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This class already has offered you the innovative experience of online learning. This week, the innovation continues. We welcome students from another course into our "online classroom." Greetings to Professor Robert Rosenwein and students from JOUR/SPSY 327 Mass Communication and Society. Professor Rosenwein's class meets online often throughout the semester. And the class often deals with issues strikingly similar to those in Online Journalism. Professor Rosenwein and I thought it might be interesting and thought-provoking to bring students from the two classes together to discuss some issues. Online, of course. The logistics are a bit complicated. The instructions
are somewhat involved. You may want to bookmark them or print them out.
We will also send them to you via email.
Both classes already have been talking about news, the different ways it can be conceived and defined, and how those definitions are being forced to change in an online world. One person in particular seems to embody issues surrounding this change: Matt Drudge. Many of you are already familiar with his work. Others may be hearing about him for the first time. This week we will use Drudge to think about basic questions, such as what is news and who is a journalist? First, we should get some background on Drudge. He has been profiled in numerous publications. One good profile, "Inside the Byte-Way," appeared in the San Diego Union-Tribune. Another, "New Media's Dark Star," was published in Newsweek. Please take the link to these sites and read about him. After learning a little about Drudge, you might also
want to visit his site. You will find it at:
You are a member of the editorial board of a student newspaper. Your online version of the newspaper has links to news sites of interest to a student audience, such as The New York Times, Newsweek, CNN, and others. One editorial board member would like to see a link to the Drudge Report. Her argument: Drudge has been in the midst of some of the biggest news stories of the year. In these times, the walls between traditional news media and new media have come down. If the student paper offers links to CNN and Newsweek, she says, it should also offer a link to the Drudge Report. The editorial board makes decision by majority vote. You and other members of the editorial board will discuss the issue online this week. On the last day, you will take a vote on whether to link to the Drudge Report. Do you think the student newspaper should link to the
Drudge Report? Please defend your answer in broad terms: What is news in
our times? Who is a journalist?
We can't have both classes discuss this case as a whole. It would be too large and unwieldy. We instead have divided you up into separate groups, made up of 9 or 10 students from both classes. Each group is its own "editorial board," responsible for its own independent decision. The discussions will take place at the Online Journalism Bulletin Board. If you have not already done so, please register at the site, http://www.lib.lehigh.edu:8900. To register: a) you go from Course Listing, b) to Journalism & Communication, c) to the Jour 366 Online Journalism listing, d) click on the key to register, e) go to the Jour 366 Online Journalism page, f) click on the Bulletin Board icon. Once there, click on Forum to see the list of forums. You can click on a forum to read the previous postings. You click Compose to write a message to that Forum. When you return, you can click on Show All or Show Unread to see messages. It's a pretty good, uncomplicated system. Each student has been assigned to one editorial group. Each editorial group has been assigned its own Forum: Drudge-1 Brooke Dumain
Drudge-2 Christine Lawlor
Drudge-3 Jennifer Conigliaro
Drudge-4 Jessica McCarthy
You should first do the readings on Drudge. Then review our case study. Then post your initial responses to the case at your Forum. To do so: Click on Forums. Find the link to your Forum: Week 2: Drudge-1, Week 2: Drudge-2 etc. After posting that first day, you should come in and out of your Forum throughout the week. We'll begin Thursday, January 21 and continue until Wednesday, January 27. Work at day or night. Work during the weekend. As I say in JOUR 366, we are open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Respond to the thoughts of others. Offer more of your own. Convince each other. Be convinced. Be convincing. By January 27, we will ask you to make a decision as a group on whether to include the Drudge Report as part of your paper's news links. It's a case study. But of course, it's also a week of classes. Like any good seminar case study, you will be evaluated by the quality as well as the number of your responses. So we take another step forward in Lehigh's use of educational technology. Thanks in advance to both classes for taking part in these new ways of learning. Please email me if you have any questions or call me at 758-4177. return to JOUR
366 Online Journalism
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