A course in ‘new media business’
Vin Crosbie, a longtime consultant to newspapers, accepted a one-year teaching appointment at Syracuse University last year and recently re-upped for a second tour of duty. In a blog post titled Life Aboard an Academic Supercarrier, he provides his outline for a course called New Media Business. Here’s a stripped-down version:
- Introduction / The Internet Timeline
- Digital and Interactive / What is/are New Media?
- Creative Destruction in the media industry / A World Tour: Cultural and Geographic Variations in New Media
- How Do the Economics of and Laws about New Media Differ from Traditional Media / Copyright
- Alphabet Soup, Metadata, and ‘Web 3.0′
- Paid Content, Permission, & Personalization: Why information doesn’t necessarily want to be free
- Social Media & Virtual Words: How to publish, broadcast, market, advertise, etc.
- Streaming Media
- Metrics & RSS
- Search Engines & Optimization
- Banners & ‘Rich Media’ Advertising
- E-Mail Marketing
- Mobile, E-Paper, Print, and the Future
This looks pretty good to me. My j-school does not have a course like this. Does yours?
That does look great. I’m actually developing a similar course for the fall at Columbia College Chicago. We’re calling it Entrepreneurial Journalism, but it’s the same basic idea. I teach a lot of these same concepts in my Online Journalism course as well, but it is nice to see them bundled together under the banner of “business.”
October 2, 2008 at 9:32 amOne thing I think is missing here is building the brand of you, yourself. Tie it in to freelancing.
October 2, 2008 at 11:40 amI think a lot of us are looking at aspects of a lot of these things under the “online” banner – we certainly at Cardiff – but it is interesting to see them put together this way. I think a freelancing segment/using the tools for personal brand awareness is a great idea. Thanks for sharing.
October 2, 2008 at 11:45 amIt seems to be missing basic business skills, but perhaps those are taught in a different class.
October 2, 2008 at 11:49 amThe School of Mass Communications, USF at Tampa lacks new media theory or analysis. New media fundamentals (writing news for Web, blogging and online research) creep into the curriculum slowly at the undergraduate level. But, the SMC holds on to TV news and newspaper traditions (and limitations) with white knuckles, regurgitating students who lack a new media skill set.
At the graduate level, the latest tools and methods for news production make up 30 to 40 percent of course work, but few students dive deep and fully engage the potential for news production innovation, unaware and uncomfortable with the new tool box.
This syllabus looks like a wish list to me, but it should be a core class, possibly before the advanced reporting classes. Story structure (and better yet, possibilities) can be imagined and created armed with a better vision of the expanding media. New media isn’t new. It is called new because it is constantly evolving. This syllabus is a good example of a J school fulfilling its purpose: to offer students a skill set on which they can innovate and be players in the new media landscape.
October 2, 2008 at 12:09 pm[...] Mindy McAdams asks on Teaching Online Journalism: [...]
October 2, 2008 at 12:16 pm#4 is the big one and I’d love to see how it’s covered. The topic dovetails with a reevaluation of the expectations — both financially and professionally — that come with new media. Revenue doesn’t come from one or two sources anymore, so it’s vital to understand aggregation of multiple revenue streams.
October 2, 2008 at 12:27 pmMark: I teach the course at SU’s Newhouse School in concert with SU’s business school, where the same students are taught basic business skills (P&L, marketing, etc.) In my class, I only add the business skills that are unique to New Media (for example, Permission Marketing).
David: My syllabus is more than a ‘wish list.’ I’m in my second academic year of actually teaching it. Also, when you say it should be “possibly before the advanced reporting classes”, you might be presuming that all my students are journalists. Although half are from the Newspaper, Magazines, and Broadcast Journalism, and other reportorial tracks, the other half are from Advertising, Public Relations, Film, and Com Law tracks. Also, I disagree that New Media is just newer forms of traditional media (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrL-fLbgEts). Indeed, the Nielsen and ComScore data have shown for more than a decade that Mass Media is read less frequently and less thoroughly when shoveled online.
As for others’ suggestions that personal branding, freelance, or entrepreneurial skills be taught, all that’s fine. However, I believe that not all students will be going into business for themselves. Most will be working for companies. So I’m teaching all of them core business skills, not just entrepreneurial skills.
October 2, 2008 at 2:14 pmAt Rhodes’ New Media Lab, as we have a fairly broad ranging new media specialisation. Consequently, I don’t necessarily teach a coherent a ‘new media economics’ block like Crosbie’s – but spread the following classes throughout the year.
We focus on the essentials of online intellectual property and the commons(globally and South Africa specific); search and social media optimisation; transformation of legacy media economics and the long tail, and online marketing.
The latter is quite contentious as I have integrated the learning of concepts and practice into an assignment where students enter into Google’s Online Marketing Challenge. Learners run an active campaign on behalf of a real client with real adspend and simultaneously blog and tweet about the experience.
October 7, 2008 at 3:42 am