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College Media
Day 1: Rich Beckman speaks, misses mark
Apologies for the rushed post, but I needed to write something up! This week, I have the honor of representing The Daily Tar Heel at the annual Associated Collegiate Press/College Media Advisers convention, this year in Kansas City, Mo.
I had the immense pleasure of tweeting up with a few of my buddies, most notably @greglinch, @anthonyjpesce and @polarscribe.
But the most interesting part of the day was the keynote address from Rich Beckman, now the Knight Chairman in Visual Journalism at the
University of Miami after spending a few decades at UNC.
He began his presentation very strongly. He laid out where newspapers went wrong
between 2002 and today, most vigorously hammering on not training existing journalists in emerging skills and relying on inflexible structures and outdated practices.
But when he started talking about what we should be doing, he lost most of the audience.
Now, I’ll admit that I never really liked Professor Beckman very much. It was never anything personal, and probably fueled in part by jealousy. Beckman never wanted to have anything to do with the DTH and, in fact, tried to lure people away from the local media organizations to particpate in his elaborate projects.
To the several hundred folks from college newspapers around the country, Beckman held up weeks-long trips to Chile and the South Pacific as what they should be doing.
Multimedia is easy with no deadline and an unlimited budget. I asked him where we should be looking for examples of good multimedia journalism that’s actually feasible. Noticeably flustered, he said we should look at The New York Times and The Washington Post. Again, not the most relevant examples, considering the WashPo multimedia works he cited were from Darfur.
Maybe I’m being too harsh. I mean, the UNC projects are frickin’ sweet (though I”ll hold up this year’s Andaman Rising as better than anything he did). But one But one of my biggest problems with academia is that it is so out of touch with reality, and Beckman did nothing but reinforce that for me. Especially for someone coming from UNC, which bills it self as the University of the People, I wanted this guy to show us how he has taken his classes to work with actual news organizations, training them and developing best practices for multimedia at real newspapers. Lord knows there’s a need for it.
Will have a post on today’s “Campus-gate” investigative reporting workshop most likely. There is just a few places to get free Wi-Fi, and it is uber slow. Sigh.
Discussion
7 comments for “Day 1: Rich Beckman speaks, misses mark”
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© 2008 dunn, reporter. 
For a convention that’s chock-full of sessions and seminars and keynotes pounding the idea that it’s all about the Internet and social networking and all that good stuff… the terrible Internet connectivity is bemusing at best, deeply ironic at worst.
Hampton Inns provide free Wi-Fi, but this place can’t.
I agree. I had a few problems with his speech, and with this conference in general , I’ll be outlining on pbs.org/idealab in short order. Also, slight misspelling on my twitter it’s @anthonyjpesce. Thanks for the post!
[...] Andrew Dunn: “Multimedia is easy with no deadline and an unlimited budget. I asked him where we should be [...]
Nice site, very clean, lots of content and loved having a look.
See, this is exactly why I have a phobia about journalism conferences. And maybe I shouldn’t — I have learned a lot at the ones I’ve been to.
But every time, there’s at least one seminar that’s a complete waste of time and makes me want to pull my hair out.
Great job on this blog post, though. My jaw dropped when I got to the part about the Washington Post and NYT as good examples of what college newspapers should be doing. I know it would take the Alligator’s entire working budget for editorial to send one person to Darfur. It’s also that kind of attitude that makes journalism professors everywhere difficult to work with — egotism and a slim grip on reality.
[...] heard a lot of buzz at the ACP/CMA conference and around the newsroom about how newspaper endorsements are irrelevant and harmful. I see their [...]
[...] the College Media Advisers conference, my non-twittering Washburn colleagues, and the college media blogosphere to the general mood at the Kansas City conference this past week. The consensus seems to be [...]