Fundamentals of Interactive Journalism

By Maya Pope-Chappell

Photo by Maya Pope-Chappell

With budget cuts, ad losses, layoffs and newspapers going bankrupt, it’s hard to be optimistic about the state of the journalism profession.  Speaker Bill McCandless, Executive Editor of Multimedia for TheSreet.com, spoke a couple weeks ago and said that most of the mainstream newspapers will go bankrupt in 14 months.

Wow, what a future to look forward to.

With the second class of CUNY J-School students graduating next week, the prospect for them is even more sour.  They are walking away with a degree in hand but with very limited job options.  Not to mention the dire economy.

I’ve talked with a few of my fellow students, both in the graduating class and the December 2009 class, and many are worried.  Some of the conversations I’ve had have ranged from, there are really no options, to complete pessimism and questions over their decision to enter into the field of journalism.

Many news outlets and publications are coming up with innovative ways to bring the news to their audience, from including more video and multimedia content on their sites, to producing original content only found online.   This is where I think I fit in and where I believe the most opportunities lie.  So I myself, while nervous about my options in journalism, remain optimistic about the future.

This industry lull is simply in a period of transition.  Transition after all is the best time to come up with new ideas and be on the frontlines of changing and shaping the industry into what it will become in the future.

What are your feelings about the journalism industry?

Dick Barnett had snapped his Achilles tendon and was lying on the operating table when he realized he couldn’t call for a substitution. He’d won three national championships at Tennessee State University and was one of the first black players drafted into the NBA. But he’s focused solely on sports in college and had left in 1959 with a “D” average and no diploma. He had no alternatives to his pro basketball career.

“Suddenly I woke up and I understood that education meant something beyond just playing basketball,” said Barnett to an audience gathered at the CUNY Graduate Center for the first event in a series on “Civil Rights in the 60s.”

After a successful operation, he began taking courses to finish his B.A. and eventually earned a Ph.D. from Fordham University’s School of Education–with a 3.9 GPA.

Barnet, a Knicks all-star, was one of four legendary players who recently told about their experiences as some of the first blacks in the NBA. The others were Earl “The Pearl” Monroe, flamboyant New York Knicks-Baltimore Bullets start who recently produced the documentary “Black Magic”; Boston Celtics great “Mr. Clutch” Sam Jones, who was named One of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History; and Thomas “Satch” Sanders, who was named to the Hall of Fame for his 13 years with the Celtics and then received the Hall of Fame Lifetime Achievement Award. Together, these four accumulated 22 world championships.

But they were fouled off the court. They faced racial quotas from general managers, slurs hurled by fans and were often refused service in restaurants. “It didn’t matter that you were a so-called celebrity, you had to deal with that just like other blacks,” said Sanders. In 1961, the Celtics were in Lexington, Ky. and went to a cafeteria for something to eat before a game. When the cafeteria workers refused to serve Sanders and other black teammates, they decided not to play. Honoring their decision, their legendary coach Red Auerbach found them a ride to the airport, even as the game played on.

Among the audience at the Graduate Center was Bernard Tomlin, the head men’s basketball coach at SUNY Old Westbury, who had brought 14 of his players to learn from the NBA legends. “The most valuable part was the education component,” said Tomlin, who wants his players to find a better balance between academics and sports.

“That’s our ongoing mission,” he said.

Former vice president Al Gore implored us to invest sustainably when he spoke recently at the CUNY Graduate Center. Organizations and individuals should buy stock in companies that have viable long-term strategies (both financially and for our planet), Gore said during a November conference on sustainable investing. He gave examples of companies that build clean energy infrastructure, hybrid vehicles, specialize in ecosystem remediation, etc. In his trademark cowboy boots, he also plugged his sustainable investment management company Generation.

Photo: Courtesy of The Graduate Center of the City University of New York

CUNY students rallied at Baruch College today against proposed state budget class. Governor David Paterson announced last month $5.2 billion in spending cuts across all aspects of the budget. Of those proposed cuts, $3.2 billion are in education and health care programs.

Organizers handed out placards and led the crowd with bullhorns

When I traveled home for Thanksgiving I came down with what seemed like a cold, but progressed swiftly into a respiratory illness. Fortunately, I went to the Wellness Center at the Graduate Center. There, I was seen by the new nurse practitioner, Adraenne Bowe, F.N.P. This is Ms. Bowe’s first academic year at the GC and based on my experience, she exceeds expectations.

At first, when I called, the receptionist gave me a run-around about not having any appointments available for the rest of the month. So I just showed up and amazingly, I was able to see the N.P. in less than 10 minutes. Not only that, but she was very competent, caring and able to prescribe the medicine I needed. In fact, she had the drugs on hand and because the GC gets meds for a discount, I only paid $10. Now I’m feeling much better and am thankful for having that resource. I highly recommend it.

CUNY Students on Election Night

By Maya J. Pope-Chappell

Last week I made several calls to the Department of Homeless Services in an attempt to talk with someone about a story I was working on.  No one returned my calls.  I followed up by sending a couple of emails, and still to no avail, I received nothing.  After several attempts over a three day period, I finally got a response.  But the response was not what I had hoped for.

In a generic email sent on behalf of the press secretary, it read:

“Due to the overwhelming volume of student requests, we cannot respond to individual requests.”

So wait, because I’m a student you can’t answer a legitimate question?  Sure I understand that the department is probably overwhelmed with requests from the media, but what about being a student journalist makes me unworthy of an answer?  Am I not a real reporter?

This made me recall a time when I went to cover my first daybook story in lower Manhattan where two teachers were receiving makeovers after winning a contest sponsored by a major magazine.  There were a group of students there all covering the event and once they found out that we were all students, they corralled us in a small area like we were a bunch of herd and feed us information and contacts one by one.

Why is it that student journalists are treated as if we’re second-rate novices?  Sure, some could argue that we are, but many of us bring great ideas, stories, and experience to the table.  Yes, we may write articles that will never see the light past our laptops, but about the stories that we do write that live on the pages of newspapers and magazines or posted on the web?

Take for example CUNY student Cristina Alesci who broke the story about the FBI files kept on journalist David Halberstam that was picked up across the country.  Or the election coverage that all the students at CUNY contributed to that led to over 30,000 page views on the New York City News Service.

What do you think?  Have you experienced a time when you were treated differently because of your status as a student journalist?

By Maya J. Pope-Chappell

Impostor journalists are crashing high profile parties in New York. At least that’s what an article in AM New York claims. Although fairly poorly written, at least by Craft 1 reporting standards which shuns anonymous sourcing and quoting just one person, the article raises an interesting idea.

The idea of an impostor journalist.

Why would anyone want to fake being a journalist? I asked three journalists at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism what they thought about these posers and what it means to be a real journalists. Here are their thoughts. What are yours?