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Innovation can’t happen without a knowledgeable staff, but a knowledgeable staff isn’t born into existence — it takes training and education on everyone’s part.

That’s what this video is all about: invest in your staff and make sure they’re properly educated for the Web. Furthermore, make sure that their education is a continual process. You can do this by encouraging the knowledgeable people in your newsroom to lead lessons over pizza lunches or by teaming up staff to compete on specific projects.

Investing in your staff isn’t only a matter of training, but of hiring the right people. Newsrooms should have at least one or two Web developers who are proficient in HTML/CSS, PHP, and/or Python to continue developing your website. Be resourceful about it; look to your college’s computer science department for budding programmers who have the skills and the passion.

You’ll be surprised at how many good ideas will come when you all sit down together and brainstorm. Don’t underestimate the power of team planning with your staff. Figuring out how your newsroom is going to work and grow together is the foundation for innovation. If you need conversation starters, we have plenty of ideas to get you started and even more on the way.

With more and more student journalists thinking about graduate school, there are many factors to consider in making the choice. In a rapidly changing industry, the options can seem a little daunting. In fact, this list was originally intended to be the “Top 10 Online Journalism Graduate Programs,” but further examination found that, well, a lot of online journalism programs look alike. Most require a similar laundry list of courses. They go a little something like this: take a class on video, one on audio. Then, take a class on the changing face of news, followed by one on ethics, etc. All these classes are followed by the introductory one which teaches the basics of reporting.

Luckily for you, however, there are a few programs that are head and shoulders above the rest.

5. Columbia University — New York, NY

While I tried not to include this classic in journalism education on the list, it was difficult to ignore them. Their faculty and the access you will gain to distinguished alumni still make Columbia a great institution no matter what area of journalism it is. Having professors like Sreenath Sreenivasan brings credibility and a forward-thinking attitude to the school.

What makes Columbia stand out: The faculty – some of the best of the best in the industry.

4. Stanford Graduate School of Journalism — Stanford, CA

While the program offers no specific program for online journalism, it’s location near the Silicon Valley brings to it some very tech-y faculty and some interesting courses, such as “Media Enterpenuership.” They’ve even recently launched a online publication for new media news for their students, entitled iStanford.

What makes Stanford stand out: Location, Location, Location.

3. Missouri Graduate School of Journalism — Columbia, MO

Any school that requires iPhones for its incoming journalism students is either crazy or insanely advanced. I vote the latter. Other than its famous new requirement, Missouri is known for one thing: options. Their long list of masters options really makes it possible for you to make a “create-your-own” masters program (after your complete the core curriculum, of course) to ensure that you’re learning exactly what it is that you want.

What makes Mizzou stand out: iPhone requirement and varied masters program

2. Medill at Northwestern University — Evanston, IL

It’s graduate program is broken down into two sections: training in technical skills and training in reporting skills. Does it get any more straightforward than that? Most recently journalism students joined with computer science majors to create new journalism tools, including:

• A program that creates computer-generated sports stories from box scores and play-by-play
• A Microsoft Word plug-in that allows reporters to speedily research and fact-check stories as they write them without having to switch to the internet
• An iPhone web application that provides the daily news in five- 10- and 20-minute chunks for news-hungry readers with limited time
• Two Twitter-based applications.

What makes Medill stand out: Rich history and detailed, modern curriculum.

1. CUNY Graduate School of Journalism — New York, NY

This new school has an advantage over the others – it’s brand new. Created in 2007, the school was able to create the nearly perfect online journalism program for what the industry faces today. Where else can you take a class in enterpenurial journalism and then have your idea be given the chance to receive start-up funds? Not to mention the fact that CUNY is currently leading the pack in not having separate tracks for the various mediums of journalism. With the mantra, “One media is all media,” no one really compares.

What makes CUNY stand out: Faculty (Including Jeff Jarvis and Eric Alterman), and a unique, top of the line approach to curriculum.

We’re doing it live!

Host: Bryan Murley

Guests: Suzanne Yada, Kelsey Proud, Lauren Rabaino and Sarah Wood

Summary: #collegejourn is a weekly Sunday night conversation about college journalism that originally started on Twitter a couple of months ago. This past Sunday, the organizers hosted a discussion called “Bring-a-Prof” and the intent was to establish ways in which J schools across the country can “better prepare students for the real world.”

Links:

• Bring-a-Prof wrap-up notes

Subscribe: iTunes | RSS

Have feedback or ideas for an upcoming podcast? Let us know!

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We’re starting a new regular Friday feature here at CoPress called We Clicked On. It’s going to be a round-up of activity on the website, news from the Network, and other links of interest in the past week. If you’re interested in contributing, join our Newsgroup on Publish2, save links with “for:copress” in delicious, or email us with the link and your take (we’ll be using that to craft the crafty commentary). The round-up will evolve as time goes on and, as always, we’d enjoy your feedback on what works and what needs to be improved.

In the Community

We launched our first forum this week, asking about what is needed for student news organizations to collaborate. As of writing, Emily Ingram has been the only one to respond, but she offers good tips for what a collaborative platform might need: a place to crowdsource a solution for a particularly difficult problem, a source for tips and tricks that have worked for other young journalists, and a source of inspiration so we can stay innovative amid all the doom-and-gloom talk.

Our new wiki also saw the light of day this week with a number of excellent contributions, including two profile pages for student news organizations I hadn’t heard from before: The Snapper (running WordPress) and The Maneater (running Django). We’re very excited to have them in the community. There’s also a bunch of new WordPress themes listed if you’re looking for something to build from.

Around the Network

Jackie Hai, of the Amherst Wire, reports on a first-ever student media summit at UMass. The goal was to “have people from each group meet face-to-face and open up channels of communication, paving the way for a collaborative workflow in delivering a more unified news experience to readers and viewers” and it appears as though they’ve already found several ways to come together.

Bryan Murley at the Center for Innovation in College Media (CICM) has announced a pretty darn comprehensive college media contest. It’s all about online media, and he’s looking for the best examples of multimedia, use of data in reporting, and overall web presence, among other criteria.

Andrew Dunn has proposed a syllabus for studying news business models, and it has been pretty well received in the community. There’s talk of doing this completely online, which would be very cool.

The Whitman Pioneer, a weekly newspaper at Whitman College, has relaunched with a new WordPress theme for its website. Andrew Spittle, the new Web Manager, has more details on his blog.

Shameless plug. In response to a growing chorus of discontent about the Daily Emerald, I wrote a post about the steps they should take to regain trust and learn how to innovate. It’s all about transparency, and I think such transparency could lead to better buy-in from the community.

Host: Bryan Murley

Guest: Rich Gordon of Northwestern University

Links: Newsmixer

Subscribe: iTunes | RSS

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