We’re never gonna survive unless we get a little… bit… crazy
I’ve got the ole iTunes on shuffle. And when I heard the Alanis Morissette version of Seal’s Crazy, a light bulb came on.
I realized that these are words for all of us journalists to live by.
In a sky full of people, only some want to fly. Isn’t that crazy?
In order for journalism to survive, and for the greater good of society, I might add, we, as journalists must want to fly.
I’ve always been sorta on the fringe of journalism, or so I felt. I’m not a reporter, a copy editor or a page designer, I’m just someone who’s interested in computers, the internet, social media and telling stories. My enthusiasm for the future is based on my crazed desire to experience “the next big thing” brought to us by technology. I created a profile on Facebook in 2004 and fell in love with social media. I’m sorta addicted to it, in a good way. The point is, I love change, thrive on it really, and I am excited about the future possibilities for journalism and journalists.
In 2006, I moved to Knoxville, Tenn. and met an amazing man at the University of Tennessee. Professor Jim Stovall and I immediately hit if off. Our interest in online journalism and the future of journalism education led us to develop an online-only news Web site for the journalism department at UT. Stovall had launched a similar site at the University of Alabama before joining the faculty at UT.
For roughly 45 days, Johnny Dobbins (a political science student at UT) and I worked on the very first version of The Tennessee Journalist. It was a crash course for me in CSS and Django. My contribution was mostly to the front-end, but I also provided Johnny with a blueprint for building my “dream” content management system.
Three years later, tnjn.com has become the cornerstone of the UT journalism program. More than 30 students are part of the staff that manages the site and almost every journalism class posts content via the CMS. Professor Stovall and I had a dream… we hoped that some day we would be able to share the tnjn CMS with other universities and build a network of college news Web sites.
And now, that dream is starting to take shape.
Last year, Professor Stovall organized a group of faculty, students and professionals and formed the Intercollegiate Online News Network, in order to “foster and encourage good journalism and high standards of journalism education through campus news web sites where students are free to learn, experiment, fail and succeed in constructing the future of journalism.”
In January, UT will host the second annual ICONN Building a Better Campus News Site conference in Knoxville. We’re hoping to have version 2.0 of the Ochs CMS ready to deploy to universities. My husband graciously agreed to help us and is currently working to port the project to Django 1.0. (Thanks honey!) I’ve also recruited super-start Johnny to give us a hand. Johnny has become quite the Django stud.
Professor Stovall has applied for a Knight News Challenge grant to help support the continued development of Ochs in an effort to give other universities (and even high schools) the ability to work with a flexible, dynamic content management system and build a network that allows students across the country to collaborate.
This is a chance for journalism departments across the U.S. to pick up where local news media may be cutting back. Perhaps academia can provide a much-needed service to the community by involving universities and their students in local news coverage. Former Washington Post editor Leonard Downie Jr., who is on the faculty at Arizona State’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, thinks so.
ICONN can be a resource for academia, an opportunity for faculty and students to connect, innovate, experiment and share ideas about the future of online journalism and content management. Won’t you join us?
If you’re interested in joining ICONN, (membership is free) you can sign up on the ICONN Web site now. We’d love to have you.
Be sure to check out the ICONN Facebook Group too.
