After two years, I am officially done.
Since my blog is about Student Media and my experiences and experiments within it, I figured my last post should be a wrap up of everything I learned and what I am taking with me to the next phase of my life and continuation of my career.
Student media is at the very least a great place to learn. I learned a lot about the industry and about life.
I learned that Journalism is not dead and that we need to change our ways in order to cater for an ever-changing audience and its needs.
People will never stop consuming and needing news; therefore, society will never cease to need journalism.
Although I think that we still don’t know exactly where all this is going to end, we do know that there is a long way to go.
Technology definitely brings a major shift to the industry and we at student media felt the changes right inside our newsroom by recently adding positions and changing job descriptions.
Some editors became directors and had a boatload of responsibilities added to their day to day activities—all in the name of convergence.
Both the news and the sports editors became directors, meaning that they would now take care not only of the content on the newspaper but also on the Web site and the radio; their check doubled and so did the hours put in.
Major print newspapers started going online; TV channels and radio stations started sharing their content on the Internet as well.
Since student media is a place to learn, it is no surprise that the “convergence” would soon come.
Point is: how well are students being prepared to the industry?
Students that wish to learn and maybe eventually work for the entertainment industry have to sharpen and, rather than specialize, widen their skills.
Today, writing only for print isn’t the case anymore. Reporters are required to know how to also write for a Web site, write scripts for radio, shoot, edit and produce video and so on.
In the news industry, the cuts are so bad that most of the times people are multitasking, from reporting to copyediting to designing both a print and an online product. Is no different in student media.
“The convergence has not been an easy transition because, as a student media outlet, we lack the resources and talent to consistently produce a quality product,” said Sergio Bonilla, sports director of FIU’s Student Media. “Resources being money and talent being experienced multimedia journalists. It’s an outlet to learn, and we all understand students have classes and other responsibilities to attend to.”
The obstacles are many but student media is where we learn on the job the skills that are going to be required from us in the near future.
You like getting your information in print form? We got it. You want to get it online? We got it. You want to get while driving to school? We also got it.
When we finally got this whole media convergence down, we were presented with yet another challenge: incorporate social media into our work flow.
I don’t think we are there yet, but I believe we are on the right track.
“Social media is so important in journalism today,” said Jorge Vales, assistant news director for FIU’s Student Media. “As a news director, I would use this tool to not only broadcast stories and links for readers, establishing a presence for FIUSM News online, but also pay attention to what FIU students are posting.”
Whether we made the right decisions only the future will tell us, but we had the chance of running and administrating something from the beginning, making tough yet essential decisions that we had to stand by day after day.
Student media is a great opportunity to put all we learn in class into practice. The industry requires more and more from us and being prepared is now a must. I was part of the production of a product that I am proud of. I learned that getting involved on something so gratifying is an opportunity that we all have, but not all of us know how to recognize it.
