August 2009 Convergence Newsletter

It’s September, you say, so why does my Convergence Newsletter say August?

No, we haven’t put time on hold, though we wish we could. It’s simply been a time of more changes here at TCN. Combined with some technical glitches and then the inevitable rush at the start of classes, and we found ourselves staring at a calendar that had moved on.

We will be following this in a week or two with the actual September issue, led by Edgar Huang’s article detailing his important work researching effective video streaming technology. But to keep things in synch, we decided to put out the “August” issue instead of a more confusing “August-September” issue.

One change you will notice is a new editor for the newsletter. Matt McColl joins us both as a graduate student and as the new day-to-day whip-cracker, bottle-washer and keeper of the passwords. Please feel free to contact him at convedit@mailbox.sc.edu with your thoughts and article proposals. And, of course, you can always contact me.

This is our back-to-the-classroom issue, and we have three insightful pieces I think you’ll enjoy.

To read the entire newsletter, click here.

Recent and archived issues of The Convergence Newsletter

August 2009: Preparing for a future in the convergence journalism world

South Carolina graduate Holly Fisher tells the tale from the frontlines of an ever-evolving journalism world and what she would and would not do differently.

Fisher provides a template for other journalism students and how to react and adapt to that new journalism world.

Click here to read the article.

Recent and archived issues of The Convergence Newsletter

August 2009: Preparing Students for an Increasingly Freelance Journalism Career

David Weintraub a writer, editor, photographer, and educator based in Aiken, S.C., outlines an experimental course he is teaching that is designed to give communications students a firm grounding in business basics and entrepreneurship.

To read the entire article, click here.

Recent and archived issues of The Convergence Newsletter

August 2009: Responsible Journalism in a Social Media World

Nicole White provides insight into the ever changing social media world and how journalism should adapt responsibly.

First it was blogs. Then came the rise of social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and mySpace. Now, “lifestreaming” is taking hold with sites like Tumblr and Posterous that allow easy posting of an almost stream of consciousness mélange of facts, observations, pictures, videos, etc.

With this seemingly exponential rise in news sources, it becomes increasingly difficult to determine which stories have responsible journalistic coverage and which were fabricated or embellished to provide more excitement. While newspapers and news anchors have been delivering sensational headlines for years, with the advent of Internet news it becomes ever more difficult to figure out where the news coverage takes liberties.

Click here to read the entire article.