great list, and a lot of the things I’ve experienced as well. The technology is always an obstacle, and the lack of “journalistic” quality to a lot of stories seems common. I’m also tweaking this year to get more “journalism” from the classes.

These students did upload their final, edited videos to YouTube, where we have a channel.

I’m wondering why the files don’t just get loaded onto a site like Vimeo. Each student could load up their project to the one account which can be made so that only those with permission can view the files. A ‘pro’ option with more features is available for something like 50 or 60 bucks a year.

Kind Regards.

Jenny, your solution with the portable hard drive sounds like it would eat a lot of class time. I hate the idea that I would have to spend 20-40 minutes in class just on file uploading!

Vadim and Cory – You are correct, they are new at all this, and that accounts in part for their greenness in storytelling. But I think also they are confused by learning the straight news formats and then trying to adapt to visual storytelling, which is more of a narrative style. Inverted pyramid is not the same “shape” as beginning-middle-end.

That probably brings us back to the use of examples — we have to show them final products that succeed in telling the story well.

One thing spans all our classes, early and late — students often do inadequate reporting. They do one stinking interview and then turn in a story. The good students learn fast that more reporting results in a better story (and a better grade). But the lazy ones keep on whining about their bad grades, when it’s clear as day that they did very little legwork.

Perhaps, once we get all of the courses set up, more will have the storytelling angle down, but it is kind of like a chicken and egg problem that we’ve discussed as a faculty at length. Which comes first: technological skills or writing skills? We’ve opted for combining them, so, as a result, students don’t entirely know how to use the skills in a compelling way. There is something to be said for advanced writers learning the technology later, as they already know a good story and can find multiple ways to tell it.

If it helps, Mindy, I have the same issues in my information gathering class (Fact Finding). Students further along know how to write stories and interview, but can’t find information, vs. the younger students dig the research end, but can’t figure out how to put it into a compelling news story. It seems to be clearly an issue of there is so much they need to know but when can we get all of it in?