It’s no secret that we’re in the middle of a cataclysmic shift in how people consume and share news and other relevant information online. Desktops aren’t obsolete in terms of hardware and software, but their accessibility in an “on the go” world is antediluvian at best, triggering a new consumer reliance on mobile devices to deliver restaurant recommendations, breaking news, photo streams, and a raft other curated content. But revolutions don’t happen in a vacuum; this shift has forced content creators to assume new responsibilities that require constantly gathering and disseminating information in real time on a mobile platform. The Mobile Journalism class in the University of Maryland’s new Multimedia Journalism Graduate Certificate program aims to equip professionals with the skills they need to reach their audience most effectively in the mobile medium.
When social media aren’t commandeering lunch banter on Madison Avenue or helping celebrities expedite the journey to public embarrassment, this ever-growing cornucopia of conversation tools is doing something commendable: saving lives. Emergency managers are embracing social media and integrating social networking into plans, policies and procedures because they’ve witnessed its effectiveness in recent disaster response all over the world.
I was in Amman, Jordan for a week (March 10-18) with my colleagues at the Center for Health and Homeland Security to host a crisis management training for top Jordanian officials in each of the country’s Ministries. I blabbed for a few hours about crisis communications and social networking, which is sort of a hot topic in the Middle East right now.
The pictures above are what everything but the training looked like.
Here’s my looklive for this story, which I didn’t write but had to use as Qik fodder for a class assignment. Note to viewers: I look homeless because I was on a transatlantic flight 12 hours before this video was shot.
What I forgot to say in this ‘fail’ of a looklive is the reason graduate assistants are pushing for more money. They say their coursework plus grading papers puts them on the same level as other university employees – employees who are permitted by law to unionize.
The College Park teaching assistants’ demonstration was a “show of solidarity” with University of Wisconsin-Madison teaching assistants.
The tumultuous world of newspaper journalism captivates Steve Berberich.
As a veteran newsman-turned-PR-pro, Berberich has had his finger on the pulse of Beltway ‘printed’ news longer than most cub reporters have been alive; he’s witnessed what the business was and watched its subsequent, excruciating decline. That inspired him, in part, to put pen to paper again, this time to tell a story about what it takes to get the story.
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WTOP radio in Washington, D.C. has more than a glass-enclosed nerve center and a lot of awards (a lot). WTOP has Neal Augenstein.
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