Jumping in to Social Media

In the beginning was the Web. Then came blogs, and Facebook, and lately Twitter. No question about it, social media is changing the face of communication and journalism.

That's why I've taken this page, which was a static listing of information about my work, and started using the blog features built into it for their intended purposes. My intention is update it with some frequency with observations about this changing milieu. (The depth of that intention and the frequency remain to be determined; right now the intention is strong to keep the frequency both regular and often ... but that's easier to say in July than to do in October.)

Actively engaging myself with these tools so that I can better teach about them is why I've also started a Twitter account (@JackRosenberry) and become more pro-active about regularly updating and using my LinkedIn account. I'll probably join Facebook as well, although I haven't to date.

So, let me start with a link to something I recently read that I see as a terrific summary of the current state of journalism education with regard to convergence. It's a column for the July 2009 AEJMC newsletter by Jane Singer of the University of Central Lancashire/University of Iowa, who's done a lot of work on digital journalism and convergence that can be found here. Many thanks to Jane for providing something that, in my view, is a really concise and cogent blueprint for how we should be preparing students for a converged environment.