The last blast-Assignment #14
Here's your chance to give me input about your time in the RTV department. As you prepare for spring semester (or flying the coop!) take a moment to look back on your career here. If you could change ONE THING about your education, what would it be? This can be class specific, technology, an idea for the entire school or even something personal you wish you would (or would not) have done.
It has been my great honor to know all you fine people! I will miss you when you leave here. Please keep in touch and go change the world!
posted by Denise @ 3:00 PM
16 Comments
16 Comments:
I would change the way the Journalism program goes about teachign web skills. In Online news I thought I was going to learn more about setting up website material more hand coding and developing and realizing design ideas. But it was obviously not way I thought. I still enjoyed the class I just came in with wrong expectations. Since websites and the internet are so huge right now the journalism program should develop a website class. I know that classes are offered by the Media arts department, I just wish that wasn't the only option. On a good note I have really enjoyed getting to know my classmates and spending way to much time with them...it's been a blast. I hope we all do our best to stay in touch through our travels and expirences after college.
oops..forgot to spell check...sorry Denise.
I would suggest that the journalism program spends more time focusing on different aspects of broadcasting. Here's what I mean by that:
I feel like we've spent most of the last year learning about how to report hard news. While I think it's great that during our 8, 12, and 20 minute newscasts we got to do an assortment of jobs, we weren't taught HOW to do them. I felt very inexperienced when I was putting my sports highlights together and narrating them, because I had never done that before--we hadn't even spent one class period learning about the differences between writing for sports and writing for news. It was the same with the weather--while I enjoyed doing that segment, I didn't actually have a clue if I was doing it right. Had it not been for my internship this summer, I wouldn't feel ready to pursue a job in TV yet because there's been almost no classes offered for students wanting to go into sports.
I also wish we would have spent more time in class perfecting our interviewing skills. Through this program, I learned how to generate good questions for my subjects, but I feel like I struggle sometimes on my delivery of the questions. It would have been nice to interview someone and have a professor critique it and give me suggestions for the future. I've started realizing this year after listening to the playback of my interviews that I say the word "um" a lot, and it sounds very unproffesional. I wish I had had the chance to discover flaws like these earlier...
Those things aside, I have learned SO much in these last 3 years. It's nice going to an internship, where on day 1, they discover that you've been taught more at school than 95% of the other interns. The things I've learned here make me feel confident that I will find a job right out of college.
I would like to work more on hard news. Everything we did was feature because it had to last a while. I wish there was someway to give us more practice with tighter deadlines to that we had hard news. Also, I would like the broadcast kids to get more practice shooting and more instruction about lighting. I think it would be helpful.
The skills I've learned in J-school can not be even compared with what I could have get from the same department back home. For me it was always a challenge to start talking to people, especially in a foreign language. I remember Bill Knowles convincing me that it takes time to talk fluently, and it's OK because you can still communicate with people and you won't freak them out. If I ever cover international issues, than I look at my experience from the positive side. I've met so many thoughtful and inspiring people through the J-school, both at classes and on the assignments, and made long-term friendships insha Allah (with God's will,FYI:)
I think there should be a class that would give people a general idea about journalism around the globe. I've taken Current Events class and learned a lot about world's problem issues, but I wish I could talked more to people who uncovered corruption or drug trafficking. I think my classmates would be interested in learning what it was like to report about KazakhGate or Tulip revolution, or controversial aspects of journalism in different countries. I was very moved (just mentally;) when I came across an article about the right not to reveal the sources in France. Things like that.
Honestly, I'm really happy with what I am now. I respect this school so much more now that I'm almost done with Bachelors.I never had to do something that is prohibited in my religion,and it tells me about the level of ethics of the school.
All in all I have learned so much here I have nothing bad to say. However, as I enter my final semester I feel I am lacking some skills. It seems as more news stations are moving towards one man bands, it is a good idea to be trained more in all aspects of news, no matter what your focus is. While the broadcast majors get experience shooting and editing, the production majors get little to no experience producing and reporting. It seems like the department has taken notice of this and is making changes to help future students become more well rounded. Other than that....Denise, if you could talk to somebody about dropping the foreign language requirement by spring semester my memories of college would be much better!
i would definitely have more sports anchoring involved. (big surprise right people) But the day i did sports anchoring was one of more fun days of my life. We need more sports anchoring. But hopefully i'll be doing it the rest of my life but it should be done more often in the cirriculum.
Something I wanted to do more of and really enjoyed was Junior year when we set up the mach Live newscasts with students all over the building and campus reporting live on sports, weather, breaking news and anchoring. They were fun and rotating helped me get a taste of what each type of reporting was like. My favorite was the breaking news reporting on location from somewhere.
Something I've always been interested in is camera photography. I know the program is trying to incorporate it into future curriculum options. That's something I would have loved.
The class I had the most fun in was of course an introductory class-to radio production/audio. I know it seems real simple and beginner like but it let us get really creative with sound and of course my favorite: MUSIC.
I think we learn a lot by doing the mock newscasts... those were really, really fun. If I could revamp an aspect of the school it would probably be the amount of attention payed to electronic media and softwares. Specifically, I would like to echo Whitney's point as well as mention the editing software used in the school.
I know supposedly EVERYONE uses Avid to edit with, so if that is the case, why not have a pre-requisite to the program be an Avid editing course? In my experience Avid is the hardest editing software to use for even the most simple tasks like cutting video frame by frame. The process has several uneccessary steps... when we first starting using Avid, and still sometimes now, I think I could edit much faster on a linear, tape to tape machine. Not to say that I do not appreciate the complexities of Avid... I just would have felt a lot more comfortable, and probably been much more creative with my stories had I a better grasp of the system... and if we are all going to be using it in our future jobs, the extra skill set would be helpful in gaining and maintaining employment and standing out in the profession, which I assume is an underlying goal of the school for it's graduates.
I think overall the school gave us a really good variety of class work while also allowing for a heavy dose of option specific education.
I have learned so much from this program. I don't really think that there is anything that I would do differently. The greatest skill that I think everyone here learned is the ability to tell a story in an interesting way.
I would like to see the program focus on different editing soft wares. We mostly used avid and final cut a little bit. More experience with final cut and other systems like pinnacle would be helpful. I also would like to see more focus on web related stuff like news pod casts.
Well it's been a fun ride. Looking back I would have loved to have more of an opportunity to take more of a diverse range of journalism classes. Would love to take a print class or two. Also, I have a interest in photo. I know that this will eventually change so problem solved.
Even though it is the broadcast department, I would have loved to learn more about different areas of production. Whether it be commercial or film. Also, more radio in the program would be nice.
I have to say I'm very happy with my education though. Denise, and the Rays did a great job at trying to prepare us for the "real world". I had a lot of freak outs last year about if this program was the right thing for me, and making my way through Sr year I know for sure that it was the right fit. Thats a ton.
I would change UM news to UM features. Also, I think that as a prerequirement to get into the jschool we should have to take an online news class. I wish I could've fit that into my schedule, but if it was required it would have for surely been taken care of.
I agree with Whitney, I think an in depth web class is a MUST. Also, I wish we were able to intensely learn Avid. I've taken some other classes where you just sit down each class and learn more and more each day about the program and practice with stock footage etc. I think that would help a lot instead of hoping you figure out how to do something every day. I also think that the RTV kids deserve a journalism degree. Otherwise we shouldn't ever have to write or report or do a newscast because that's not our "degree." We commit journalism too gosh darn-it! Otherwise, they can just let us run KBGA and make made for TV documentaries if our degree is "Radio/Television"
Other than that, no complaints, I've learned a lot about journalism and tv production and acquired many skills- time management, teamwork, reliability, etc. etc.
I have had such a great experience here at the J School. I agree with everyone else, more web classes would be nice, but I understand that is already going into place. I think doing newscasts that included weather and sports would have been helpful, like we did our junior year. Also, the production students had to one-man-band, so why didn't the broadcast kids have to as well? We all need the shooting/editing experience as well.
I think that learning how to write more specifically for the web would be helpful. More time with audio and lighting in our junior year would have been nice, and would have solved a lot of problems during our senior year. I also think that RTV students who want more on-air experience should be able to do it...we are all going to be in the same situation for the job market, so there is no reason why they cant try anchoring if they want to get those skills.
There are a million things I would have loved to do, but there is only so much time in the day. Overall, I feel I am well prepared to enter the real-world, and I will really miss working with everyone. In the short amount of time we had at the J School, I think we all learned so much. Denise and the Rays have done an amazing job with us....thank you!
I have learned a lot in J-school, but I would say that J-school should combine various journalism aspects... especially sports. Right now there's no sports reporting class or any sports-related classes offered. I was lucky that I took a sports journalism course in my sophomore year. After that time the course was no longer offered and finally sports-related course will be back in next semester. Although I had a chance to learn sports journalism once, I still wish to experience more about it. When I was in Seattle operating cameras at baseball games, of course it was totally different from what we have done in class, and I kind of felt like I have no skill for sports field (I still really enjoyed my work though. And I learned a lot on the field). Since we got into the professional program, we have done a lot of hard news stuff. I liked it but I also missed some creative production stuff (commercials, promos, and etc) from junior year. I also realized that although it is "Radio-TV," there was only one radio class in freshman year. I think J-School should offer courses in different fields of journalism while it teaches news reporting and production. It will be wonderful if students have more options to choose from, so that they could be confident not only in news but also in sports or radio or web or any other production field after their graduation.
I love the J-School. I know I sound like a complete brown-noser when I say this (but I mean it). I have enjoyed the way the classes are structured and I have learned a lot along the way. I really believe I am ahead of students from other schools as I enter the work force.
If there is one aspect that I feel I am under prepared in it's the business of journalism. We touched on it in Senior Seminar but only briefly. I would like to understand sales, marketing, markets, ratings a little better than I do.
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