a higher education institution.

They would have to see it to believe it.

"One has to see the center and read about what can happen here in the way of learning before they can fully appreciate what the program is capable of doing for education of both students and professional journalists," said Dodd.

Dodd contacted the Associated Press, Time Inc., the European newspaper technology group IFRA, and Media General of Richmond, Va., to help in creating what she calls "the ultimate partnership between an urban, public university and the communications industries."

In addition to cash for center development, much of the support is in the form of providing editors to conduct workshops and seminars, agreements to send employees for training, providing paid internships or supplying consulting services. For example, to date, Media General has contributed more than $500,000, and has begun sending its reporters for two-day classes at the center.

Time Inc. will make cash contributions over five years to support the center's development, as well as providing all-expenses-paid and salaried internships in New York and Washington. And it also supports the center with its Time Inc. Distinguished Lecturer Series, now in its second year.

This year's presentations are given by James Seymore Jr., managing editor of Entertainment Weekly, and Richard Stolley, senior editorial adviser at Time Inc., who is also a former managing editor of Life magazine and the founder of People magazine. Lectures and seminars by Time Inc. staff are designed for students from the university's honors program, as well as for senior reporters and feature writers who want to make their writing connect with both traditional and new media audiences, said Dodd.

IFRA is making an in-kind commitment of $250,000 for Phase One (through 2000) to provide technical consulting. Technologically, the center is on the cutting edge as the first site where research and testing in the use of infrared, radio frequency and high-speed cable technologies occur under the same roof to determine the fastest and most efficient ways of connecting to the Internet, she said.

IFRA and VCU have also agreed to swap representatives on their advisory committees; to co-plan and co-sponsor training events and conferences in the United States and internationally; to exchange staff experts in various areas in support of both the News Center and IFRA members worldwide, and to place articles in each other's professional publications. The formal partnership also has IFRA developing the technology for Phase Two.

Landmark Communications of Norfolk, Va., is also taking a hard look at the program to assess opportunities for collaborative work, said Dodd. And courses are available to international journalists who can write and speak English fluently, and are already familiar with basic reporting principles employed by U.S. journalists.

Over the course of the coming year, each member of the executive board will present a special "hot topics" seminar at VCU. The curriculum for both the seminar series and the master's program are being collaboratively created by the executive board, Dodd and Phase One lead trainer, Jeffrey South, formerly computer-assisted reporting specialist at the Austin (Texas) American-Statesman.

The board is chaired by Ahearn and includes Lockwood as well as Jeff Gralnick, vice president of ABC News and the founder and executive-in-charge of Abcnews.com; Kerry Northrup, technologies editor at IFRA as well as executive director of the new IFRA Centre for Advanced News Operations; David Kohler, general counsel for CNN; Jose Ferrer III, executive editor of Time Inc.; Spencer Christian of ABC's "Good Morning America," and Jeffrey Birnbaum, Washington bureau chief for Fortune magazine.

The strong and enthusiastic industry response has been the biggest surprise for Dodd.

"I had thought it would be harder to sell on the outside," she said. Instead, "top media professionals have expressed a great need for it and a wish to support it with quality time."

After getting support, Dodd considers her biggest success as having designed and launched the center -- all in 1998.

The center's structure includes four programs, each an attempt to prepare for a particular facet of a future we can only anticipate and, perhaps, manage -- a trajectory based on the information available today, which, as recent news events have shown us, can change beyond the limits of imagination in a matter of moments.

Each of the four -- Computer Assisted Reporting, Multiple Media, CAR Special Topics: How to Tackle Stories with Tough Numbers, and News Organizations in the Next Millennium -- have several courses that range from two to five days.

In the two CAR programs, courses include on-line research, spreadsheets, database managers, crime statistics, demographic data and home loan data. While each of these runs two days, a three-day course addresses desktop mapping, which helps journalists spot geographic trends, and a five-day skills course covers on-line research, spreadsheets and database managers, as well as intensive writing and application of CAR skills.

Courses in these programs offer instruction in the most basic areas of computer-assisted reporting, including finding reliable information quickly from the Web, learning how to work with people to get data, and spotting stories, trends and anecdotes in government budgets, crime statistics, census numbers, pollution records, political donations and health statistics.

The courses also explain how to turn the data you've collected into multi-layer dot and thematic maps for publication in newspapers, and interactive or user-customizable maps for web sites.

Each of the five offerings in the Multiple Media program is two days long, and includes web page creation, reporting with sound and pictures, multiple media writing and decisionmaking, visual presentation and design, and understanding communications in cyberspace.

In these courses, students use digital camcorders and editing systems as well as web-specific technologies. They gain an understanding of audience reaction, perception and interaction, and come away with new skills in using tables, frames, animation and interactivity -- and in determining which media are best suited to a story, and preparing and integrating story elements for a particular medium.

The program News Organizations in the Next Millennium is taught by the news center's executive board and top-level executives from various media companies. It includes two-day sessions on international news law and global news publication protocols; brand identity and the media in the new millennium; editorial management in an era of accelerating change; leadership, organizational culture and human behavior, and fact checking and making editorial decisions in an age of instantaneous publication.

The more philosophical of the programs will emphasize cable news and the Internet, and focus on ethics, credibility and First Amendment responsibilities that exist in tension with commercial goals, shareholder expectations, and the role of technology in growth and media company profits.

Media managers will have opportunities to gain insight into relationships between a number of variables, including the effects of shifting job expectations, the tensions between accuracy and expediency, and how a competitive marketplace that demands brand identity may affect innovation and creativity as well as company culture.

-- L. Carol Christopher

From THE COLE PAPERS, January 1999, Copyright © 1999, All Rights Reserved.