Convergence@UWW

Yeah, I know. I’m using the default design for my blog. Truth is, I like it. Many of the others are cutesy or cluttered. They have features I don’t need, or they’re typographically awkward. I won’t force anyone to read white-on-black type, or lines of type that are pasted on the page at an angle. I always used to tell my students at Madison, “Don’t use design elements that call attention to themselves.” I’ll stick to that philosophy, for now.

Yeah, I know. I don’t blog because, at this point, no one’s listening. But that will change soon enough.

I’m developing a course called Digital Journalism. It appears that I will be the teacher when the class starts next fall. Holy crap! What have I gotten myself into?

I am not a native speaker of this technology, but I think it’s pretty cool, and I think it’s imperative that we teach it to our students. So I will do the best I can. The students and I will be learning together. Two things give me confidence. First, I have been fooling around with this stuff and find I can do a lot of it fairly well (go to YouTube and find the channel “Webhawk News”). Second, the tech support at UWW has been great. Without those guys, I’d be toast already.

Into the void, then. Watch this space for further experiments.

Well, I’ve been doing a lot of stuff. Really. Among other things, I got hold of one of those cool Flip Video cameras and taught myself some video editing. Go to YouTube and look for “Webhawk News pilot.”

Hello out there. My name is Jim Kates. I’m an assistant professor in the Communication Department at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. I’ve been an academic for just a few months now, but I’ve had about a quarter-century of experience in newspaper journalism, including time at The Philadelphia Inquirer and at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, where I still work Saturday nights on the copy desk.

A lot of funky things are happening in the journalism business right now. Some are cool; some are pretty frightening. Some are both, come to think of it.

My department has asked me to keep tabs on such changes and to think about how we might refine our curriculum to reflect these changes. “Convergence” is the buzzword du jour; it means simply that a lot of word journalists will be working with sound and images as the Internet blurs the lines between media. So call this the convergence blog if you want. Post a comment if you’re so inclined. I’d like to hear from you.