Shadow a Journalist

As a visiting assistant professor of journalism and writing at the University of Tampa, I designed a “Shadow a Journalist” project that helped students find and reach out to local media professionals, spend time with them on the job, and create presentations for the class. Students went behind the scenes with journalists and out on assignment, and came back to class with stories, talking points, pictures, videos and anecdotes that ranged from professional sporting events to a radio DJ’s booth to a movie theater full of
film critics.

The presentations spurred class discussions about interviewing skills, story ideas, journalism law and ethics, and the business of media.

A few students told me this was their favorite project they had ever done for any class, and one student told me my class had been his favorite at UT so far because of this project, which he called a “life-
changing experience.”

Multimedia journalism education

I designed a multimedia journalism class for UT with the goal of arming students with skills that would put them in the top 20 percent of digital proficiency of most newsrooms in the U.S.

They learned to create and maintain WordPress blogs, use basic HTML to design web pages, manage live blogs, create alternative story forms, crowdsource current news topics, use a wide variety of social media and multimedia apps and platforms, build interactive maps starting from spreadsheets, create interactive graphics, and capture and edit audio, photos and video.

They spent weeks gaining experience with independently finding sources, conducting interviews, doing research, and planning
coverage for multimedia narratives.