A MULTIMEDIA LOOK AT MICHAEL SCULLYS

Application
for Tenure

LATE TRAIN PRODUCTIONS2012

C HAPTER 1

An Introduction
Directions on how to read this

Tenure Argument

Lighthouse Sampling
Greetings and welcome to my multimedia Tenure Application. Over
these last few years, Ive considered myself an avid lighthouse tester
when it came to new digital technologies and Im using this application
of iBooks author to make this tenure argument just to illustrate a potential direction for the Journalism curriculum at Roger Williams University.
If all is working as expected, you are holding an iPad and dragging your
finger along the screen moving through this data version of my tenure
package. My method here is simple: I want to demonstrate the potential of this new digital tool -- the tablet reader -- and I wanted to make
good use of its multimedia function to better demonstrate the work Ive
been doing here at Roger Williams University these last six years.
So, as you plod along, experiment and explore! In addition to the text
narrative, you will also see multimedia icons scattered through the data
package.
To make the media work, with the still photographs, just drag your finger across the image to move to the next one; with the video, just tap
the arrow in the center of the freeze frame and the video should start
playing. To make the video larger, just place your thumb and index finger together on the video and then move your fingers apart. The video
file should play full screen. Do the opposite to reduce it.

(Tap the arrow to see the video.) View this 5-minute

video to understand how to read this multimedia document.

Authors note: I deviated slightly from the accepted form for

this document and added this introductory section believing
that narrative thread of this argument for tenure needed
more punch. If youd like to skip directly to my teaching philosophy, you will find that it begins on page 8. My hope
though is that you will read this introduction and look kindly
upon my initiative.

Finding the Teachable

Moment

particular year) architecture, biology, communication and construction management.

Now, I remember it was a hot, cloudy morning in early June
and one of the students, Ryan, was standing on the stairs leading away from a mini amphitheater; he looked up at me and
spoke: I dont really know why Im here, he said. I mean, I
really appreciate all these old buildings but I really dont know
what any of this has to do with my
major?
What is your major? I asked
him. Ryan was one of three construction management students.

In the hills of southwestern Turkey are the ruins of an ancient

Greek city called Ephesus. Built at
the height of the Greek empire in
1 BC, all that remains today are
the ruins of an ancient library, a
coliseum and the foundations for
several bath houses and Greco
mansions.
In 2011, I was helping to lead a
dozen Roger Williams University
students through this month-long
tour of Turkey and, among my many responsibilities was the
duty of helping to educate these students.
Because of the nature of these international trips, the students
come from a variety of academic disciplines including (that

Now, it took me a moment to

think about it and I realized that
my years of journalism training
taught me how to sift through
data and find information relevant to my audience. It was in
that moment of thought that I discovered a teachable moment.
Rye, I said, What are the construction specifications for a
staircase?
Without hesitation, he looked about and answered: Roughly
8-inches deep by 8-inches high, he said.
Why? I asked.
2

Its always been that way, he said.

So, would you agree that the stairs youre standing on are too
specification? I asked. With that, he looked down at his
shoes and at the stairs he was standing on. It took him just a
moment to realize that -- yes! -- they were to spec and the
stairs beneath him were over two thousand years old.
Holy shit! he replied.
How cool is that? I asked him. Some Greek engineer set the
specifications that YOU are currently using in the modern
age. The look on his face made the trip absolutely priceless.
Now, as you read through this treatise, I want you to appreciate that Ive been teaching for eight years and that during this
time Ive had many, many gee-whiz moments. To me, the
joy in teaching comes with every student epiphany: that moment when they get it; when they understand that they are not
alone at something but rather their work inside their discipline is actually part of some greater global conversation that
transcends space and time and that now it is their chance to
advance the dialog.
Teaching! Teaching is a thrilling profession and Im glad every
day that Im a part of it.

were the frustrations. The moment I came to that revelation

came in 2002 and I was working as a copy editor and writer
for CNN in Atlanta, Georgia.
I remember exactly when it struck me: I was bored and frustrated and knew I was very distant from the path I thought Id
chosen for myself. I was standing in the living room of my tiny
Craftsman bungalow in East Atlanta; the radio was on playing
Stuck in the Middle with You, by Stealers Wheel and I was
seized by the moment:
Clowns to the left of me; jokers to the right; Here I am: Stuck
in the middle with you, sang Gerry Rafferty.
The news industry was in turmoil and the nation was at war.
The World Trade Center had just crumbled six months before
and I was simply shoveling copy into Tele-Prompters in a massive industrial newsroom inside the CNN complex. For my
part, I had the responsibility of reading AP wire copy and
transforming that into scripts for the CNN news anchors. The
rewards, as I stated, were gone.
So, as I stood there in my living room, my mind raced through
a list of possible career changes: among them, newspapering,
PR, consulting, politics and media training. And then I asked
myself: How do I become a college professor?

The Long and Winding Road

It took me 24 arduous months to figure that out.

My story begins this way: As I neared the end of my 18 years

in the newsroom, I found that many of the things that attracted me to journalism had dissipated and what remained

Journalism is a brutal sport. There are petty competitions in

every newsroom where apparently the weak-minded suc3

ceed and the more talented either advance further into the
field or move on to associated professions. Prior to 9/11, CNN
had fired one-third of the news staff and I was one of the substitute hires brought in to write business news -- Time Inc.
was about to shut down CNNfn, the financial news network -but no one in Atlanta understood that and they assigned me to
write international news. It was all very unsatisfactory.

Instant Karma
By 2004, I was working overnights for the Fox News Channel
in Rockefeller Center, pounding copy at 4 a.m. as the U.S. expedition forces moved on Baghdad in a swarm of Humvees.
In the middle of all this, a domestic story crossed the wires:
Walmart had a billing snafu at a site in Florida and a producer
at Fox News wanted to punish them on air in a way that actually slandered the company. When he directed me to write the
story his way, I refused. I politely explained to him that I
didnt want to have anything to do with a libel/slander suit
and he told me I was being ridiculous: You cant libel a corporation, he argued. I argued back.
The trouble here was this guy was a gnarled mess of neuroses:
He described himself (often) as a card carrying member of
Mensa; he also had a pronounced oral fixation -- Im not making this up -- that included brushing his teeth 17 times (I had
an assistant producer track him) during one six-hour shift.
Odder still was the fact that BEFORE joining the Fox News

Channel, he worked as a trapeze artist for the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus.
So, when I explained to this producer that my Constitutional
Law professor at Columbia University was Floyd Abrams -who represented The New York Times during the Pentagon
Papers trial -- the producer, who suffered from a myriad of
confidence problems, called me into a conference room and
began yelling at me.
You can imagine how surreal that moment was. During my 18
years in the news industry, Id interviewed Congressman and
Senators; Id spoken to dizzying list of key business leaders;
Id met Michael Pulitzer, James Carey, Terry Anderson and
Pinch Sulzberger, and Id studied with -- to date -- no less
than seven Pulitzer Prize winners. When I entered Columbia
in 1996, I went with the purpose of getting the degree and returning to the District Columbia to cover Congress for The
Washington Post. (I actually interviewed there four times but
never got a job offer.)
So, there I was sitting in a conference room with this Senior
Producer from the Fox News Channel yelling at me! Over the
tenure of my career, Id been challenged -- repeated by bullies
-- and Id learn the drill: I bowed my head down and retreated
inside myself. Inside my head, I dwelled on the following fact:
In my move to New York City, my home in Atlanta lumbered
on the real estate market waiting for a buyer. The 9/11 attacks
absolutely wasted the Atlanta real estate market. At that mo-

ment, the house was 50 weeks on the market and I had absolutely no offers.
Now, if I had indulged this producer -- who at this point is
standing over me, shouting louder than any one in my professional memory -- I would have stood up, shouted back and
given this bully exactly what he wanted: A reason to fire me.
Afterward, Id be standing outside on Sixth Avenue wondering
where my next mortgage payment
was coming from.
Clearly, I had too much to lose. And,
as it happens, I was reading Buddhist doctrine on the commuter
rails, which repeatedly explained
that you cannot control life, you can
simply endure it gracefully. The
whole experience was a desperate assault on my sense of dignity but I
never yielded... sitting, waiting for
the storm to pass. When he finished,
I stood up and finished the shift...
and another news writer got called
into the Legal Department for libeling Walmart.

Video: Roger

In June 2004, during an informational interview at SUNY

New Paltz in New York State, the chair of the Communication
Department stopped explaining the qualifications for a journalism professor and simply said: Do you want to work here?
We have an opening. I was stunned by the ease of this transition.

So, that August, I walked into my first university classroom

and began teaching. I had a fourclass load that semester (and four
Williams University preps). By October, I was exhausted
but thrilled. My passion for Journalism was reborn and I felt like a
graduate student again.

Oddly, during the Winter break that

year, I accepted a conversation with
The Boston Globe, who had heard
about my work and wanted to talk to
me. So, during my Christmas holiday in Boston, I climbed in my
pickup truck and drove down to Mor(Tap the Arrow to play the video.) This 3rissey Boulevard for a conversation
minute video profile of Roger Williams University
was produced by Lauren Meltzer, a former stuwith the Managing Editor, who -dent, in 2010.
surprisingly -- offered me a lucrative
position as night City Editor. For a
As for me, three days later I got a solid offer on the house and
moment, I lost my breath! The money was nearly twice what I
realized I was free to leave the Fox News Channel. At that
was making in New Paltz, the job certainly brought me back to
point, nothing of the joy that attracted me to the craft of jourBoston, and the position itself was an assignment sitting in
nalism remained. It was time to find a way out.
the command center of one of the most exciting newsrooms in
5

the country and Id be calling the shots... on weekday evenings, most weekends and certainly all the holidays.
What do you think of that? she said, smiling. Dazed, I said
nothing for a moment. The old joy swelled inside me. City Editing was fun. This job is primarily about news judgment and
managing young reporters. And then the look on my face
changed: Whats the matter? she asked, and before I said
anything, she offered: Take a week to think about it.
Before Id reached the parking lot, Id already decided.
Teaching for me has been a natural fit... from the very beginning. I have found that in the academic setting, Im allowed to explore and experiment; I enjoy connecting with students and colleagues; and I love the raw creative experience
one can only find on a college campus. And, in fact, Id learn
more about journalism during my four months teaching in
New Paltz, than I had during my 1,000 days in cable news.
The thing that really shut the door for me was one of the comments on a student evaluation form: This class changed my
life, the student wrote. I called The Globe a few days later and
declined the position. Ive never regretted that decision.
A Different Path
Today, I am very happy and fulfilled and delighted with my future in academia. My only disappointment is the fact that I
didnt discover this passion a little earlier. In fact, had I given
my application to Columbia University some better thought, I

might have actually considered getting a PhD in the discipline.

At this point in my academic development, Im still considering that option.
Trouble is, now that most of my research attention has turned
towards Digital Journalism, I found that there are very few
graduate programs that fully grasp the theory and the application of this new subset of the Communication discipline.
So, for now, my focus remains fixed on my work in the classroom. As Im writing this, Ive had seven years in the classroom. During this time, I have found myself constantly learning and exploring: Im reading and studying new techniques;
Im experimenting with digital tools, software and web applications and Im learning. Im learning and then sharing what
Ive learned with my students. These are great days for me.
What I like best about teaching: I like interacting with the students. I like discovering their passion for news and I like helping them grow into a field Ive loved for two decades. There is
an innocence that comes with undergraduate students; theyre
young, theyre still developing and -- if you can capture their
interest -- you can help them explore their passion for storytelling.
At its heart, journalism is about telling stories... passionately.
I think, given a chance to reflect, the news community might
one day find its way back to that place. But, for now, the news
professionals appear lost and spiritually absent from the
search for that new place -- that digital platform -- that will
bring the audience back and restore the journalist as the docu6

mentarian of the human condition. So far though, that new

place seems too distant and too far out in front of us; beyond
our reach.
Now, I know that the future of journalism is uncertain and its
unclear what the newsroom of the tomorrow will look like
but Im convinced that there will always be a demand for journalism and professional journalists. As for my part in all of
this, my hope is to send our students out into the world with
the skills to work in any news environment regardless of the
form, the medium or the audience. Instead, if we teach them
Mass Communication theory, they will be prepared for a successful life no matter what shape the news form takes.
As for my journalism skills: The skills Ive developed as a journalism professor have placed me light years ahead of the person I was when I left the news industry. I cant help but marvel at that. These days, I know communication theory, media
law and history on a level that would stun my former self; and
my skills with the digital tools are far beyond anything I
thought I could accomplish. I mean -- look at me -- Im writing a digital textbook right here before your very eyes!
But the real thrill for me is how I feel about journalism: the
joy of journalism has returned to my heart. I suspect, as you
read through this document, that truth will be increasingly apparent.

S ECTION 1

Section 1: My Educational Philosophy

Teaching Philosophy

A T EACHING P HILOSOPHY
1.

Challenge students to think

2. Press them to grow beyond their years

3. Lead by example
4. Teach with passion
5.

Be deliberate

6. Be professional
7.

Be creative

8. Be a mentor
9. Listen
10. Train them to out-grow you

With the opening of the Fall 2012 semester, I began my eighth

year in the classroom. Eight years! I remember the opening
days of my first semester and, as I reflect now on that introduction to academia, I realize how very little I understood about
the field. I hesitate to suggest this, but Ive learned so very
much about teaching and Ive grown substantially since then.
Considering that change, I must begin with the following belief: The best professors are the ones who constantly and continuously consider their discipline and their approach to teaching.
With journalism, I think this must be doubly true simply because the craft of news storytelling has been in rapid evolution
since the commercialization of the Internet (in 1996). No one
is certain how to translate the old media practice into something that makes good use of the new technologies: certainly,
a myriad of ideas have come and gone and returned again. To
survive both as an academic and a journalist one must be
adaptable, respectful of the journalism tradition and infinitely
aware of new technologies, software and the practice of multimedia storytelling.
This is no small truth.
If you compared the modern journalism syllabus to the syllabus you might find in lets say a discipline like history, one
could draw many conclusions about their similarities but lets
look at the troubling differences that make journalism a diffi8

cult discipline to teach. With history instruction, the list of the

great kings of Europe or Asia, for example, arent going to
change; our understanding of the details of the U.S. Civil War
havent altered greatly; and the same can be said for most of
the content taught in the Western Civilization classes.
With journalism, however, the landscape is in constant flux.
In just the last decade, weve seen the following changes:
1.

The birth of Facebook, Google,

YouTube, Wikipedia and Twitter;

2.

The decline of Microsoft and

the Personal Computer;

3.

Introduction of the iPad, the

iPod, the iPhone and the Apple
Apps store;

4.

An absolute decline in daily

newspapers and local TV
news;

5.

The rise and fall of blogging,

Napster and Friendster;

6.

Revolutionary changes in digital cameras and editing software.

tronics industry; we must also teach ourselves to use new software and hardware; work on a variety of digital platforms; as
well as follow all the digital communication trends including
Skype, Four Square, Linked In, Vimeo I could go on.
We do these things because we want our students to be vital
and prepared for the professional world. The tricky part here
is the fact that its unclear what the professional world of journalism is going to look like even
just five years into the future.
As a result, I found that I needed
to rethink the way I do things in
the classroom. I realized that I
needed to rely less on practical
journalism training and, instead,
give some attention to the theoretical. To me, practical news training
will serve a student for a few years;
a theoretical understanding, however, could serve them for the rest
of their lives.
And thus, I began retooling. I
started to read some of the theoretical but I also began giving special
care to how I presented myself in the classroom and decided
to concentrate on my method. There is a science to teaching
and I wanted to perfect it.

Decline in Daily Newspaper readership since 1970.

(Source: Pew Research Institute)

And thats just a short list.

To survive in this climate, journalism professors must be voracious tech junkies who follow developments in the digital elec-

During my time here at RWU, Ive certainly made some

changes in my teaching style and my teaching philosophy has
shifted as a result. Let me begin with the most important shift:
I believed (erroneously) that because I was successful in the
field of journalism that I was, by default, entitled to be successful in the field of academia. Every day, I realize that nothing
could be further from the truth.
To succeed in the classroom, professors must learn (and perfect) the skill of teaching. One of the more lucid moments in
my development as a teacher came when a professor from Indiana University showed me Blooms Taxonomy. As she explained the protocols of this theory, I realized I was looking at
THE theory I needed to perfect in the classroom. I had, in the
process of teaching myself to teach, achieved some of the
Bloom method but now that the method was there before me,
I could apply it. I dont think a day has gone by where I
havent thought about my message, learning outcomes and so
forth.
I also quickly realized how ineffective my teaching skills were
and began working to improve upon them.
Oddly, one of the first things I needed to do was change my
mind about my professional life: As early as a three years ago,
if youd asked me to explain what I did for a living, I would
have told you Im a practicing journalist who teaches.
That is no longer true.

Today, and for the rest of my career, I will call myself a

teacher.I am a college professor. I teach journalism in the
Communication Department at Roger Williams University.
Suddenly, the path ahead seems so much clearer.
Now, instead of favoring my knowledge from the industry, Ive
begun looking at Communication theory. In fact, my department chair, Roxanne OConnell, spoke so often about Marshall McLuhan, that I decided I needed to review his research
and bought a copy of Understanding Media.
That text changed my mind about a lot of things. Lets talk
about a few of them.
As I said, the news industry is in complete and utter turmoil.
There is a struggle between the old and the new over how to
present news in a world were fewer and fewer people are reading newspapers.
And while there are many possible solutions, one of the looming problems is a systemic one: The news industry is so entrenched in its ways, there is a complete paralysis of creative
thought. Editors and producers are so busy performing the
day-to-day business of their craft that few of them have little
time, or for that matter, regard for the long-term repercussions caused by their collective inaction.
As I read through McLuhans theories, I realized that he had
created a language of media theory and that he was assigning
ideas defining the various media as either hot or cool. Sud10

denly, I found myself beginning to understand why certain aspects of my professional journalism career worked and while
other points failed. I also concluded that I spent far too much
time in the ephemeral world of the industry.
Now, I know this also seems very minor but it was this series
of ideas that forced me to redefine my professional persona.

More surprising to me was the opportunity to travel. I knew

Id always see the world, but for some reason thought that my
work as a journalist would be my ticket to travel abroad. It
wasnt until I was invited to participate in the Middle East
Partnership Initiative that I realized Id have a chance to learn
about other nations and travel internationally.

During the last few years, my department chairman, Roxanne

I like being college professor. The
OConnell, has been encouraging
academic world rewards creative
me to attend some of these industhinkers. The classroom is a fruitful
The Feed: Resume Reel
try conferences. On a few occaplace for conversation and debate.
sions, I also had a chance to share
And in many ways, I believe my life
my ideas as a speaker during one of
in the academy is proving to be
the panel discussions. What Im dismuch more rewarding and successcovering is that really is a world of
ful.
knowledge out there; some of it you
have to find on your own, but someI underestimated the importance of
times, the discovering comes from
research. Oddly, Ive always had a
sharing conversations with peers
curious nature and, in fact, my web
(Press the Arrow to see the video.) In the Fall
inside the discipline.
presence which includes a series
2007, I launched The Feed, a student-run video
of YouTube accounts, three blogs,
news group that published over two dozen videos
And whats best of all, are those moand a Vimeo page are all really
during its three-year run. This is the first groups rements during a particularly lucid
sume
reel.
part of the digital laboratory Im depresentation by an industry expert
veloping.
when my mind begins racing, brimming with thoughts of my own. Life, I realize, continues to be
It works this way: With every new digital tool, I try little exthis great exploration.
periments testing their creative functionality. When the work
is finished, I publish the results online knowing that the global
community will offer input and advice. In many ways, the publics response has been lucid and candid.
11

Finally, in the classroom, Ive began moving away from the

trappings of the inexperienced teacher; Im no longer attempting to entertain my students; instead, Im working to engage
them and challenge them to think. In the classroom, Im in
charge and they know it. Ive realized that its not my responsibility to befriend them, entertain them, manage them, or coddle them; instead, Im there to make them think, to challenge
their conventions and to force them to work outside their comfort zones.
In time, theyll realize that my purpose here is to nudge them
forward, arming them with the knowledge, skills and work
habits that will better prepare them for the world ahead of
them. Finally, Im realizing that our purpose isnt to prepare
them for the first job out of college; instead, were here preparing them for a lifetime of successes both personal and professional.

12

S ECTION 2

Course Descriptions

Section 2: Course Descriptions

An Overview

Scullys course load over the last five years:

This is an interactive image: Just sweep your finger over

the image and you will see a rundown, semester by semester,
of all the classes I taught and when I taught them.
1 of 16

I was hired ahead of the Fall 2007 semester and was surprised
to find that, by Fall 2008, I would be the only full-time faculty
member working the journalism curriculum. (Things would
be this way for another two years.) It was obvious that I was
going to have to make some quick decisions about how to proceed, and those decisions included a rapid evaluation of the
course catalog and the structure of the existing classes. For
the most part, I found the existing curriculum to be adequate
but in immediate need of updating. So, as I read through the
course catalog, I began writing syllabi that reflected the outlines of the catalog descriptions but also reflected my teaching
strengths.
I also moved myself into the middle of the curriculum by
teaching News Writing & Reporting. It didnt take me long to
realize that this class was the cornerstone of the entire journalism curriculum; it was also a portal that every journalism student had to pass through. So, I dialed up the rigor in this
class, and raised the pressure on the students. As a result, the
threat of this class began working as a filter pressing the
less-engaged students into other disciplines; that action allowed me to focus my rigor and passion on the students who
wanted to learn the craft of journalism. The results have been
astounding.
13

In the Fall 2010, I was joined by my teaching partner, Paola

Prado, and the pressures on me to teach across the curriculum
eased substantially.

Course Load from 2007 to the Present:

COMM 111, Writing for Mass Media: This 100-level Communications course is designed to introduce Media Communication majors with a concentration in Journalism and Public
Relations on the basics of news writing and reporting. From the moment
they walk into the classroom, I teach
them about deadlines, writing for a
mass audience, and the importance
of accuracy. Along the way, I press
them to learn how to interview subjects, find sources, shape a story, and
write. During the 15-week semester, I
show them a variety of writing styles
including one for the Associated
Press, press releases, television, and
the Internet. During the course of the
semester, students were required to interview cops, faculty
members, international students, and so forth.
Goals: The purpose here is to teach them how to write for a
professional setting. I want my journalism students to capable
of finding successes in a newsroom and I want my PR students to know how to fashion press releases. Beyond that, I
want them to know the protocols of the professional world in-

cluding one of the most important: Meeting deadlines. As for

how this class fits into the academic program, I see this class
as the gateway class for the entire curriculum. Believe this,
Ive decided to make this course very rigorous. The idea, simply, is to encourage students to either commit or resign from
the Communications curriculum.
Method: I walk into this class with a sharp syllabus and a
hard, rigorous presence. From the onset, I tell them they are
not allowed to be late for class; they
cannot miss deadlines; they must silence their cellphones; and they must
be prepared for the hardest class of
the curriculum. I make them memorize the First Amendment; Ive begun
quizzing them weekly on the content
of the textbook and on the news of
the day; and I start moving them
through the basic news reporting
skills: They learn to interview, they
learn to research, they learn to shape
a story, and then they write. This
class is all about writing, and writing on deadline. With each
essay, I line edit every word, a process that takes 30minutes per paper, 24 papers, = 12 hours. Theyll write five papers by the end of the semester. When Im done with them,
they will no how to write.
Student Performance: For the last 8 years, I would describe my teaching style as having evolved from a soft touch
14

to more of a hard-nosed taskmaster. Four years ago, I began

toughening my presence in the classroom believing that they
needed to be better-prepared for the working world. These students need to realize that very soon there will be a prospective
employer looking across a desk from them hoping they have
the skills to succeed as professional journalists and PR executives. These students need to be prepared for that moment.
Evaluating Achievement: In this entry-level class, I have
found that there are three ways to measure their achievement;
first, I look at their written work; second, I engage them during classroom conversations and ask them pointed questions;
finally, I watch them apply their skills during classroom exercises and in their course work. Competent students develop a
confidence that tends to become more apparent as the semester moves forward.
COMM 430: Special Topics: Journalism Basics: This
class was actually a prototype for a newly-created class called
JOUR 170: News Writing & Reporting I and was designed to
offer the cub reporter experience. In todays industry, many
editors expect new reporters to have basic skills, hopeful that
they picked those skills up as college students.
Goals: The purpose of this class is to hammer the student
with basic reporting, writing and copy editing skills. They will
perfect the Inverted Pyramid style, and will appreciate the AP
Style Guide. They will also perfect their writing, reporting and
copy editing skills. We created this class because I believed

there was a serious gap between COMM 111 and COMM 280,
Feature Writing.
Method: The course begins with communication history and
theory and before moving into rigorous study of the process of
news writing. Students attend town council meetings, talk to
police officers, you meet business and political leaders. When
theyre finished, they will have the basic skills necessary to
work in the professional news world.
Student Performance: Students will be encouraged to explore story ideas on and off campus. They will be pressed to
reach beyond their comfort zones and to be enterprising. Students will engage conversations with law enforcement and
elected officials. They will generate a series of stories that often make up the cub reporter experience.
Evaluating Achievement: With each writing assignment,
the student must demonstrate his/her development as a journalist. They will be assessed on their ability to secure proper
interviews, on their writing and copy editing, and their ability
to shape and format a story.
COMM 280, Feature Writing: After taking COMM 111,
this is the next step in the writing progression. I tell students
that they need to learn how to write breaking news and general news but they WANT to learn how to write features because this is the dessert of journalism. Personally, I love feature writing and when I teach, this fact is apparent. Now, during the 15-week semester, I require them to write at least five
700-word stories about a variety of subjects. I also teach them
15

several key feature writing styles including the most important one: the Wall Street Journal style, which is simply when
you take a national issue and localize it. When writing about
the war on terror, for example, the students need to find someone in Bristol with ties to the conflict; subjects include ROTC
students, parents with children in the conflict, and so forth.

Method: I begin each semester by appealing to their passion

for writing. One does not volunteer to take a Feature Writing
class if you dont love writing. I begin the semester by drilling
them on the basics of the Associated Press style simply because I believe they come to me underserved and must be
drilled properly. From there, I move them into other writing
styles. Before I have them write a profile, I show them a wonGoals: If they can learn to write in the Wall Street Journal
derfully written sample of a profile. Then I point out why it
style, they can land a job anyworks. From there, I have them
where in the magazine industry.
shop around for a story idea,
Feature Writing
To my thinking, the WSJ is the
which they must bring to me for
Powerpoint lecture on building a feature profile
workhorse of all long-form feaapproval. Once approved, they
ture writing and -- finely trained
write. Theyll write five essays by
-- having this tool in their writing
the semesters end.
mind will only help them find successes out there in the publishing
Student performance: Ive
world. As for where this class
been dismayed to learn that
stacks up in the curriculum, I bemany of these students reach me
lieve that the Internet is destroywithout the basics of news reporting the daily newspaper industry
ing. They dont know how to
and the new journalism model
track sources, they dont know
(Press the arrow to view the video.) This Powerwill include two models: An
how to engage and interview
point lecture is from the 2nd week of Feature Writing.
Internet-based breaking news enstrangers, and they dont undervironment supplemented with
stand the need to source stories.
companion weekly magazines written to offer depth and perBeyond that, they dont know the Associated Press style,
spective. To succeed, our students need to learn how to prowhich is an integral part of the news/PR industry. I open the
duce news for an electronic community AND to write longer,
class with a quick refresher on these basics and then I press
more-thoughtful features for a weekly magazine world.
them to learn to shape feature stories. I taught this class last
Spring, with moderate success: I found that if I encourage
16

them to write about their passions, they tend to be more engaged. There is talent in this student body. My purpose is to
find those students and give them the skills to succeed.
Evaluating Achievement: Feature writing is a complex
form of advanced story telling. As a feature writer develops,
he/she learns the things needed to tell affective and important
stories in compelling ways. So, I measure the success of the
student by the advances they make in their feature writing. As
the semester evolves, the course work develops a complexity;
obviously, the students writing should reflect that complexity.
COMM 290, Copy Editing & Layout: Copy editing and
page design and layout are two very distinctive operations
inside a traditional newsroom environment. Copy editors
check stories for spelling, grammar, style, factual accuracy
and accuracy; page designers plan how the stories, photographs and graphics coordinate with each other through the
newspaper. Oddly, this class is horribly dated simply because
it was initially engineered for a newspaper environment.
In spite of this, when this class came around in the academic
cycle, I decided to teach it. I did so for several reasons. First,
the adjunct, who taught this class for the three previous years,
was doing a miserable job; second, many of the students
needed this class to round off their requirements for the Journalism curriculum; finally, I saw an opportunity to experiment and explore.
Goals: I decided to use this class as a forum where we discussed how many of the established news design and editing

techniques are being employed in the digital era. To do this,

students are taught the history of newspapering; they are also
taught how to check and recheck stories for spelling, grammar
and accuracy. They must learn to identify libel. Finally, they
must learn the skills of headline writing, photo placement and
design, topography and page design.
Method: This class is cut into two distinctive halves. During
the first eight weeks, we focus on copy editing; during the remaining seven weeks, we work on page design. Throughout
the semester, I use a series of participatory lectures to engage
the students. At the beginning of the semester, I require them
to READ the Associated Press Style Manual because this dictionary is key to the news and PR industries. I then quiz them
on each chapter.
During the second half of the semester, we explore headline
writing and other publishing techniques. In one example, I
ask them to create names for their own newspaper: Typically,
they choose names that includes the words chronicle or
times or herald or press, and I ask them why theyre so
married to ancient ideas? And then they respond with their
creativity. One student called her newspaper: She Said
What? Of course, my point here is that things dont need to
be the way theyve always been.
I do this and a series of other drills because I want them to understand that the most dangerous thing they can do to themselves is enter the news industry as analog thinkers, or journalists who only think about the newspaper environment. In17

stead, I want them to be dynamic and courageous and thoughtful: I want them to challenge convention and I want them to
have the talent to back up their creativity. In short, Im creating digital innovators.

COMM 310, Mass Media Law and Ethics: I was a little

surprised when the department assigned me to teach this theory class after three successful years teaching lab classes. But I
accepted the challenge and taught it with great energy. Armed
with a solid textbook on Media Law, I instructed the students
Student Performance: Students are evaluated on their
to read chapters in the textbook; from there, Id lecture on the
class participation; and the eagerness with which they engage
related subject matter and then quiz them. I quizzed them
new ideas and new concepts and apply them. Students are
EVERY Friday during the course of
quizzed constantly; they must also
the semester. I did this because I
read the 9/11 Commission Report
Copy Editing & Layout
wanted them to be engaged with the
and write collaboratively with their
Powerpoint lecture on photography
curriculum and the class discussion.
peers; finally, they must execute a seDuring the course of the 15-week series of newspaper design and layout
mester, I spoke to them about the pudrills.
rity of the First Amendment (which
I made them memorize), I explained
Evaluating Achievement: The
the dynamics of open government,
overall purpose of this class is to simthe purpose of the Freedom of Inforply demonstrate to them that the
mation Act, and so forth. We also
work they fail to do as writers, must
spoke extensively about the case law
be done by copy editors. As a result,
regarding the First Amendment
I force them to write and then selfstarting with Marbury v. Madison; I
edit and then peer-review their classworked out from there touching on
mates work. Finally, I edit stories in
New York Times v. Sullivan, the Penfront of them just to demonstrate
(Tap the arrow to watch the video.) I use visuals to illustrate
rule of thirds and other photo styles to show students how one
tagon Papers, Watergate and so
how monstrous a task copy editing
powerful photograph can help tell one incredible news story.
forth. I also made a point of talking
can be. Students are graded on their
with them about intellectual propdevelopment as writers, and copy
erty rights, pornography, public decency and so on.
editors and creative thinkers.

18

Goals: Our growing Internet society is blurring the lines between fair and unfair; students come to Roger Williams University believing that anything found on the Internet is free
for the taking. The danger in all of that is the fact that were
training them to create content, but as content providers they
have little or no respect for Intellectual Property Rights. In
this class, I begin by teaching them about the power and the
necessity of the First Amendment. From there, I make them
understand government and its responsibility to them. Finally, I tell show them how profitable Intellectual Property
has been in the past and why corporate groups including the
RIAA are on a crusade to defend and protect those revenues.
In the scope of the program, I want them to understand there
are legal and ethical boundaries regarding digital content and
impress upon them the need to be aware of the legal ramifications for their actions both professional and otherwise.
Method: Oddly enough, there are many great stories attached to First Amendment law. I use these stories to earn
their interest as we move through the text. And to keep them
on track, I constantly quiz them. To make the class discussions work, I often pull them into the conversation and make
them take a position. Argue for the defendant here, Ill say
to one. And you, you make the case for the government. This
class, by week six, is often a lot of fun.
Student performance: Success in this class amounts to
class participation. If you talk, if you share your ideas, if you
engage in debate, you typically enjoy this class. Now, this class
usually has unwieldy enrollments of 30+ students, which

makes getting to know them difficult. Still, Ive been surprised

and encouraged by their interest in this class. Ive taught
FOUR sections of this class and ALL have been successful.
Evaluating Achievement: Quizzes, lots of quizzes. I
quizzed the students every week. Each quiz reflected the content of the previous class sessions and the case law introduced
in the readings. By the end of the semester, each student
should have a very strong understanding of Journalism case
law and media ethics.
COMM 320 Broadcast News: I taught this class for the
first time during Spring 2010 and used this class to build a
foundation for COMM 355 and COMM 455. The idea here is
to get them to understand that Digital Journalism is part of
the natural evolution of Broadcast news production.
Goals: I want my students to appreciate the roots of television and radio. I want them to know who Philo Farnsworth
was and I want them to follow the growth of mass media from
radio into television and ultimately into cable news and beyond. I want them to be able to identify Edward R. Murrow,
Walter Cronkite, Morley Safer and Christiane Amanpour. I
also want them to know the basics of television news field production techniques.
Method: I open the class with the power of mass media. We
start with newspapers and move into radio and television. We
speak about the history including the highs and lows of broadcast news. From there, we move into field production. I arm
19

them with Panasonic Lumix ZS-10 HD video/still camera and

tripods and I have them learn to use these tools in the field.
Student Performance: The students surprised me with
their interest in the curriculum. They appreciated the history,
they loved the old stories about the founders of the modern
broadcast news community, and they met my expectations
nicely. When we moved into the production component, they
learned to appreciate the process of producing a field news
package; they also developed an eye for news judgment and
video and audio standards.
Evaluating Achievement: Students are asked to produce a
series of news packages to demonstrate theyre understanding
of television news writing, reporting and editing. They are also
quizzed on their knowledge of basic TV news trends, the formation of modern television, and the organizations that are
now producing news content for television.
COMM 355 Digital Journalism I: I was hired by Roger
Williams University to introduce digital media concepts to the
curriculum on campus. When I arrived on campus, I was surprised to learn that the university had NO video cameras or editing suites and that I would be starting from scratch. Faced
with those shortcomings, I pressed forward with this class and
was surprised to learn that it filled up within hours of its offering.
Roughly a week before the semester started, a friend told me
about the Flip Video Ultra, an aim-and-shoot video camera,
one could purchase for $150. I immediately sprinted off to

Wal-Mart and bought one hoping it would help fill the video
equipment void in the curriculum. It did more than that.
Within hours of buying the unit, I rewrote my syllabus entirely and emailed the students directing them to go out and
buy a Flip Video Ultra ahead of the semester. Little did I realize that wed all love the unit.
From those humble beginnings, this class remained true to its
mission. Digital Journalism, to me, is about using new electronic tools to tell news stories (with a careful eye on 400years of news-gathering tradition.) To teach this class, I broke
the students into groups of three and directed each team to
pick a topic and produce a TV news story nearly every week.
Now, each team was assigned a reporter, a producer and a
camera operator. Working together, they had to chose a story,
find sources, conduct interviews, shoot B-roll, write and track
scripts, produce the piece and then publish it on Facebook
and Youtube. Now, I find, with a 15-semester, Ill be lucky if I
can get each team to produce five packages; during the Spring
semester, I got them to produce six. I was very pleased. Having proved themselves with the disposable cameras, I now
move them on to the Canon Rebel T3i video/still cameras.
These cameras are more sophisticated, which means that they
learn to produce a higher professional-grade video product.
Also, with the growth and interest in Social Media, Ive added
a lecture component to the class that includes information
about Twitter, Facebook and FourSquare simply because
many of my former students are using these tools in professional settings.
20

Goals: Because of the ever-changing nature of the news indusStudent performance: This production course builds from
try, this class is in a constant state of evolution; in spite of this
a simple base and moves upward into more difficult technolo(or because of it), Digital Journalism I is turning into one of
gies. I realize that no ONE person has the intellectual ability
the most important classes in the Communication Departto excellent at all aspects of TV news production. Instead, I asment curriculum. This class is about the future of media. This
sign them to work in groups of three producer, cameraperclass is designed to punch up their skills, introduce them to
son, reporter and I measure their successes on the ability to
new technologies, and spark
work as a team. Last Spring,
their imaginations to consider
these students were very enJoanna speaks about her love of tennis
the things that could be up
gaged, and fun and funny, and
ahead.
surprisingly enterprising. Of
the 19 students, I had one lazy
Method: This is a wonderful
slacker. The remainder worked
workshop class. I open with an
hard (in a class that hadnt fully
overview of what is and isnt
developed in my head). I have
working on the Internet and
high hopes for the current and
then I show them why. From
succeeding classes.
there, I give them the eyes to
see what works and what
Evaluating Achievement:
doesnt and we move forward
This class is designed to encourfrom there. During the course
age students to explore the creaof the semester, we work on
tive side of news storytelling.
(Tap the arrow to watch the video.) In the Spring 08, my students and I
video news packages, we write
During the course of each seexperimented with video storytelling and we shot this mini-biography together.
a Wiki textbook, we craft blogs,
mester, students are taught to
This was my first breakthrough teaching Digital Journalism.
and we talk about how it all
appreciate a series of video techworks or doesnt work. By the end of the semester, weve creniques that start with the basics and move into more adated a cumulative digest of content and musings that should
vanced presentations. Students are evaluated on their ability
a stranger stumble upon them he could reconstruct the patto adapt to visual story telling; they are also graded on their
tern and progress of the class.
proficiency with the video production tools.

21

COMM 370 News Writing & Reporting: As my knowledge of the journalism curriculum grew here at Roger Williams University, I was surprised to discover this class in the
catalog. In fact, if it hadnt existed, I would have created it.
News Writing & Reporting is a mid-level, reporter skills-level
class. Its purpose is to simply show the students how to be reporters and then send them out into the field to prove they
have the skills to succeed in the professional world. To me,
this is the centerpiece of the Journalism curriculum and I tell
the students that its easily the toughest class in the major
and I teach it this way.
Goals: Every journalist needs to know how to find information, speak to sources, craft a story idea, write it, edit it and respond to the public reaction. This class forces them to learn
in great detail everything there is to know about one subject.
To get there, they must develop a source list, speak with experts and begin writing the piece. Along the way, they learn to
work with source material, experts and an editor. Right now,
this class is engineered as a triage class designed to strictly define the essential skills needed to succeed as a professional
journalist. In years past, given the structure of the journalism
curriculum and the limited number of full-time faculty members, many of the students were slipping through the lowerdivision classes having dodged their responsibilities. In response, I sculpted this class as a boot camp: They must know
how to research, they must know how to report, they must
know how to write and edit, and they must know how to tell
long-form stories. They get that training here.

N EWS W RITING & R EPORTING T HESIS T OPICS :

Country Music in New England

Crystal Meth
The Deaf in America
Federal Hill
Fantasy Football
Fashion as Art
The Hartford Whalers
Native American Culture
Providence Hipster Culture
ROTC
Skin Cancer
Title IX
Urban Sprawl

Method: This course works this way: One topic, 15-weeks,

10,000 words. This is a thesis class where students must
choose a topic and begin the process of understanding everything there is to know about this class. They do this through
extensive research. Once they understand WHAT theyre writing about, they must begin finding experts to help explain the
theories around the piece. During this reporting component,
they must look beyond their comfort zones and reach out to
important and knowledgeable experts. Next comes the writing: I require them to write THREE drafts of this paper. With
each draft, I line edit correcting spelling, grammar and AP
22

style; I also comment on the quality of the research, reporting

and writing. With each succeeding draft, they either improve
upon the work, or receive a lower grade. For the faculty member, the process of line editing is menacing but the final yield
is worth it: The student learns to be a journalist. By the third
draft, this paper will be in firm shape. But the larger point
here is the fact that each student will know how to find information, speak with experts and shape the written work into a
magazine-style article with mass appeal.

class for 15 weeks, and thus, they feel less than motivated to
develop relationships with sources knowing that this is little
more than an exercise in news gathering. After years of trying
to teach variations of this class using drills like I want you to
write a business story this week..., I decided I needed to be
more creative. And all I really did was turn the car around in
the driveway.

The solution: I decided to simply ask the students to choose

their own beats and this is how I do
Why do they write long? You
it: I tell them they can write about
News Writing & Reporting
can call this a magazine news writANYTHING they want BUT, once
Powerpoint lecture on writing forms
ing class if youd like to, but the idea
they choose a topic, theyre stuck
here is much more sophisticated
with it AND they must answer my
than that. Intermediate and adquestions when they arise. So, when
vanced news writers are traditiona student came to me recently wantally assigned news beats. On a traing to write about Peter Pan, I said
ditional business news desk, for exabsolutely. Little did she realize
ample, reporters are assigned reshe was going to find herself writing
tail or finance or commercial
about copyright law. In fact, the
real estate. And, as they work
WHOLE essay turned out to be
through these beats, they develop
about copyright law. Why? Because
a deep understanding of the forces
J.M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan,
that prey upon that aspect of the
gave the copyright royalties to an
business world. Reporters also learn (Click the arrow to view the video.) This the
English childrens hospital; and, at
lecture I deliver in the 5th week of News Writing &
to cultivate and work with editors
least once a decade, someone proReporting.
and sources. This is beat reporting.
duces a movie about Peter Pan, and
the royalty payments go to the hospiProblem: How do you simulate this experience in the classtal. So, by the time the student was done with the essay, she
room? Student realize theyre just going to be working in this
23

knew quite a bit about the story of Peter Pan and the systemic
affect that simple story has had on Western Culture.
Student Performance: Ive taught seven sections of this
class (four were at another institution) and Im currently working through the eighth section during the Fall 2012 semester.
Ive discovered that students both love and hate this class.
They hate it because they are forced to be aggressive and creative; they love it because they grow, they learn, they evolve
into fully formed journalists.
In Fall 2009, I worked with nine students on a variety of essays including ones on Crystal Meth, Jam Band Culture, Country Music in New England, Alcoholism and so forth.
One of the more successful essays was on Ice Cream. When
the student approached me with this topic, I feared that it
might be too light for a journalism class but because she
was a top student I allowed her to proceed. Her final work
surprised me. As she moved through the body of research, she
spoke to industry experts at Haagen-Dazs and Ben & Jerrys,
she toured a Ben & Jerrys ice cream plant and she spoke to
one of the Flavor Gurus in the flavor division inside this
world-class ice cream company. Her research included data
on fat content, health concerns and so forth. She also had a
thorough understanding of the amount of wealth created by
the ice cream industry. When she was done, the final work
read like a Fortune magazine piece: Specifically, a business
profile on a $20 billion segment of the food industry. Oddly
enough, had I actually told her she was writing a business

story, she would have bristled. Instead, I allowed her to believe she was writing about ice cream; where, in fact, she was
writing about a subset of the dairy industry.
Hers was not the only success in the class.
In the past, Ive had students write about Girl Scouts, Facebook, Female Genital Mutilation, Mens Field Hockey, Hemp,
Marijuana, Boxing, sailing, Harry Potter, Bollywood, feminism and so on. As for their sources, I have them speak to
Congressmen and Senators; theyve spoke to astronauts and
engineers; political and social leaders; world-class actors and
musicians; academics and government experts and so forth.
One student trade notes with Supreme Court Justice Sandra
Day OConnor; another interview U.S Ambassador Jeanne
Kirkpatrick; a third spoke to author Howard Zinn.
Evaluating Achievement: I love to teach this class. It really
is one of my great successes as a college professor. At Roger
Williams University, I transformed this weak, poorlyconceived academic experience into the cornerstone of the
journalism curriculum. My A students love the idea of this
class because they see it as an opportunity to rise to a challenge. Also, because of the constant writing and editing, this is
the class where I really get to know the students. Each student
is graded on their personal achievement: I want them to be resourceful, I want them to be creative, and I want them to be
excited about their future as journalists. This class allows
them to test the waters and explore their writers voice. This

24

class really has dynamic potential for a gifted and motivated

student.
COMM 430 Special Topics: Political Journalism: The
Communication Department offered this class during the Fall
2010 semester ahead of the national elections that year. Because I worked on Capitol Hill for several years, I saw an opportunity to talk to students about my passion for political
journalism. As Im sure you know, political journalism can be
a very complex and insulated aspect of news gathering and reporting. I say insulated because reporters who fall inside the
world of political journalism, usually become obsessed with
the nuance of governance and the intricacies of the political
process, and often forsake all other forms of news; call it Beltway Fever, and by way of confession, I was -- for a time -- one
of those journalists. Now, the plan here is to teach this class in
a two year rotation, paying special attention to the midterm
and presidential elections.
Goals: The purpose of this class is to engage the students by
illustrating some of the nuance to the U.S. political system
and possibly capture the imaginations of some of the potential
political writers. When were done, students will have some
knowledge of the campaigns, the political issues and the process that leads to the way our government is selected. Ideally,
the students will have a firm understanding of the U.S. political system, the responsibilities of the political journalist, and
the confidence to operate inside the world of political journalism.

Method: I do this first by reviewing the roots of the Constitution including an emphasis on the First Amendment; from
there I break down the political party system; before, finally,
getting into the issues of the current campaign. Students
speak with campaign volunteers, precinct captains and political candidates. They attend speeches, debates and fundraising
events. On Election Night, I send them out into the world to a
campaign headquarters just to witness the event. Along the
way, I pepper them with examples of political writing and lectures on topics relevant to the political events of the wee.
Student Performance: As with all my classes, I offer a series of interactive lectures. Armed with a Powerpoint presentation, I begin reviewing some aspect of the political system -an example might be gun control and the 2nd Amendment -and then I begin outlining the various arguments for and
against gun control. As we move through the course work, interested students become more so: they talk, they interact
with others and they offer something to the classroom dialog.
With the external assignments, students are measured on
their attendance at campus political events and their subsequent essays written after the fact.
Evaluating Achievement: Students are graded on their
ability to assess the political landscape; do they understand
the debates? can they distill fact from speculation? and are
they ready to work in the very complex world of political journalism?

25

COMM 430 Special Topics: Planet Forward: In November 2008, I was called into RWU President Roy Nirschels office to talk about producing a series of videos for a PBS special
called Planet Forward. The program was the brainchild of
CNN news anchor Frank Sesno and he was shaping this program to be a public forum for a debate about Global Warming.
At this initial meeting, Sesno, Nirschel and I agreed that I
would create a class that would be the vehicle wed use to get
students to produce these videos. In my mind, this class was a
pure version of COMM 455: Digital Journalism II. Wed have
one topic Global Warming and the students would work
collectively to engineer a series of related stories.
Goals: The purpose of this class was to show students how to
conceptualize, shoot and edit video for a mass audience. Students learned how to arrange interviews, wield cameras, plan
a shoot, and work through the production process adding music, and text to the final projects. Once completed, these students should have the skills of a field producer.
Method: This class has a workshop feel to it. Because the
class ran during the January intersession, the class met every
day for three-successive weeks. Each morning, the students
gathered to discuss projects, and the progress of each production. Concurrently, the teams worked to line up interviews,
gather video, and craft music for each of the pieces. As they
moved through the production process, they had hands-on
contact with the cameras and the editing equipment. They
were also forced into a collaborative environment where they
learned from their peers. And at every turn, the students were

subject to spot review and advice by me; this is the role of an

executive producer.
Student Performance: Forty-four videos. The total yield
created by the two groups of students who worked through
this project was 44 3-minute videos on a variety of subjects including wind power, electric and bio-diesel vehicles, alternative energy sources and so forth. Initially, we were recruited to
create a total of eight videos over the two class-cycle. But the
students got so emotionally invested in the project, they began
working beyond the boundaries of the class, ultimately crafting a combined total of 44 videos. Of these, at least three were
featured on the PBS program, Planet Forward, which aired on
April 15th, 2009.
Evaluating Achievement: It would be unfair to call this a
class. Instead, this was a workshop that had astonishing results. These students worked vigorously at everything they
did. Along the way, we experimented simply because there
were many moments when we were unsure what we were capable of doing. There were many instances when -- after a long
day -- I would get a phone call or an email or a text message
from a student asking advice on a piece of work and -- to my
surprise -- it would be near midnight on a Friday night and
theyd still be working on a project. In the end, I simply measured these students against their own ambitions. How much
time and hard work did this student give to the project? Looking back, some years later, and I realize that the real success
here was the video project, it was finally understanding what
26

its like to work with gifted and talented students in an environment where they want to achieve.
COMM 455: Digital Journalism II: As I wrote earlier,
Planet Forward was a pure version of this class. I believe that
the most sophisticated part of the online news community is
digital video; so, as a result, the purpose of Digital Journalism
II is to get students perfect their video production skills. In
this class, they work collaboratively on one major topic -weve done Oddly Rhode Island for example -- where each
student is required to research, write, produce and edit a story
related to the topic. Again, the purpose here it build a workshop around a single project and each student is encouraged
to participate not only in their one video but in the process of
all the other video production cycles.
Goals: When the class if complete, the students should have
access to a catalog of related video. Along the way, they learn
how to collaborate, how to be industrious and creative, and
how to plan for complex video projects. Ideally, this class encourages the student to pull together all of their news gathering skills. Because of the complexities of video production, students learn that video field work is very complex and that a lot
of advanced planning must take place. Successful students
learn how to prepare; they also learn how to manage themselves and others.
Method: Each student is assigned one aspect of the video project. Because no one student has all the skills needed to produce a final work, he/she must enlist the skills of the other stu-

dents to finish the piece. So, basically, the student executive

produces a story, hiring camera operators, reporters, video editors and musicians to help them pull the final work together.
Student Performance: Students are measured by three
things: first, their ability to recognize well-produced video; second, by the quality of their own work; finally, by the quality of
their contribution to other work.
Evaluating Achievement: The students are measured by
their confidence to work with the equipment and their ability
to distinguish poor work from quality work. As they achieve,
their confidence grows and their work begins to reflect that.

Conclusion
My overall purpose here is to craft an academic structure that
builds each students knowledge and skill base as they move
through the curriculum. Now, under the old curriculum, there
were two parallel paths -- one for print and the other for digital media -- and the progressions were fairly simple:
Print
COMM 111: Writing for Mass Media
COMM 280: Feature Writing
COMM 370: News Writing & Reporting
Digital Media
COMM 355 Digital Journalism I
27

 COMM 455 Digital Journalism II

Now, as I wrote earlier in this section, the course structures
were a little awkward because students often took Comm 280
and Comm 370 out of sequence. As a result, I was forced to
open both classes with review sessions on material they would
have gotten if they went through the curriculum sequentially.
In my mind, the curricular waterfall works this way: In Comm
111, students are introduced to the basics of news gathering,
reporting and writing. They are taught basic reporting skills,
which include finding sources and interviewing people. They
are also taught the basic news writing styles specifically the
inverted pyramid, which is the form used by the Associated
Press and most public relations firms. In this class, they also
get a taste of television news writing, which includes script
writing, simple on camera work and so forth.
In Comm 280, students are encouraged to learn more sophisticated reporting and research skills. I challenge them to move
out and off the campus for sources. They learn to observe subjects in the field and to take detailed notes describing what
theyre seeing and doing. With research, I show them a series
of sophisticated online research tools including Google
Scholar, ProQuest and the Government Accountability Office
site.
In the writing component of this class, students learn to write
traditional feature profiles and the Wall Street Journal style,
which requires them to take a national issue and find a local

person affected by that issue. Finally, students learn to copy

edit their own work and the work of their peers.
In Comm 370, I tighten the screws. In this class -- which is a
long-form magazine journalism class -- students are pressed
to conduct tight interviews; they are taught to use notebooks
and MP3 audio recorders for their field work and they are challenged to find tough news sources. With their writing, they focus on perfecting the Wall Street Journal style which is -- to
me -- the premium magazine news writing style. Finally, they
are required to present letter-perfect essays that adhere to the
highest standards for grammar, spelling, AP style, and libel
compliance.
With the digital progression, in Comm 355, students begin
with simple cameras and a simplified approach to the video
editing software. They learn to shoot and edit basic news interviews and then move into more sophisticated TV news packages.
In Comm 455, the storytelling projects become increasingly
more sophisticated. Students learn to consider micro and
macro story ideas. They also work on their technical presentation by improving upon the way they design shots and work
with lighting.
Regard for RWUs Core Values
In the Communication Department, I believe my colleagues
and I all teach with an emphasis that encourages our students
to love the prospect of learning new things.
28

In my case, the proof of this comes when the students begin

working vigorously outside the classroom and, in some cases,

RWU C ORE V ALUES

1.

Love of learning as an intrinsic value

2.
Preparation for careers and future study
3.
Collaboration of students and faculty in
research
4.
Commitment to community through
service and sustainability
5.

outside their comfort zones; they interacted with the local and
regional communities; and -- because of the very nature of
journalism -- promoted the prospect of civil discourse.
Running through the list, Id like to submit that my students
are learning to love what theyre doing; theyre working to prepare for the future; theyre collaborating with me and each
other; theyre improving the community through service;
theyre appreciating the global perspective and their participating in the civil discourse both in text and in video.
In short: I couldnt be any more pleased with the way they go
about doing what theyre doing.

Appreciation of global perspectives

6.
Promotion of civil discourse

outside the course work. With The Feed, the purpose here
was to simply demonstrate what a possible digital media program might look like. Little did I realize that the students
would seize control of the medium and sustain it for three
years. To me, this is proof that the students love what theyre
doing.
Of course, there were many other instances, including Planet
Forward, Feature Writing and -- especially -- News Writing &
Reporting. With all of these classes, my students stepped well
29

Planet Forward: Return to Portsmouth, RI

(Press the arrow to watch the video.) In 2010, the students from Planet Forward (RWU) 2.0 went into Portsmouth, RI to discuss the effects of a new wind turbine one year after it was first erected.

C HAPTER 2

Academic Advising &

Program Development

We design the curriculum and then channel the students through the academic experience. The danger here is the fact that
the curriculum needs to stay current and
the students need to stay along the path.
To succeed, the faculty members need to
be aware of industry trends; they also
must be able to herd the students, like
cats, through the academic matrix.

S ECTION 1

Academic Advising

An Overview
Years ago, when I accepted my first teaching situation, the department chair rattled off a list of my responsibilities as a
full-time faculty member. In addition to teaching and campus
service, she mentioned academic advising. At the time, I remember thinking how hard could that be? Ah, to be so nave. Professional wisdom has a way of making us reflect on
those moments and relish the innocence of our opening days
at any opportunity. Anyway, let me get to my approach to academic advising.

Theresa: He told me that Mother Theresa used to say of her

work with the poor: You must let them eat you. I was
stunned the first time I heard that. To her, the process of feeding the poor wasnt about letting them eat from your hand, it
was about letting them eat from your soul. Im sure every parent knows this sacrifice, this idea that when you provide from
your children, you must give to them all they need to nourish
themselves. Often, they ask of you not only sustenance, but
blood, marrow, bone flesh.
Now, I doubt that any of us is ever capable of reaching Mother
Theresas level of selflessness but one can take cues from her
wisdom.
In my case, I feel a sense of responsibility for my charges.
When I arrived, I was surprised to find that there really wasnt
any power nucleus at the center of the Roger Williams University journalism curriculum or community. Instead, many of
our students were floundering around, fielding advice from advisers scattered across the School of Arts & Sciences. In the
process, many were misdirected, knocked off course, and
some cases, discouraged from the major.
Im working to change that.

As a freshman, one of my first real college friends Bob

used to talk about hope and the human condition. (Little did I
realize that hed later become a Catholic priest, but, looking
back on our conversations, his path was certainly assured.) I
remember long talks about service and helping others but the
one statement he left me with was a quote from Mother

During the freshman advising sessions last summer, I told

EVERY student I met with an interest in Journalism to ask
the administration to make ME their adviser. I did this for a
few reasons.

32

First, I think every student deserves a sense of continuity

when offered advice on their undergraduate curriculum. Further, I think each adviser needs to know the student and his/
her interests when discussion courses to consider. Third, I
think every adviser must be aware of changes in the curriculum, and the special topics being offered from semester to semester. Finally, I think this is a symptom of my egomania:
This idea that Im going to simply take on ALL of the journalism students as advisees but this method does have the potential to unify, define, and invigorate the major.
Now, I have to confess that my opening days here at Roger
Williams University left me a little dazed with regard to the
shape of the academic structure. I didnt know about the Core
course load structure until we were well into the advising process. But I figured it out.
When it comes to the advising process, I dedicate a week or so
to the process, requiring my students to sign up on a sheet
posted on my door. When they arrive, I attempt to get them
through the process with 20 minutes or so. That said, I believe
the registration system is a disaster. I tell my charges that the
course enrollment software was written by someone who
doesnt like people very much. I still believe that.
As for the process: I begin by shopping through the required
Major and Core courses and place them in there. I then move
into the secondary courses searching for classes that might
serve their Minors. (We need to rename this course of study
as an academic minor. The current language is confusing.)

From there, we begin looking at the gut courses: Classes

that may serve their interest but dont distract from their primary studies.
Along the way, I make them understand that they are responsible for their own educations and that they need to come to me
prepared with a list of classes and a sense of their schedule. I
do this because I believe many of our students still have this
Im in high school mentality, which is a setting where many
students are denied the opportunity to make their own decisions.
At the college level, the opposite should be true. Again, students should be vigilant about the quality of their own educations. They should also be aware of the penalties and/or benefits awaiting them should their successes in the classroom either falter or escalate.
The student should read the Course Catalog, they should understand the rigors of their chosen major and they should allow themselves an opportunity to grow. As part of this, every
student should be aware of the Office of International Programs; they should also know about the universitys Passport
program. Of course, possessing this knowledge will help them
achieve and enjoy their experience here at Roger Williams University.
Anyway, thats my pound of flesh on that.

33

Advising Method
As the academic advising period approaches, I post a list of
rules on my door and a calendar. Students are encouraged to
reach the rules of engagement and to sign up for one of the
20-minute advising sessions.
Now, the rules of engagement direct the upperclassmen to
have a completed list of no less than five classes and one alternate; they should also map out a calendar illustrating that
there are no conflicts in their proposed schedule. Finally, students are warned that if they miss the meeting they are on
their own.
When the student arrives, I review their advisement package
and I ask them how their studies are going. I then ask them
about direction and objectives. By their sophomore year, they
should have a firm sense of direction and purpose. If this is
not the case, I tell them they need to be more aware of their
future.

release the hold on their account and send them off into the
world.

Purpose
I think the worst thing we can do is allow these students to
pass through the university absent any sense of responsibility.
This is your education! Defend it rigorously, I often tell
them.
When they arrive as freshman, they come to us with this pronounced sense of dependency. In many cases, they simply
wait for us to select the classes for them and then send them
on their way. The danger here is the fact that these students
do not learn how to make decisions or manage their own futures.

During the course of our exchange, I suggest classes and supplemental programs; I also ask them about their interest in a
semester abroad and help them better-understand the fouryear experience at Roger Williams.
By their senior year, students usually develop a maturity that
makes me confident about their future. My favorite students
are the ones who turn up with a full schedule in hand and simply tell me what theyre doing and why theyre doing it. I then
34

S ECTION 2

Program Development
The new Journalism major is Approved!

Launching the New Journalism Major

On April 24, 2012, Roger Williams Provost Robert Potter officially approved the new Journalism major. Getting to this
point was no easy task and the roots of this change date as far
back as 2007 if not further. Thats five long years.
In 2007, I was hired to inject Digital Journalism into the curriculum. When I arrived, I worked vigorously with Roxanne
OConnell to craft language for two new classes, Comm 355
Digital Journalism I and Comm 455 Digital Journalism II.
What we failed to do, then, was incorporate those classes inside the required Journalism curriculum. Instead, these
classes stood out as curious electives populated by students
who feared they may need to learn a thing or two about video.
In 2008, Professor Ted Delaney moved into the Creative Writing Department and began channeling his energies there.
That decision left me wondering about direction for the Journalism curriculum. Concurrently, the Provost approved hiring
a new journalism professor and I decided Id wait to see who
we hired before I pressed forward with any changes. In 2010,
we hired Dr. Paola Prado and my focus returned to the curriculum. Again, I decided we needed to wait until Paola felt more
comfortable with the curriculum.
In 2011, the Communication Department finally turned its focus to changing the Journalism curriculum. In my mind, several things had to happen immediately. First, Journalism
needed to be extracted from the Media Communication major
35

Changes to the Journalism Curriculum

(Drag your finger over the image.)

This is the old curriculum.

36

and separated -- at least theoretically -- from Public Relations.

Next, the major needed to be updated to meet the demands of
a new digital news-gathering age. Finally, there needed to be a
way to track journalism majors through the curriculum and
raise the rigor.
When Ted Delaney, Paola Prado, Robert Cole, Roxanne OConnell and I finally sat to discuss a vision, it became relatively apparent that we were in some sort of agreement. An uneasy negotiation -- managed first by Robert and Roxanne -ultimately fell to Paola who guided us through the
process. The process included increasing the number
of required classes; we set a minimum GPA; we fused
Digital Journalism classes into the curriculum; and
we added three new classes.
About the three new classes: Paola believed strongly
that we needed to add a history course to the curriculum; I wanted to create a more deliberate structure to
the journalism curricular waterfall; and we all agreed
that there needed to be a senior-level capstone class
that brought all the components of the curriculum together.

JOUR 355: Digital Journalism 1

JOUR 455: Digital Journalism 2 to the required classes

We created three new required classes:

JOUR 170: News Writing & Reporting 1

JOUR 270: Journalism History + Ethics
JOUR 470: Journalism Capstone + Portfolio

Heres what we changed:

So, starting with the FY

2012- 2013 Course Catalog year, we will introduce the new Journalism Major to the incoming class of 2016. As for
our mission: Our emphasis is on Digital Journalism.

We had several purposes in mind here.

First, we wanted to es(Press the arrow to start video.) This
PowerPoint presentation explains how we altablish Roger Williams
tered the curriculum and why.
University as one of the
After some deliberation, heres what we decided:
key academic centers
for journalism in New England. Second, we wanted the stu We increased the total course load from 12 to 14 classes
dents studying the discipline to have a close kinship with the
We
banked
COMM
290
Copy
Editing
&
Layout

industry. Finally, we suspect the new major will attract more

We reassigned COMM 280 Feature Writing as an elective
applicants to RWU.
We added two required classes:
37

Looking back on 2007

3.

A lot has changed since I first arrived at RWU in 2007. The

Communication Department has grown, it has also relocated
inside the new academic building, the students are smarter
and more engaged, we now have a growing supply of electronic equipment and a cataloging system, the curriculum is
decidedly more modern, and NOW we offer a new major in
Journalism studies.

a.
Joanna Nettlefield (class of 2008) built a huge
video catalog for Bristol boating hardware supplier Jamestown Distributors and has since moved to New York City to
duplicate that success with a PR firm there;

Our students are also beginning to find local, regional and national success. Communication students are finding careers
inside the discipline, and their growing collection of academic
and video work is finding larger and larger audiences. Examples include:
1.

The 2009 Planet Forward video catalog;

a.
The New Bedford rail video is currently on display
inside a transportation museum in the city; for a time, it wa
also prominently displayed on the website for Rep. Barney
Frank (D-Mass.);


b.
The Marine Sciences oyster video (I suspect) helped
RWU land federal funding for the Marine Biology Department;


c.
Kyle Toomey (class of 2009) appeared on the premier pilot of Planet Forward in April 2009;
2.

The 2010 Planet Forward video catalog;

A growing collection of video-for-the-Internet projects;

b.
Paul Chiera (class of 2010) finished producing a series of videos for the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities
and is now working as an independent video producer in upstate New York;


c.
Will Boshes (class of 2010) just finished producing
a series of videos for the International Tennis Hall of Fame;


d.
Keith Weiner (class of 2011) is currently producing
a body of video for Phillips & Garcia, a law firm in Dartmouth,
Mass.; he is also working as a free-lance video producer in
New York City and elsewhere;


e.
Lorin Richardson (class of 2010) is working as a traffic news reporter for a local TV affiliate in the suburban New
York City media market;
One of the best part of this job is seeing our students take our
lessons and move them to the next level. In many ways, their
successes are our successes.
Oddly, during a chance encounter with former President Roy
Nirschel, he turned to me and said: Before Planet Forward, I
didnt even know we had a journalism program. I know he
was offering a bit of bravado at the moment, but still....
38

That was 2009. Since then, our curriculum has certainly won
a lot of attention. My hope then as it is now, is that that the
work we did on Planet Forward deserved the attention it
earned; and the subsequent laurels that have been given the
Communication Department will be put to good use. Armed
with that new energy and the entrepreneurial underpinnings
of the university culture, I began whittling away, reshaping
the curriculum.
Below, you will find a rundown of the systemic changes. You
will notice, as you progress through the list, that there was a
thoughtful progression through the development of the curriculum. Concurrently, there was a fair an equitable accumulation of digital video and still photography equipment, which
was ultimately compiled in a cataloging network under the
control of Media Services.
In just six short years, the Communication Department
moved from a decidedly static print-oriented journalism curriculum towards a fresher, more enterprising curriculum that
allowed students to explore their creative instincts. Looking
back, I have to confess that I depended very heavily on the advice and guidance of my department chair, Roxanne OConnell, my teaching partner Paola Prado and my Dean Robert
Cole. Id like to think that as the department accumulated
tools it did so with an eye towards fair department-wide inclusion and a minimum of waste.

We also made the seamless transition from offices on the

outer-rim of the campus into a unified space inside Global
Heritage Hall.
Heres a rundown of the changes:
2007
1.
The Feed: This faculty-student collaboration was an incubator where we explored the dynamics of a possible Digital
Journalism program. Working with three students, Ted Delaney and I began exploring the technical aspects of the computer labs; we also borrowed a series of pro-sumer grade cameras from the venders and trained the students to shoot, edit
and post video-for-the-Internet. This inaugural project kicked
open the door for everything that came after;
2.
Digital Video Equipment: Just as the AVCHD video protocol was entering the market, I began experimenting with the
various cameras. I also petitioned the Communication Department and the Dean of the school for funding to purchase some
basic tools;
2008
3.
In Spring 2008, I introduced COMM 430: Special Topics
in Journalism: New Media hoping to broaden the reach of the
Digital Journalism curriculum. Taking what we learned in the
Fall, the Department and I offered this fully-loaded class, enrolling at least 20 students. We also incorporated the Flip Ultra aim-and-shoot video camera into the curriculum. This
39

$150 hard-drive camera has quickly become the workhorse of

the curriculum. Its ease of use allowed me to show students
video shooting and editing basics;
4.
In Fall 2008, Ted Delaney, Roxanne OConnell and Anjali Ram helped me craft proposals for two new classes
COMM 355, Digital Journalism I; and COMM 455, Digital
Journalism II which were carefully guided through the Curriculum Committee and approved for the 2009 academic year.
5.
Armed with a new Cap-X budget, the Communication Department started buying video production tools including six
(6) Canon XSI still cameras; and nine (9) Canon HF-10
AVCHD (hard-drive) video cameras;
2009
6.
In January, 2009, nine students and I worked with Judi
Johnson to create video content for Planet Forward, a PBS program on sustainability. With the support of the Communication Department, Dean Robert Cole, Assistant Vice-President
Judith Johnson, Joan Romano and the RWU Presidents office, my team and I crafted a total of 18 three-minute videos
featuring a variety of sustainability issues. That body of work
was wonderfully received by the Presidents office, the Board
of Trustees, the local and regional press, and PBS;
7.
During the Spring 2009 semester, I introduced COMM
455: Digital Journalism II for the first time and used this class
to move students beyond the Planet Forward experience. This

collection of 8 students produced a series of videos about

Rhode Islands Oddities.
8.
The Communication Department moved from its outerrim office spaces into a unified space inside Global Heritage
Hall. We also helped to bring the Multimedia Performance
Venue, the Editing Suites and the Green Screen Room on line.
9.
Under the guidance of Assistant Dean Roberta Adams,
the Communication Department and Media Services developed a pilot catalog and storage program inside the basement
of the university library. The idea was to move all the video
and still cameras out of my office and place them inside the library system where they could be properly catalogued, stored,
and issued to the students.
10.
In the Fall 2009, I taught News Writing & Reporting for
the first time. I saw an opportunity to use this class as a triage
program for students who in my opinion had slipped
through the lower-division classes without the learning the
skills of a modern journalist. To train them, I appropriated a
syllabus I used at a previous institution and retooled it for the
students at Roger Williams University. This is a thesis-writing
class, where students choose one topic and write 10,000
words on that topic. The purpose is to move them through several drafts of the same story and using the draft process to
measure their skills and press them to advance further.
11.
Armed with a new Cap-X budget, the Communication Department purchased six (6) Canon Vixia HF-s10 AVCHD cameras and six (6) Canon HV-40 tape-drive cameras.
40

2010
12. Planet Forward 2010: Working
with 17 students and Judi Johnson, I helped this team to produce a total of 26 videos for the
PBS program, Planet Forward.
13. With the introduction of
Canons new EOS video/still
photo cameras, we shifted the
camera equipment substantially. Now, the Communication
Department is using Canon Rebel T3i cameras; Canon EOS 7D
cameras; and Panasonic Lumix
ZS10 cameras. We made this
switch to reflect the trends in
the professional world.
2011
14. The Communication Department spent at least three years
crafting a new Journalism major. In doing so, we severed the
kinship with Public Relations;
we also integrated a Digital
Journalism platform into the
core of the curriculum. Today,
Roger Williams University can

claim to be one of the few Digital Journalism programs in

the country.
Looking forward:

S CULLY S P ROGRAM D EVELOPMENT

1.

The Feed

2. Special Topics: New Media

3. Digital Journalism I & Digital
Journalism II
4. Launched Media Communication major
5.

Acquired Digital Video Cameras &

Equipment

6. Planet Forward (RWU) 1.0 & Planet

Forward (RWU) 2.0
7.

Established Media Services lending

system

8. Retooled News Writing & Reporting

9. Co-chaired Journalism Search
Committee
10. Co-designed the new Journalism major

During the last six years, the Communication Department hosted

four faculty searches, which ended
with the hiring of two new colleagues: Paola Prado and Hume
Johnson. I sat on all four committees and working with Roxanne
OConnell co-chaired both journalism search committees. I suspect
that once these colleagues get comfortable, they will begin considering
additional changes to the curriculum. For my part, I will do what I
can to help guide them through the
process.
For now, there seems to be a muted
debate over the fate of the Media
Communication major. Now that
Journalism has struck out on its
own, Media Communication is
really just Public Relations. This
will have to be changed.

41

S ECTION 3

Student Media

Student Media

The Feed

As for what to do next about Journalism, its apparent that

that the student media need our attention. Over the last few
years, I have been involved in a series of conversations about
the prospect of seizing the student media groups specifically
the Hawks Herald and WQRI, the student-run Radio Station
and incorporating them as teaching tools inside the Communication Department.
To do this, the University would have to exhume these media
from their student club status inside the Student Affairs division and reassign them to the academic side. As part of this
transition, a full-time non-tenured faculty member with professional experience should be assigned to over see these operations with a purpose of integrating and professionalizing
their content.
A model for The Hawks Herald

(Press the arrow to view the video.) Started

in the Fall 2007 as a prototype for the Digital Journalism curriculum, The Feed became a studentrun video news program that ran until 2010.

In 2007, Provost Laura DeAbruna got stung when an article in

The Hawks Herald incorrectly quoted her. The message was
pretty clear: This student-run publication is in dire need of an
overhaul. For now, it remains the central and most visible example of whats wrong with the student media on campus.
Now, Ive been schooled on the long and sorted history of this
publication and having seen its physical space can see that
there is NOTHING attractive about this newspaper. Instead,
for the hardcore journalism students on campus, The Hawks
Herald is a place for professional catechism and a penance
ahead of a hard-edged career in a failing industry.
42

Of course, the state of affairs for this newspaper is a travesty.

When I arrived here, the paper was a black-and-white broadsheet, which was managed by an Education major. Over the
last five years, the students have culled it down to the size of a
berliner and added color; theyve also created a companion
website, but the two media groups lack any sound coordination.
And then there is the content: I swear, the students who take
my classes, must suffer some sort of amnesia when they enter
the narrow offices of The Hawks Herald. For the life of me, I
do not understand how they go about crafting that paper
week-in and week-out. The paper is polluted with columnists
and little content. In fact, the columns are where the real trouble seems to be manufactured, simply because the students
are publishing tripe that appears immune to any true editorial
mission.
As for the height of travesty, in 2011, the editor of the publication wrote a column entitled: When You Wear Yoga Pants, I
Can See Your Vagina. When the story appeared on the Internet, it went viral; and, of course, the students reputation was
tarnished by the experience.
What really angered me about this whole situation was the
fact that there was a visible lack of supervision with this, and I
suspect, the whole of the newspapers editorial mission. Absent a professional advisor, the students are basically allowed
to make these and other mistakes. And the faculty in the Com-

munication Department are powerless to exercise any oversight of this publication.

Oddly, the problems Im seeing with The Hawks Herald are
not unique; most student-run publications across the nation
were created as student clubs. I suspect, in the 1960s, given
the protest culture of most universities, this model made perfect sense. But now, given the nations current litigious culture, it would be in the Universitys best interest to find another management model.
Id like to propose the Ithaca College model as the solution to
our problems with The Hawks Herald:
It amounts to this:
1.
In 1987, Ithaca College wrested control of the studentrun newspaper, The Ithacan, and under the watchful eye of
the Communication Department overhauled the management
structure;
2.

They hired a full-time academic adviser to the paper;

3.

The created a newsroom setting for the publication;

4.
They established a clearly defined student-run management structure;
5.
They put the newspaper on a solid Thursday-toThursday weekly publishing cycle;

43

6.
And they began selling advertising for the publication locally.
Now, as I understand it, The Ithacan, in addition to sweeping
all the top student newspaper awards including the Pacemaker Award almost annually, the paper is actually running at
a profit. Thats right: Its actually paying for itself.
Once more, this working news laboratory has also become a
place where aspiring journalists can try their hand at news
writing and editing. And, the publication has become a recruitment vehicle. They also publish an annual in this slick hardcover that includes the top feature stories from the academic
year, which are printed on high-end magazine-quality paper.
A model for WQRI News
As a byproduct of the campus construction, the student radio
station, WQRI, had to be shut down two summers ago because its transmitter had to be relocated. In 2010, the station
resumed programming but with some changes. The station
now has a lot of new state-of-the-art software, which actually
plays music during the overnights. And, the student management has made repeated efforts to begin broadcasting student
sports specifically the Mens and Womens basketball games
each January.

Unfortunately, because of the awkward rotation of student

management through the radio station, there is very little
follow-through after each turn in the academic calendar.
The Feed
Started by me in Fall 2007, The Feed is a weekly TV news format that publishes 90-second news vignettes on Facebook
and YouTube. When the semester ended, the production team
broke up and I had to retire The Feed. I did so for one key reason: Absent my direct supervision, this medium posed itself as
an unnecessary liability.
That said, a pool of talented students have approached me
about bringing The Feed back out of retirement. My plan -this academic year -- will be to train them, teach them the traditions of this medium and then set them loose to tell video
news stories.

Of course, the next step is to add the other sports and to finally create a radio news division thats reporting information
every 30-minutes.
44

C HAPTER 3

Scholarship &
Professional Development

I believe the Faculty Review Committee

should pay special attention to the work
Ive done producing video these lasts few
years; specifically, the Planet Forward
catalog earned a lot of attention both
near and far. All totaled, Id like to argue
that my work at RWU with regard to
Planet Forward and other projects has
been consistent with Dr. Ernest Boyers
arguments regarding scholarship.

S ECTION 1

Scholarship & Professional

Development

B OYER S M ODEL FOR S CHOLARSHIP

1. Scholarship of Discovery
2. Scholarship of Integration
3. Scholarship of Application
4. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Pedagogical Scholarship
Looking at Boyers model for scholarship, I believe I have
been following this path all along. As Ive written earlier, I
think its incumbent upon all faculty members to remain current by following the trends and changes of their disciplines
and I believe one would be hard pressed to find a discipline
that has been in a more fluid state than the field of Communication.
Given the entrepreneurial environment surrounding the Digital Age, it seems that every month a new technology is springing out into the public and users are finding new and interesting ways to employ these technologies to evoke change -- if
not downright revolution -- in the global marketplace.
For my part, I believe Ive been vigilant in my practice to learn
and study these changes and that this curious nature of mine
falls well within the guidelines of Boyer. I submit that I am
practicing the art of Discovery, Integration and Application
and Im bringing those experiences into the classroom (Teaching and Learning).

The Argument for Planet Forward (RWU) 1.0

Lets look at Planet Forward (RWU) 1.0 as an example of this
Scholarship of Discovery: As Ive written, I was approached
by the President of Roger Williams to produce four (4) videos
related to sustainability. As part of my negotiation, I said that
Id be willing to produce the work if and only if I was granted
46

creative control over the project and given the tools Id need
to complete the task.

gether, the Planet Forward team tackled dozens of obstacles

and we did so creatively.

That deal included a budget, access to University resources

One example: A video we did entitled Patrick Charles. As
and the ability to choose my production team. From there, I
part of my negotiation with the Presidents office, I was asked
managed the project as a producto shoot a video about Green
Planet Forward: Patrick Charles
tion laboratory.
Buildings and I was directed to
interview RWU Professor Patrick
Working with nine students (and
Charles. During my preadministrator Judi Johnson), we
interview with the professor, I rebegan crafting a list of stories
alized that Patrick was very charthat fell within the guidelines
ismatic but had a heavy French
laid out by the Presidents Office
accent; second, his idea of the
and Public Broadcasting. During
perfect building was located in
a three-week production cycle,
New Orleans; finally, as he
that team produced 18 videos.
spoke, he liked to illustrate his
ideas. As I sat there speaking
The important thing about this is
with him, I wondered: How am I
the fact that the entire project
going to produce this video?
was an exploration. When I ac(Click on the Arrow to watch the video.) The proccepted the responsibility, I will
ess of producing Planet Forward (RWU) 1.0 was really
This is the solution we created:
freely admit that my knowledge
just a giant experiment that forced my students and I to
We decided to interview Profesexperiment and to experiment constantly.
of the cameras and the editing
sor Charles in front of a Green
software was poor. Further, beScreen so we could illustrate
yond my live experience at CNN, I knew very little about prowhat he was talking about; second, we placed a reporter on
ducing anything other than traditional three-minute cable
the set opposite him to keep him on topic; third, we purchased
news packages.
stock video images from a free-lance video producer in Minnesota; finally, we captured the professors illustrations by literWorking on Planet Forward forced me to experiment; it really tying a video camera to the ceiling with a shoelace. This
quired me to learn how to collaborate with students; and towas not our only experiment.
47

In fact, to shoot this, we had to paint an entire wall green, we

had to light the set, we had to neutralize the reflection on the
able with the table cloth, AND I had to contact RWU Campus
Security and demand that they STOP testing an emergency
public announcement system so I could shoot the interview.
Finally, the reporter in this story -- Jillian MacDonald -- did
80 takes to get the walk-and-talk at the end of the video correctly.
And that was just ONE video: We did eighteen of these things
and EACH offered a different and exciting challenge. Looking
back at all of this, the whole project was a wild experiment
that helped all of us -- the students, Judi, and I -- learn how to
be effective Digital Journalists. As for how it looked: Check for
yourself!
The Scholarship of Discovery
Which leads me to think about Professor Ernest Boyer: What
would he think? To me, the first Planet Forward was a lab experiment but instead of working with electrons and neutrons
and lab animals, we were working with pixels and tricks of
light. Ours was --wait for it! -- a Scholarship of Discovery because we moved well beyond the traditional understanding of
digital video storytelling; we established our own norms; and
crafted a body of work that transcended our understanding of
media. Ours was also a Scholarship of Learning because the
work was being coordinated through the efforts of an academic and his students in a University setting.

And while were on the subject, a word about peer review:

That work, OUR WORK, appeared in the public forum on
April 15, 2009 on a national PBS program called Planet Forward. Consider the breadth of that achievement! An RWU faculty member working with students in a broom closet in the
basement of a dormitory crafted a body of work that earned
national attention.
Now, searching for comparative teaching experiences, I submit that we should consider looking at both the sciences and
the creative arts. With scientific discovery, often, a faculty
member will be working with a team of graduate and undergraduate students directing them as they move through the research process. With this model, the faculty member meets
with the students, they discuss complex scientific theory, and
draw up a plan for research and exploration.
One could also make the same argument for faculty working
in the creative arts. I mean, consider how a theater director
moves through his/her research. The faculty member writes
plays, they consider set design and they employ students to
help produce their vision. With every line of dialog, every set
design change, every directors cue, the work is changed, transformed, elevated: and the world is better for it. This is the argument for the world of exploratory scholarship.
In my mind, Planet Forward was very akin to both of these
styles of exploration: Ours was a collaboration of idea and invention produced in an incubator hidden in the basement of a
dorm located on the southern edge of Roger Williams Univer48

sity. And I submit, during those three weeks, ours was a mixture of rocket science, performance art and grand theater.
And, looking at Boyers model, isnt this the model for the
scholarship of discovery?
One example: we explored how to use Green
Screen technology.
When you look at
weather reports, the
weatherman is standing
in front of a green wall
and the images playing
behind him are projected there as the signal
moves through the control room and out over
the airwaves (or cable
network).

Oddly, as I bought it, a woman standing behind me in line

asked: Does your wife know youre buying THAT color? It is
rather ugly!
Lady, I said. Jolly Green is exactly what we need!
The next day, I assembled my team in our workspace -- the
Honor Student conference room -- and I directed them to set
up lights and cameras. I then explained to them that -- as they
applied the paint to the wall -- the wall would disappear in
post production, thus revealing the image underneath; in affect, it will look like theyre painting the image. I then directed
them to experiment.

Green Screen Fun: An Experiment with Light

This is Sherman-Williams
SW6931 Jolly Green interior
paint, which is almost
chroma-key green.

To illustrate the potential of this trick of light, I went out and bought drop cloths,
paint rollers and three cans of Sherwin-Williams SW6931
Jolly Green interior paint. If you are unfamiliar with this
color, Jolly Green is nearly perfect chroma-key green, which
is the color of the professional Green Screen in most newsrooms.

(Press the Arrow to view the video) This was an

experiment designed to show students how ChromaKey technology can be used in non-fiction storytelling.
Now remember! Not one of these students had ever worked
with Green Screen technology before. To them, all they were
doing was smearing green paint on a wall inside a classroom.
49

And yet they got it! (Side note: we did this much to the chagrin of Peter Deekle, who graciously loaned us access to the
Honors Lab, and we repaid him by painting the wall Jolly
Green! Sorry Peter!)

did what most executive producers do when they dont get

what they want: I walked Prof. Pavlides out of the performance venue, thanked him for his time and told him Id call him
in a few days.

From here, I asked them to consider other applications, which

lead us into our Scholarship of Application.

I then returned to my crew and asked them what they thought

we should do: All of them wanted to kill the idea. Kill it! Well
find something else. But I told them that Prof. Pavlides did
have a message to share and that we needed to find a way to
share it. At that point, one student volunteered to sit through
all 16 hours of the town hall video, which I rejected. Id seen
that kind of video before and its really nothing more than
poor lighting and poor audio married together and projected
over cable access and no one should have to look at that stuff.

Scholarship of Application
As Ive written, the Planet Forward (RWU) 1.0 project ran
from January 5, 2009 to January 26, 2009. During that threeweek period, we had an average temperature of 20-degrees
(F), twelve (12) days without sunshine, and two snowstorms.
Begging the question: How do you shoot quality HD video
about the environment without sunshine?
One of the videos we were asked to produce was about Wind
Turbines and their potential for generating power. We were
asked to interview RWU Professor Eleftherios Pavlides who
had for several years been speaking at local town government
meetings about the potential for wind power. When he arrived
to meet with us, he wanted to completely control the project,
and suggested that the first step include his lecturing the students for three days on the intricacies of wind power. He also
presented me with 16 hours of video shot during his presentations before various town boards.
When he was finished explaining his intentions, I told him
that we were merely shooting a three-minute video and that
all we really needed was his talking points. He resisted, so I

Instead, I asked them for a vision. Ideally, one student said,

Id love to see him standing in a field beneath a wind turbine
talking about its beauty and power. The idea, visually, would
be to have this tall looming wind turbine thumping away behind him creating this rather picturesque image of power and
environmental beauty.
But its 20-degrees out! another student stated. Theres no
way were going to get Lefty to stand out there in the cold and
talk about wind power. Everyone nodded in agreement.
Lets shoot him in front of the Green Screen, another suggested.
A week later, we brought him in and -- after a 90-minutes
shoot -- boiled everything he said down to one three-minute
50

video. We also layered his conversation over video of wind turbines, creating the effect that they were there in the background. When we were done, Id argue that we elevated the
quality of his arguments by boiling them down, clarifying
them and video taping it all. His message is now online awaiting an audience that could find its way to this work for decades to come.

imagine attempting to produce this video outside, on the private property near the base of the wind turbine at Portsmouth
Abbey. The wind chill was around 15 degrees that day, which
would have made a 90-minute shoot nearly impossible.

As a side note, Id also like to direct your attention to music

playing underneath the Pavlides interview. The song is called
Wind Power & Life, and was proPlanet Forward: An Interview with Dr. Pavlides duced by RWU graduate Alec Harrison. We asked Alec to write this
music specifically for the project,
which forced all of us to consider
the creative process regarding
soundtrack music, copyrighting
and external contracting.

Now, applying Boyers model, he

asks us [h]ow can knowledge be
responsibly applied to consequential problems? I submit that this
interview with Dr. Pavlides does
that very thing. We take a myriad
of problems regarding content,
concept, environment and media
I point this out because this music
and we applied a solution. We
supports Boyers model for the
placed Dr. Pavlides in a controlled
Scholarship of Integration. In
production environment, we enaddition to learning to shoot noncouraged him to speak comfortafiction video, we also had to take
bly about his subject of expertise
(Press arrow to see video.) This was the visual soluinto account a variety of other disand then we cleaned it all up in
tion we created to interview Prof. Pavlides during our
ciplines including music, the scipost production. Further, we trans- winter production cycle.
ences, architecture, history, agriported him to an environment -culture and so forth.
specifically in the foreground of several wind turbines -- and
elevated the power of the story simply by placing Dr. Pavlides
Scholarship of Integration
within visual proximity of the wind turbines. Without the stuBoyer argues that the Scholarship of Integration is when you
dents understanding of the Green Screen, or Chroma-Key
take the knowledge gleaned in one discipline and then apply it
technology, this video never would have been shot. I mean,
to a series of other disciplines. I could argue that this is the es-

51

sence of journalism but, instead, let me show you another

Planet Forward project to make my case.
When Teddy Applebaum joined the Planet Forward team, he
had never held a video camera. Further, he acknowledged that
when he arrived at RWU as a freshman, he came here to study
marine biology, not journalism. In the opening days of the
Planet Forward production cycle, I asked the team to consider
any stories related to sustainability -- both near and far -- and
Teddy approached me about the RWU oyster seeding program
going on in Mount Hope Bay.
The project is simply this: the University has been, for many years, working
to restore the oyster population off the
coast of Bristol, Portsmouth and Warren. To do this, theyre using solar panels to power saltwater incubators filled
with oysters. Once the oysters are viable, they transplant them to the bottom of Mount Hope Bay. Teddy loved
this story because it linked his two
great passions: marine biology and journalism and -- for that very reason -- I
allowed him to press forward and produce a story.

inside the Communication Department and applying that to

an alien discipline -- marine biology. As with the Pavlides
video, there are many of the same obstacles in play here including poor weather, gray New England skies and -- the
added bonus -- of producing video images while afloat in a
boat. When Teddy set out to produce this piece, I thought he
was destine to failure. I was wrong.
The Scholarship of Teaching & Learning

In the opening of this argument -- 50 pages ago -- I wrote that

I love teaching. I have found that I have a natural aptitude for
it and, because of this easy relationship
with the profession, I have developed a
Planet Forward: The Oyster Shoot
love for learning and for teaching.

(Press arrow to watch video.) The

Planet Forward team used its growing knowledge to explore stories located well outside
the discipline of Communication studies.

Now, before you view the video, I want

you to appreciate how this applies to Boyers ideas on the
Scholarship of Integration. Again, were taking research borne

In his outline on scholarship, Boyer

paraphrases Robert Oppenheimer writing that teaching should be at the
heart of any scholarly endeavor... and
then goes on to quote Oppenheimer,
who said: Thus it is proper to the role
of the scientist that he not merely find
the truth and communicate it to his fellows, but that he teach, that he try to
bring the most honest and most intelligible account of new knowledge to all
who will try to learn.

In the modern age, the discipline of journalism requires anyone who practices the craft to be constant in their understand52

ing of the new technologies. I submit that I have been passionate about my understanding of all the new communication
tools as they emerge. Those, of course, include the new media
-- specifically video, texting, social networking -- and the various new applications of traditional media including innovations in news gathering and distribution. This is no easy task.
Every April, a new generation of video cameras is produced,
for example. It seems that every Fall, Apple is changing the
landscape of media with a new device: the laptop, the iPod,
the iPhone, the iPad; each changed the way we do what we do.
Right now, as I look back on my skills as a practicing journalist, I blush with embarrassment over how little attention I
paid to the technologies and media emerging around us. I was
lucky to be part of the Washington press corps when the Internet was first discussed by Congress; it seems that happenstance had simply helped to prepare me for the world Im living in today.

engage in the discussion perpetuating across the academic

community. We do these things to understand and through
pronounced understanding, we gain the ability to teach and to
teach well.
For the better part of eight years, Ive been doing these things.
Ive got three YouTube accounts, three blogs, two Vimeo accounts and a growing stash of cameras, peripherals and other
equipment. All in the pursuit of Digital Journalism research.
Or, as Oppenheimer described it: I am working to bring the
most honest and most intelligible account of new knowledge
to all who will try to learn.
For me, the Boyer model makes sense. It makes sense because
just six weeks ago I knew nothing of Boyer, and yet I was practicing scholarship in a manner that reflects his model for such
research.
So, how did we get here?

I mean, my god, hasnt the Internet changed everything? It

would be impossibly irresponsible for a practicing journalism
educator to sit around now ignoring the power of social networking, for example, or the connectivity of the iPhone platform. To be honest, I dont know how one could sustain themselves as a journalism professor, if theyre merely purporting
to understand the digital landscape.
Instead, I believe it is our responsibility to explore new websites, new social media devices and tools, to read and review
new technologies and gadgets and -- most important of all -53

Planet Forward (RWU) 2.0: Gem Car Profile

(Press the arrow to watch the video.) As part of the Planet Forward (RWU) 2.0, students tracked down
Public Safety officer Kate Tobin to ask her about the Universitys Gem Car, which is an electric video used by
the officers to patrol the campus parking lots.

S ECTION 2

External Validation
F ROM THE RWU F ACULTY A GREEMENT

A Little Breaking News

On September 19, 2012, the Communication Department received notice from the New England Newspaper and Press Association that this news society had selected me as its 2012
New England Journalism Educator of the Year. You can imagine my surprise and delight.
The NENPA is the definitive news association representing
450 daily, weekly and specialty newspapers across New England. Started 62 years ago, its website declares that the
NENPA has been Promoting Growth and Excellence in New
England Newspapers since 1950. Given the stoic attention
newspapers give to detail and accuracy, their honor of Educator of the Year comes as no light accolade for my resume. Instead, I feel the burden of responsibility to live up to the standards set by this institution. Again, the news of this award created a great deal of humility for me.
As it happens, I was with my colleagues, Roxanne OConnell
and Paola Prado, when the news reached us. Roxanne was
looking at her email, when she noticed a message from the
NENPA Executive Director Dan Cotter telling her (and us)
that I had won. The timing was rather poetic for me simply because I was surrounded by the colleagues who made this
award possible.
What happened next, I didnt expect. With awards of this nature, often the news seizes you and takes you where it cares to
go. In my case, when the news reached the Roger Williams
community, I was bombarded with emails from colleagues
55

and friends saying congratulations. Among the messages was

a note from RWU President Don Farish:

A student reaction:

eMail from Dr. Farish:

Within hours, I had notices from friends and relatives, I also

had comments from former grad-school classmates and, of
course, my students. My students were especially thrilled with
the news. I heard from dozens of current and former students.
and their messages included many of the same ideas. One
even suggested that her education was worth more now that
my profile had been elevated so publicly.
I called my mother, she said, just to brag that my professor
was the best in New England.

Again, Id like to suggest that often, these awards have away

getting much bigger than the recipient and this award may be
a point in case.
All that aside, let me offer this argument: Hey! I just got some
strong positive feedback -- dare I say, External Validation -from an industry organization that takes the process of granting accolades very seriously.
56

And, of course, we all win from this award. I get bragging

rights for a few more weeks; my students have a little bit more
faith in the lessons Im presenting to them; my colleagues can
boast and jeer all they desire; and Roger Williams University
can use this award to build its argument in the market and attract more students.

eMail from the NENPA:

Of course, placing all of this aside, I do have one more major

responsibility to embrace: On October 11, 2012, I will turn out
for the NENPAs annual convention in Natick, Mass., to collect the award and my hosts are asking me to offer some brief
remarks. But what should I say?
The newspaper industry is dying? (But) does anyone have internships for undergraduates?
The trick here, I think, is to be humble and sweet and honest:
I suspect I will tell them that the news industry as we knew it
is fading but the need for intelligent, honest and dedicated
news-gatherers has never been more important. I respect the
mission of every news reporter whos every suffered through a
town council meeting or written at length on water and sewer
billing. Looking forward, if I have my way, my students will understand, what I call, the catechism of the news writing and
I will instill in them the absolutely need to respect and honor
the current news practice and news tradition established by
the generations of journalists who came before. Newspapering
may die but the struggle for honest and smart and courageous
news reporting, writing and editing must endure. I believe in
the NENPA; I hope they, in turn, believe in me.
57

S ECTION 3

A look at other work

10 R ULES FOR D IGITAL J OURNALISM
1.

Digital Journalism integrates several media to tell one story

2.

Technology is not journalism

3.

Create Internet content explicitly for that audience

4.

Research, reporting, writing, editing, thinking: remain

paramount

5.

Accuracy, accuracy, accuracy

6.

Let images be powerful; apply the same standard to writing

7.

Be dynamic, be brief

8.

Professional work must look professional

9.

Understand each medium

10. Interact with the audience

A Guide to Self-Instruction
When I started this journey through the academy, I combed
the Internet searching for a model, a list of rules or standards
that defined Digital Journalism. After an extensive search, I
was surprised to learn that no one had catalogued a list of
ideas and I began itemizing my own list.
After several years of thought, and after many revisions inspired, in part, by friends and authorities who cared to look at
it, I present my list 10 Rules for Digital Journalism, which
appears to the left. I believe, for now, it may be the only list of
its kind and Im rather proud of it.
To craft it, I simply began considering all the things that I was
teaching in the classroom and I clarified the ideas down to simple statements. Of course, of all of this was part of my own
education.
In an effort to teach myself about Digital Journalism, I began
building a digital footprint. Right now, I have three blogs,
three YouTube pages, a Twitter account, a Facebook presence,
a Vimeo account and a Flickr page.
When I started building these tools, I had no idea what I
would learn from these experiences. But now, years later, Ive
a host of anecdotal evidence related to each of these media
sites and social networking accounts.
Concurrently, I began exploring video. One of the key vehicles
in this study was Planet Forward. Over two years, my students
58

and I worked in two production cycles and developed a catalog of video. As we did this, I learned from the process of doing: I learned how to manage, to problem solve and to work
with the tools. As my knowledge grew, I began sharing my experiences in the classroom and at conferences.
To say that Ive grown, these few years, would be an understatement. My shift into the realm of Digital Journalism has
been seismic and at the heart of that development has been a
collection of lessons Ive catalogued into a list.
After eight years teaching, these are the things Ive determined about Digital Journalism:
Now, I could go through each of these in order, but the reason
Im posting this list is to demonstrate why Im doing what I do
as I move through my Academic career. Lets talk about some
key points:
Technology is not journalism: There is a belief among my
peers in the discipline that by issuing students digital recording equipment, you are empowering them as journalists. Nothing could be further from the truth. Student need to learn
about the basics of the news industry: Specifically, research,
reporting and writing, before they begin applying electronic
tools. Taking a video camera into a Town Hall meeting doesnt
make you a journalist; it makes you a voyeur. Journalism begins when the person wielding the camera determines whats
important and how it should be presented to a mass audience.

Create Internet content explicitly for that audience:

During the summer of 2010, Rolling Stone magazine came under attack because it failed to publish a story about Gen. Stanley McChrystal on its companion website. Instead, it published the story in the hardcopy edition of the magazine and
let the other digital news outlets publish excerpts of the piece
on the Internet. The criticism, largely, was over whether Rolling Stone failed to connect with its audience; and, was the
magazine too concerned with revenue, instead of serving the
audience.
I rejected both ideas.
I think the editors and publishers instincts were half right.
They didnt want to give the story away; instead they wanted
readers to buy the magazine. But what they did do was they
failed to serve the readers with teaser or companion content
on the Internet. Instead of publishing the McChrystal story in
full, what they could have done was published video and/or
audio clips of the actual interview; they could have also published a series of still photographs showing the writer, Michael Hastings, sitting with the general. Finally, they could
have also allowed the readers a real forum for reaction.
My point is this: Rolling Stone failed to consider its digital
audience. Instead, when they finally published their story,
they simply repackaged content created for an entirely different medium.
I believe this: If Rolling Stone had published companion organic digital media on the Internet, they would have actually
59

profited financially and editorially; the audience would have

gotten MORE from the interview and the digital content
would have a real financial value.

Of course, in our haste to tell a great story, we neglected Marshall McLuhans warning about the medium and the message;
and a purist in the industry might ask why we published a
piece that was factually inconsistent.

Accuracy, accuracy, accuracy: Often, in our haste to publish information in a new medium especially when working
Be dynamic, be brief: This rule is intentionally obtuse. Idewith video it is really easy for the news
ally, every piece of journalism is dyteam to cut corners. Examples abound,
namic, but often, writers and editors
Planet Forward: Potato Shuttle
but let me offer a specific one. In 2009,
confuse the quality of a story with the
the Planet Forward team produced a
actual quantity of text. The same is
video entitled Canola Shuttle, which
true with video.
featured a man collecting a delivery of
In the magazine industry, every word
potatoes and driving those potatoes to a
counts. In television, the software actukitchen on the campus at Roger Wilally measures in seconds the time it
liams University. Inside the kitchen, the
takes to actually utter each word.
potatoes are sliced and dropped into a
grease fryer, and then the fry grease is
Right now, there is a belief that bemoved through a curing system and ulticause the Internet is a dominion of inmately used to fuel a shuttle bus on cam- In 2009, I was the executive producer of this finite bandwidth, that the rules of
video about using vegetable oil to power a
pus.
brevity do not apply. Nothing could be
diesel shuttle bus.
further from the truth. Sure, there is
Now, while the images are pleasing, the
plenty of space for people to publish
message is actually incongruous.
online BUT the concern needs to return to the audience: Im
In a very pure sense, the visual message is that Roger Wilfinding that when looking at video, the audience starts to get
bored at two minutes, at three minutes theyre searching for
liams University is using potatoes to fuel its shuttles; where,
the next link and at four minutes, theyre gone.
in fact, the university is using Canola oil to fuel its shuttles.
To report this story accurately, the initial images should have
been of a farmer moving Canola seeds from the field to the factory to the kitchen.

Professional work must look professional: In the age of

YouTube, blogging and Facebook, there is a lot of room for
amateur content. On YouTube, the company has actually set
60

the default resolution down to 360p in a universe where many

flat panel televisions are designed for a 1080p resolution. I
suspect theyre doing this simply because of the volume of
data their servers are storing and processing each day.

Digital Journalist could document stories from the field and

work through the technical and political problems that might
occur in an International environment. I have to confess that
there were many.

I read, recently, that YouTube subscribers posted a volume of

Oddly, one of the key political problems stems from the fact
video content greater than all the data broadcast over the telethat the Turkish government has shutdown access to YouTube
vision matrix since the first comto anyone inside the country. As
mercial television licenses were
a result, I found myself having
Turkey 2010 visit: Pamukkale
issued in the 1940s.
to publish on Vimeo, which has
a decidedly different video culThe result? There is a lot of
ture; it also takes much longer
trash video posted on the
to upload (or publish) video on
Internet and the only thing that
this site. In some cases, it took
will truly distinguish profesnine (9) hours to upload a
sional work will be the quality of
three-minute video to this site. I
its visual content. Professional
suspect, given the ease of the
storytellers need to create clear,
YouTube network, uploading
crisp, beautiful images and an
times would be substantially
audience will find their work.
shorter.
About my Digital Footprint:
RWU Turkey Tour (A Multimedia Presentation)

Internet band width and access

During the summer 2010, a group of colleagues and I
also became a problem. While
toured Turkey to consider academic relationships with uniin Istanbul and Ankora, the maversities in this wonderful and exotic country.
jor cities, finding hotels with
During the summer of 2010, I
high-speed Internet access was
had an opportunity to tour Turnot a problem. But in the outlying areas, Internet access is
key with three of my colleagues. As we moved around the
spotty.
country, during the two-week visit, I made a point of documenting the tour with a Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3 hybrid
digital video/still camera. The purpose here was to see how a
61

By the time I arrived back in the United States, I found that I

had enough visual data to produce a catalog of eleven (11)
video postcards, which all now appear on my blog, Ode to
Journalism on July 22, 2010.
Video Postcards: As part of this project, I began crafting
something Ive created called the Video Postcard. The idea is
relatively simple. Modeled after traditional postcards, Ive concluded that these little video/photo messages can have a Turkey is fine! Wish you were here! effect on a digital viewership. Because this form of trash video is designated for personal use, the quality can be below standard. Instead, the idea
is to simply offer a quick, keepsake video message that invites
the viewer to see you in this distant environment. The work is
fairly well received.
Ode to Journalism

As a point of self-discovery, I began drafting a Blog called

Ode to Journalism, which can be found at
www.journalismprofessor.Blogspot.com. I started writing on
this Blog in May 2007 and Ive been working steadily at it
since then.
During the last 65 months, Ive been writing about my classes,
my career, new technologies, changes in the industry and so
forth. Ive also been publishing video and still photographs. As
for my writing habits, during the first few months, I published
something weekly; in 2008 I wrote something just about
every other day.
Ive also been following the traffic patterns. Ive had over
14,000 visitors to my site from countries across the globe. I average 25 visitors a day, who look at roughly 44 pages a day. I
have regular readers hear at Roger Williams University and
elsewhere. In fact, I recently had the IT director at the University of Oregon email me and tell me that he wished his faculty
was half as inspired as I have been.
Also, as the integration technologies continue to improve, Im
finding that corporate media groups have been finding ways
to integrate Blogs like mine in their content. During Hurricane Gustav, I wrote a Blog entry about the storm as it approached New Orleans. I was later surprised to find that I was
getting an influx of traffic from the CNN website. Turns out,
CNN had added my Blog link to its website for a few hours,
and that caused my traffic to spike.

62

What Im learning: Ive been reading volumes of information about the cultural, political and social aspects of the Internet. Ive also been marveling at what the library scientists are
writing about the Internet: One suggests that the Internets influence over world culture will soon be greater than that of the
printing press. No small boast there.
As for my microcosmic understanding
of things, Im finding that there is an
audience for just about any subject.
Ive been writing quite a bit about
video cameras including the Flip
Video Ultra and I have become, on
some level, a Blogging expert on the
quirks of this little camera. People
email for advice, uses and lighting suggestions. I get at least one page view a
day related specifically to this device.
I think that Blogging has jumped the
shark as they say. It had its day but it
looks like other social networking platforms have supplanted the blog, at
least the blog as we knew it

We Are

way to Twitter and Linked In and Tumblr. Its all worth knowing about simply because one technology relates to the next.
The Feed
Acting on the encouragement of Professor Ted Delaney, I built
a three-student team and helped them produce two-minute
news videos for the Internet. That project began in Fall 2007 and, over the
The Feed
course of 15-weeks, we eventually published 12 video pieces which is very
ambitious. In fact, during my teaching
at Ithaca College, I was lucky if I could
get the students to produce half that
volume.

(Press the Arrow to play the video.) The

students from the original production team
talk about their work on The Feed. This
video was produced by Prof. Ted Delaney.

But who knows? It seems that every

year or so, a new social networking device or program comes along and -- for a time -- it becomes
the thing. Blogging gave way to Facebook, which is giving

When the semester ended, I had to

place the Feed on hold simply because only one of the three participating students want to continue with the
project. The others said they had internships to complete and departed
(only to later realize that theyd
walked away from one of the best projects of their academic careers). Also,
because I lacked proper video cameras, I also placed the Feed on

hold until now.

63

Beginning with the Fall 2008 semester, the Feed resumed

production and has returned to a Wednesday publishing date
that continues to sustain itself to the present day.
My purposes here are many: Ideally, Im training students to work in a weekly video production style that will certainly serve them when they move off into the professional
world; second, Im attempting to define a new form of student
media believe that student-run cable access programming and
student-run weekly newspapers have become tired and dull;
third, Im using the lessons learned from the Feed to better
prepare myself for the classroom; finally, I believe the Feed,
with its global reach, is quickly becoming a strategic marketing tool for the university.
Any student looking to better-understand what were doing in
the Communications Department need only look online for
samples from the Feed and my Digital Journalism course
work.
Professional acknowledgements
1.
Roger Williams University alumni and faculty
mailings: During the last two years, my work in the Communication Department has been repeatedly profiled and presented in a variety of newsletters and student mailings.
2.
Roger Williams University students create
green video vignettes, was an article that appeared on
Boston Globe Environmental Reporter Beth Dalys website in
February 2010.

3.
Planet Forward, an hour-long television pilot that
aired on PBS. In April 2009, Roger Williams University senior
Kyle Toomey sat onstage for a discussion about sustainability
with host Frank Sesno and White House Energy Czar Carol
Browner. The nationally-televised program featured three (3)
three-minute videos which were produced and edited by RWU
Communication students and executive produced by me.
4.
A video by Roger Williams University students
aids in the national debate about energy alternatives; Providence Journal. In March 2009, Gina Macris
from The Providence Journal published a full-on feature
about our work on Planet Forward for PBS.
5.
Universities Try Out New Digital Devices BusinessWeek magazine. On August 27th, 2008, I was quoted in
BusinessWeek magazine in an article it was doing on the technologies universities are using to reach students. The writer,
Arik Hesseldahl, called me because hes been reading my Blog
for some time and he knew that I was using the Flip Video Ultra as teaching tool. He called me to ask me how it was going
and I spoke to him for about 30 minutes. When we were done,
he asked for a student he might consider interviewing and I
gave him Communications senior Lorin Richardsons name.
Comments from both our conversations appeared in the online version of the article. Im unsure if it appeared in the actual magazine.
Conference Papers

64

1. Teaching Civic Engagement in a Global Classroom:

the Middle East Partnership Initiative by June S.
Speakman and Michael Scully. In September, 2010, June
Speakman presented our paper, Teaching Civil Engagement
in a Global Classroom: MEPI, during the annual American
Political Science Association conference in Philadelphia.
Conferences and meetings
1.
Fulbright Fellowship tour of
Turkey. In June 2011, I was one of
five Roger Williams University faculty
members who lead an international
tour through Turkey. While I was
there, I met with academic peers at Istanbul Technical University and the
Middle Eastern Technical University
where we discussed sustainability issues. I also lectured at ITU about the
power of Communication and how
video can be used to address a mass
audience.

a group of my peers about the pedagogy related to teaching

multimedia in the classroom and how -- by simplifying the
technology -- students can successfully complete a video production cycle.

4.
Guest Interview on the Gene Valicenti Radio
Show, 99.7 WPRO Talk Radio. March 10, 2012. Gene invited
me to come on his radio program to
discuss the future of news media and
Photos from conferences and meetings
the influence the iPad might have
over the future of newspapering and
traditional local TV news.

(Drag your finger over the image to see photos)

5.

Rhode Island Foundation:
In August 2010, I met with a dozen
Rhode Island Foundation grant recipients to discuss producing video presentations for an Internet-based audience.

Here is a collection of photographs taken as I

moved through many of these meetings.

6.

Fulbright Turkish Delegation: In June 2010, I was invited to
1 of 16
tour Turkey with eight other Roger
2.
NYSCA 2011 Conference, ElWilliams University colleagues for
lenville, NY. In October 2011, I attended the annual NYSCA in
two weeks. During our travels, we met with administrators
the Catskill Mountains and presented my ideas about using
and faculty members from Istanbul Technical University and
Google Documents as a learning tool in the classroom.
Middle Eastern Technical University to discuss potential collaborative teaching programs.
3.
VisCom 2012, Salt Lake City, Utah. In June 2012, I attended this annual visual communication conference and pre7.
Middle East Partnership Initiative 2009 reunion.
sented my findings my ideas about Video Postcards. I spoke to
In March 2010, Kate Greene and I flew to Istanbul to meet
65

with the MEPI scholars we worked with during the Summer

2009 program. During that event, I lectured for 60 minutes
about the influences of Digital Journalism and the power of
Social Media to help elevate the profile of a political or social
movement. Roughly 300 students attended this lecture.

faculty, administrators, students, family and friends attended this Green Carpet function that included presentations by each of the students and 12 of the student-produced
videos on sustainability.

8.
Association of Educators in Journalism and
Mass Communication convention 2009. Roxanne
OConnell and I attended the annual AEJMC conference in
Boston, to conduct interviews with potential Journalism and
PR faculty candidates. We also attended several lectures and
functions.

12.
Invited Lecturer, Ithaca College London Center, London, England. I was invited by Assistant Professor Ryan
Parkhurst to lecture about Blogging and Digital Journalism. I
used the three-day lecture series to show his journalism students how to use video cameras to shoot digital postcards for
friends and family. We also looked at the professional comment of TV-for-the-Internet. May 2009.

9.
Middle East Partnership Initiative 2009: Working
with Kate Greene and June Speakman, I was invited to teach
20 Middle Eastern MEPI scholars about Digital Journalism.
This three-week program which ran during the month of
July included instruction on video and still camera equipment; we also worked to publish this video online.

13.
Invited Lecturer, Society and Journalism, Connecticut
College, New London, Conn. I was invited by Associate Professor Sunil Bhatia to lecture about the dynamics of Digital Journalism and social networking. During the 90-minute lecture,
we explored the changing digital landscape and spoke about
the power of civic journalism. April 2009

10.
VisCom 2009, Grand Targee, Wyoming. In June 2009,
I attended this annual visual communication conference and
presented my findings on the RWU Planet Forward 1.0 project. Roughly 50 peers from a dozen U.S. universities attended
the function and spoke about their work. They also offered
some very kind observations about the Planet Forward catalog.

14.
Planet Forward presentation to Roger Williams University Board of Trustees. Escorted by RWU
President Roy Nirschel, I was invited to present an abbreviated look at the RWU Planet Forward 1.0 video catalog.

11.
Planet Forward Green Carpet Premier: In
March 2009, the RWU Planet Forward 1.0 production team
hosted a 90-minute video premier. An estimated 300 people

15.
Presidents Conference on Civil Discourse: On
January 31st, CNN news anchor Lou Dobbs came to Roger Williams University to speak about a host of political topics. During his hour-long presentation, Dobbs spoke about his lack of
confidence in the government, politics and the election process. He also spoke about the illegal immigration troubles here
66

in the United States. Afterward, I was invited to join a panel of

faculty experts for a discussion about Lou Dobbs, his ideas
and his presentation. Because I have long experience in cable
news generally and CNN specifically, I spoke about the state
of affairs in the cable news industry; I also offered criticism
about the lack of proper discourse in the cable news environment.
16.
Society of Professional Journalists Northeast Regional Conference: On April 26th, I was invited to speak at
the SPJ regional conference in Portland, Maine, about the
Blogging and digital media. Ryan Parkhurst, my former teaching partner and a journalism professor at Ithaca College,
joined me at the Portland conference and co-hosted the lecture, which lasted 45 minutes. During the lecture, we showed
a series of online media projects and explained what was and
wasnt working. We spoke about the dynamics of the new
world of journalism and what traditionalists needed to do to
assimilate to the future. We presented to a group of 75 people
students, academics and professionals afterward, we were
bombarded with questions, queries and business cards. This
was one of the more successful presentations of my career.
17.
Discussion with Romanian Librarians: This was a
little odd but I was invited by Kate Greene, the director of International Programs, to speak with three visiting Romanian
library fellows touring the United States. After several days in
Providence, they stopped in for a brief conversation with us at
Roger Williams University. It was during this discussion that I
began musing with them about some of the library science

studies about the potential of the Internet. I went as far as to

tell them that one theorist believes that all of it belongs online
where the global community can study, review and critique it.
I suggested that something called the great digital textbook
was being written into the fabric of the global network and
that one day everything, every academic study, every
email, and every text message would be catalogued. They
asked me why? and I told them because we can and then I
closed the deal with the following request: It will be up to you
librarians to catalog it all. Daunting, I know, but they liked
the challenge I laid before them. My message, I hope, was
clear: We are in the throws of the information age and while
most of society is working to create that content, it will be up
to a select few to organize it all. To the librarians, this is a
good thing: There will never been a shortage of demand for
people who can organize and catalog content.
18.
Middle East Partnership Initiative 2008: I was approached by Kate Greene from International Programs to
teach just ONE day of technology to 16 Middle Eastern scholars in the MEPI program. If you dont know, MEPI is a State
Department program that wrangles young leaders from the
Arab League and brings them to the United States for 6-weeks
of training on government, politics, democracy and leadership
skills. Kate wanted to include some technology training and
approached me for some ideas. By the end of the conversation, I was teaching three classes and possibly spending more
time with them to offer technical and educational support. I
ultimately spent an estimated 90 hours with them during the
67

6-week conference. I met them in Washington DC on July 1st.

I traveled with them back to Rhode Island; I toured the state
with them; and then I traveled with them for a two-week visit
that passed through Milwaukee, Chicago and then back into
Washington DC. During this time, I got to know them very
well. In fact, at one point, I was living in a dorm suite with
eight of them during the visit to Milwaukee. My tech lessons: I
taught them to shoot video and build Blogs. I told them that
the could affect change in their regions if they posted video of
events that may not be covered by the traditional press. For
now, Blogging has been compared to the pamphleteering culture of the 1700s but, as Ive stated before, I think its potential
is growing.

Video application for the APSA

Congressional Fellowship

(Press arrow to view video.) In 2010, I sent this video

application to the American Political Scientists Association
hoping to win a fellowship on Capitol Hill.

68

C HAPTER 4

Service

Of all the responsibilities we have at Roger Williams, service

seemed to be one of those things that came to me very easily. I
spent the last several years touring the globe with students
from near and far, teaching, mentoring and proctoring.
Ive also made good use of my time, sharing my knowledge
across the department, the college, the university and -- more
broadly -- the state of Rhode Island. I do these things because
I enjoy sharing my discoveries and my ideas. I mean, in many
ways, its through our service to others that we define who we
are as human animals. Wouldnt it be great to think that with
every conversation and every encounter, we have an opportunity to help shape the world and guide the people around us?
Teaching is certainly a powerful part of that; what we do outside the classroom can be as equally important.

S ECTION 1

Service

Service
I dont think its any small matter how much time Ive committed to the service of Roger Williams University. I have served
the Communication Department, Ive worked on at least one
key committee inside the College of Arts & Sciences, Ive certainly done work for the University and I have had extensive
contact with Rhode Island as a whole.

Sharing the Wealth

In many ways, Ive become a pitchman for the cultural and medicinal benefits of Digital Journalism. Im finding that when I
get talking about my knowledge base on these new digital
tools, I find that people tend to become engaged.
In recent weeks, Ive heard myself declare that were living in
the Age of Video, and that the Internet is the catalyst of
global democracy and that the World Wide Web has become
the source for the great global dialog.
Trouble is, I believe this stuff.
Right now, its absolutely possible to work collaboratively with
people on the far end of the planet. When I call 800 numbers,
Im often surprised to hear a distant accent in the voice of the
person offering me customer service. As for video, Ive been
declaring for years now that everyone wants video.
During the last few years, Ive begun sharing these thoughts in
many forums including the classroom and the boardroom. I
70

attend the Open Houses, Im there at Accepted Students Day,

and Ive lectured to domestic and international students.
At a conference in Istanbul, I asked an audience of 300 Middle Eastern and North African students who was on Facebook? All 300 hands went up!
When I saw this, I asked: When was the last time 300 people
from the MENA region agreed on anything!
Last summer, I worked with one of my students to produce a
series of videos about the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities. That body of work included videos about Civil War
Re-enactors, a museum for the SeaBees, and a profile of AS220, cultural hub in downtown Providence.
At every turn, Im finding that people are changing their lives
with the Internet and my purpose is to show them the way.
Heres the work Ive done:
1.
Rhode Island Foundation: In August 2010, I met
with a dozen Rhode Island Foundation grant recipients to discuss producing video presentations for an Internet-based audience.
2.
Fulbright Turkish Delegation: In June 2010, I was
invited to tour Turkey with eight other Roger Williams University colleagues for two weeks. During our travels, we met with
administrators and faculty members from Istanbul Technical
University and Middle Eastern Technical University to discuss
potential collaborative teaching programs.

3.
GrrlTech 2010: Believing that this project has great
merit, Ive decided to continue lecturing to would-be female
college students at this annual conference. This year, as in the
past, this lecture has been entitled So you want to be on YouTube, and often brings in 30 or so Rhode Island high school
juniors.
4.
Washington DC Alumni Function: George Washington University, March 2009. As part of the Planet Forward
production rollout, the RWU Planet Forward 1.0 team was invited to host an alumni function the first of its kind in
Washington DC. Distinguish guests included U.S. Senator
Sheldon Whitehouse, CNN Anchor Frank Sesno, RWU President Roy Nirschel and Washington Post Reporter Anna Uhls.
5.
GrrlTech 2009: Believing that teaching situations like
this one have great merit, Ive become a regular on the
GrrlTech lecture project.
6.
Frank Simms luncheon: In November 2009, I was invited by President Roy Nirschel for a luncheon/conversation
with Frank Simms, a television voiceover actor known best for
his work as the voice for the Kool-Aid man.
7.
Alan Weisman Luncheon/Lecture: In October
2009, I was invited for a luncheon/panel discussion with
author Alan Weisman.
8.
Lisa Ling Lecture: In October 2009, I was invited to
President Roy Nirschels home to meet Lisa Ling, a TV news
reporter.
71

9.
Journalism Search Committee Co-Chair: In September 2009, Roxanne OConnell and I began co-chairing the
search committee that ultimately led to the addition of Dr.
Paola Prado to the Communication Department.
10.
Public Relations
Search Committee member: I began participating in
the search committee that ultimately led to the addition of Dr.
Hume Johnson to the Communication Department.

RWU Knife

tem and he needed voices. I located eight students who called

by the Mens and Womens games during a season that
opened in December and played through into April. During
that time, the student sports announcers traveled near and far
to call the games. They also developed relationships with the
players, the coaches and an
Internet audience. So much so,
Safety Video
in fact, the student radio station
is now considering the idea of
taking live play-by-play over its
signal during the 2008-2009
basketball season.

11.
Ray Suarez Lecture: In
March 2009, I was invited to
President Roy Nirschels home
to meet PBS Anchor Ray Suarez.

14.
GrrlTech 2008: Professor W. Brett McKenzie asked if I
would teach a technologyoriented class to a group of
high-school aged Rhode Island
12.
Open House: In Novemstudents during the 2008
ber, 2008, Roxanne OConnell
(Touch the Arrow to see the video.) Our friends at
GrrlTech conference at Roger
and I worked together recruitBon Appetit asked us if wed shoot a knife safety video for
Williams University. If you
ing potential students.
the dining hall workers. Student Stephanie Lippmann prodont know, GrrlTech was creduced this multi-camera shoot to demonstrate her skills.
13.
Roger Williams Univerated to encourage female highsity Basketball play-byschool students to consider maplay: In December, 2007, I received an email from Athletic
joring in technology programs at the college level. Prof.
Director George Kolb wondering if I knew of any students who
McKenzie asked me to do a class entitled: So, you want to be
might be interested in calling play-by-play during the Mens
on YouTube. I used the setting to show them what was going
Basketball season. At the time, he and the Nick Williams, the
on with media on the Internet. So, on March 7th, I showed
PR guy for the Athletics Department, had wired a laptop to
them a variety of websites including Facebook, Blogger and
feed sports broadcasts into an Internet-based announcing sys72

YouTube and then I shot video of them shouting Grrl-Tech

rocks!, which I later posted on my Youtube page:
www.youtube.com/user/mscully444. The meat of my lesson
was this: The Internet belongs to their generation (not mine)
and it will be up to them to define how the medium will be
used professionally, culturally and academically. Right now,
anything can happen.
15.
Communications Department PR Search Committee: In late Fall 2007, I was approached by Professors
Ted Delaney and Aimee Shelton about joining their PR search
committee. This search ended without resolution.
16.
Committee member of the CAS Curriculum Committee: I served a one-year interim appointment on the college Curriculum Committee and became a voice in the process
of course design and implementation. I joined this committee
knowing that I would soon have a hand retooling the Journalism curriculum; being inside this committee helped me better
understand the process of curriculum design and the standards for proper presentation.
17. Faculty Union Finance Committee Chairman: After
a year working as a board member on the Finance Committee,
was elected to be this boards chairman. During my year as the
chair, I lightly managed the five members and ultimately lead
the process of selecting five scholarship winners from the
Class of 2012.
18. Journalism Major Development Team: Working
with Professors Paola Prado, Ted Delaney, Roxanne OConnell

and Dean Robert Cole, I helped design and develop the new
Journalism Major. After years of posturing, the actually work
shifting classes into and out of the major, took us six hard
months. Along the way, we designed three new classes, which
were all successfully added to the new major. In April, the University leadership officially approved the new major and the
language of this new curriculum appears in the RWU 20122013 Course Catalog.
Community Outreach

1.
Jamestown Distributors. Over the Winter break, I
was approached by Mike Mills, the president of Jamestown
Distributors, a Bristol-based boat supply company, about the
prospect of recruiting interns to help him shoot how to videos, which hed later post on the Internet. During a second
meeting, I walked through his facility to see what he actually
did for a living: Basically, hes a hardware store for boaters
and hes using the Internet to build a global presence. As part
of this, hes discovered that if he posts how to construction
videos on his site, his traffic increases. Responding to his interest, I connected him with Communication graduate Joanna
Nettelfield, who served as an Internet over the summer. During that time, he shot an average of six videos a week and
posted them on YouTube. Things went so well, in fact, that he
hired Joanna on full time and has since contacted me hoping I
could send more students over. Joanna kept this job for three
years -- earning a salary around $50K annually -- and her
work attracted 700 additional dedicated page views to Mills
online operations. Basically, people were just coming to the
73

site to see Joanna. In 2011, she left Jamestown and accepted

her dream job as a video producer with a PR firm in New
York City.

in video production, moving vehicles need to move in the

same direction) and I directed them to produce a threeminute safety video. As it happens, I was going to a teaching
conference in Istanbul, Turkey and I didnt want to cancel
2. The Anthony Quinn Foundation: In 2011, I asked one
class, so I used this project to
of my top students to work with
keep them on topic and working
the Quinn Foundation as an inJoanna Nettelfield at JDTV
in my absence. Oddly, the protern. During his tenure, Tim
ject worked out wonderfully!
Boughton helped professionalRight now, Kathy Souza is using
ize the Quinn Foundations digithe video to train her employtal footprint; he also shot sevees. Also, because of the void of
eral hours of video for the Founquality safety video, the director
dations public outreach proof health safety at a Florida
gram.
state university contacted me to
ask if he could purchase licens3. Video projects aroun caming rights to use the video at his
pus: In 2010, the RWU directer
university. Regretfully, because
of Environmental Safety, Kathof liability issues, we had to deleen Souza, contacted me to
cline.
help her solve a problem. Be(Click on the Arrow to see the video) During a chance
encounter with the CEO of Jamestown Distributors, I orcause of a spate of golf cart acciIn 2011, Kathy contacted me
chestrated
an
internship
for
one
of
our
top
PR
students,
Jodents, the Universitys insuranna Nettelfield, who parlayed this job into a lucrative posi- again to ask about shooting anance company was requiring the
other video. This time on knife
tion in New York City.
school to conduct rigorous golf
safety inside the dining hall. I
cart safety training classes.
used that production opportunity to demonstrate to students
Kathy came to me because she couldnt find any online that
how to properly light a set and do a multi-camera shoot in a
met the OSHA standards and she wanted to know if any of my
controlled environment. Both of those videos are posted here
students could produce something. After giving it some
in the chapter if youre curious to see them.
thought, I realized I could use the situation as an opportunity
to teach my students about storyline continuity (for example,
74

Faculty Advisor for Student Internships

All students in the Communication program are required to
take a student internship. The belief here is that students who
participate in internship programs gain a first hand understanding of their professional future. Internships give students access to newsrooms and other media environments
where they can watch and learn as professionals go about the
business of gathering, producing and distributing information.
As part of the process, students must write a 10-page paper
outlining everything they learned, explaining their duties as
an intern and so forth. Again, the program enriches the education of the students who participate.
Since I arrived in 2007, I have been approached by scores of
students seeking internships. In fact, I have acted as the faculty sponsor for 57 student internships during the last five
years. I do this because I know the students need to earn the
credits; it also allows me a better understanding of where the
quality internships are located and what the students are
learning in the process.
Student Orientation and Recruitment
One of the most important steps in the process leading to college is the student site visit. I think all students should make a
trip to each of their prospective colleges for a look around just
to see to glimpse at what college will be like should they opt to
attend that university.

Clearly, each university needs to put its best face on and make
an effort to attract the best and brightest students. Now, while
most of this burden falls on the shoulders of the support staff
specifically the Admissions Department I believe that professors should also play an active role. Ideally, these students
will be spending most of their time in the classroom working
with department faculty; at the very least, they should have
some sense of the personalities theyll be encountering.
For my part, Ive been actively participating in the student
Open House events simply because Im proud of the curriculum and the potential for the Communications Department.
Ive also met with visiting students and parents on several occasions. Again, I see it as an opportunity to explain in a oneon-one environment what the student should expect if they attend Roger Williams University.
Accepted Student Day is also a very important event. Here,
students who have been invited to attend actually have another chance to evaluate and confirm their interest in Roger
Williams University. With admission numbers getting tighter,
this day is especially important. Theyre here, theyre interested, we should close the deal.
Finally, Student Orientation: This is really when the fear of
commitment begins to settle in for the student. Our job is to
ease their buyers remorse and assure them that theyve
made the correct decision. Again, I think all faculty members
should greet these events with energy and enthusiasm. During
the course of the last year, Ive attended no less than four
75

Open Houses; accepted students day; and two new student orientation advising sessions.

Class Production: Golf Cart Safety

(Press the arrow to watch the video.) In 2010, while I

was at a teaching conference, I directed my students to produce this golf cart safety video to work on their production
skills.

76

C HAPTER 5

Goals

The process of change, especially inside the academy, can be a slow and arduous one. To achieve,
one must be enterprising, creative, thoughtful
and patient. In my case, Ive been very lucky to
have the colleagues I have, who have helped me
manage and maintain my goals. And, to be fair,
there have been many.
So far, I think Ive been very lucky to have
achieved just about everything Ive sought out to
achieve.
Looking forward, however, there is a lot yet to be
done.

S ECTION 1

Goals

The Communication Department achieved a major milestone

in April when the university approved the new Journalism major. Now, by this point, Ive written substantially about the
process and methods we used to split journalism off and establish it as its own major; what I need to do here is explain the
larger implications of this latest achievement.
Very simply, everything that Ive been doing since I arrived at
Roger Williams University can be summed up this way: My
dream is to be part of a world class Journalism program. Now,
there are two paths to this goal: the first is to join a wellestablished journalism program; the other -- and arguably the
harder path -- is to simply create that program. With the help
of my colleagues in the College of Arts & Sciences, weve been
working towards creating that program.
Launching the Journalism major simply represents the most
sweeping change to the Journalism curriculum since the Communication Department was established. But there is so much
more work to be done.
Next up: We need to add more faculty; we need to raise the
number of declared majors; we must fine-tune the academic
waterfall and elevate the rigor in the curriculum; and we must
raise the regional profile of the journalism program at Roger
Williams University.

(Drag your finger across the list.)

Soon, I think, I want everyone in New England to know that

Roger Williams University is the place for Digital Journalism.
And, beyond the boast, I want the staff, the students, and the
78

curriculum to back up that statement. So -- yeah! -- we have a

lot of work ahead of us!
Before moving forward, let me pause and simply tell you
where were headed: Before I leave Roger Williams University,
I would like to be one of the personalities credited with launching a new school: The James W. Carey School of Communication Studies. (Look! I even went as far as to name it!) In defense of this idea, let me say that we are living on the bleeding
edge of new the Digital Age of Communication and education centers of this nature will -- very soon -- be as vital as
schools of architecture, business, engineering and law.
Oddly, New England is starving for such a center of higher
learning and Roger Williams University -- given its entrepreneurial nature -- is poised to be the host for that.
But before we get into that...
Past Goals
When I arrived at Roger Williams University, I was coming
from my alma mater, Ithaca College. One couldnt help but
stammer at the pronounced disparity in the students and their
approach to their journalism studies.
At Ithaca College, I had overachievers turning up for academic
advising with colored pencils and color-coded folders outlining exactly what they were going to study, when they were going to take it and how a semester abroad was going to dovetail
into the rigid matrix of their undergraduate degree.

In the classroom, I taught an introductory class called Journalism Research, which went fully enrolled with 20 secondsemester freshman. By the third week, my relationship with
those students had rooted and -- to my disbelief -- those students (all of them) maintained perfect attendance all the
way to the 12th week of the semester (when one of them -apologized to the entire class -- to retreat home to visit a terminally ill grandparent).
From that environment, I walked into the North Campus
Building at Roger Williams University to begin the Fall 2007
semester. In defense of the students, the classroom design certainly worked against gaining and maintaining their attention.
But, clearly, the students in my Comm 111: Writing for Mass
Media class were certainly distracted.
Collectively, they walked in late; they were desperately unaware of the news; they hardly knew any local or regional histories; and seemed preoccupied with Facebook and -- soon -text messaging. Exasperated, I asked one class -- 20 sophomores -- who here wants to be a journalist? Three hands
went up. At that moment, I realized I was literally starting
from scratch. Missing from the equation were -- in no particular order -- engaged students or a seemingly passionate faculty; instead, there was a culture of ambivalence, a student
newspaper, and an IT Department that cared less for any idea
of developing a digital matrix for new media tools.
So where do you begin?

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Respect

2.

No one walks late into class;

I started with respect! Not for me, necessarily, but for the institution of higher learning. And that process began with me losing my temper: On a particularly odd evening in late September, a student Id never seen before walked into one of my
classes 15-minutes late and declared as he sat in the back that
he was one of my students. From the moment he arrived, he
was a confusing distraction: he was late, he interrupted my lecture, he was wearing a ball cap inside a building, and -- from
the moment he sat down -- all he did was fiddle with the computer.

3.

No cellphones;

4.

Three absences and you fail;

5.

Follow the news;

6.

Do the homework;

7.

Call me Professor Scully.

Pressing on, I resumed my lecture which included my asking

students around the room to answer questions about content
wed covered over the previous weeks. In time, I looked over
to the student in the back row and -- to my surprise -- realized
he was chewing tobacco and spitting the residual waste into a
white plastic cup.
Aaron? I said addressing him directly: At the very least, you
have to understand that this is a tobacco-free environment.
He was so stunned that I addressed him directly, he actually
swallowed the hunk of tobacco in his mouth. The rest of the
students turned and looked at him -- his face blanched -- and
I actually smiled a little bit. I didnt mean to embarrass this
student and I did apologize to him; but the impact was systemic: I realized that the remaining students could be
schooled and I began instituting some rules:
1.

By the end of the school year, the respect I had at my former

teaching institutions was taking root at Roger Williams University.
Establish a Passion for Learning
The first Planet Forward experience -- Planet Forward (RWU)
1.0 -- proved to be one of the most innovative moments in my
professional life. Given my complete editorial control over the
project, I realized I could do just about anything as long as I
succeeded at the first real important step in the teacherstudent relationship: Capture their imaginations.
With the Planet Forward kids, I told them that we were participating in a competition against several other universities including the George Washington University, Middlebury College, Stamford, and the University of Nebraska. Our responsibility, I told them, was to produce four (4) videos but, given
our time and resources, my target was to actually create
twelve (12) completed three-minute videos.

No baseball caps;
80

From there, we absolutely collaborated on the first project. I

told them that they had just eight hours to produce a video
simply entitled Overdue Library Books and I left it to their
imagination to determine what that video would look like. The
nine students sat down and began talking about ideas. During
that discussion, they created a theme for piece, a storyline,
and established a production cycle hierarchy. Basically, in that
collaboration, they realized a passion for their own education
experience and the yield -- although seemingly minor -turned out to be invaluable.

From Planet Forward, I learned any student -- given an opportunity to create -- would seize control of their own education
and thus would be empowered with their own passion for
learning.

Overdue Books

Kerry Complains!

(Click the Arrow to watch the video.) This was an experimental learning exercise aimed at empowering students to learn and create on their own terms.

In January 2010, during Planet Forward (RWU) 2.0, this success would be duplicated. Those students -- all 17 of them -invested themselves fully, working 12 to 14 hours a day including Fridays and weekends, and ultimately produced 26 videos.

(Click the Arrow to watch the video.) At 6:30 a.m.,

Kerry and her team from Planet Forward (RWU) 2.0 prepare to head north for a story on Sustainable Hotels.

81

With my method tested, Im now trying to find a way to duplicate that success during the regular semester sessions. To me,
its just a matter of time until I find the correct combination of
students and course material. For now, the seeds are planted.
Establish Digital Journalism
The Feed and Planet Forward established a sound interest
among the students in Digital Journalism. Looking forward,
we needed to move this experimental curriculum into the
classroom and then into the major. This was done in phases.
The first step was creating the Digital Journalism classes. Ted
Delaney, Anjali Ram, Roxanne OConnell, Robert Cole and I
all shared tangential conversations about the curriculum and
its direction. Roxanne then dedicated several hours explaining
to me the process of creating new classes and moving them
through the Curriculum Committee. The result, as Ive written, was the addition of two new classes: Digital Journalism I
and Digital Journalism II.
The second step included accumulating the tools. The Communication Department and Dean Cole made this happen. This
started first with the Communication Department and the
Deans office pooling together $6,000, which was spent purchasing editing equipment and one video camera. From there,
the university accepted a Cap-X request from the Communication Department that supplied us with six video cameras, tripods and other peripherals. A second and third request, made
us flush with digital cameras and equipment.

The third step was to find a way to move all this equipment
into a cataloging system that allowed the students access. As I
wrote earlier, Assistant Dean Roberta Adams lead the development of a pilot program managed by the Universitys Media
Services and its Library system.
The fourth step was to create a production space. It typically
takes three hours to edit one minute of video. Knowing this, I
wanted to find a place where students could work for long periods of time without interruption. This was why the editing
suites were established. Joan Romano and the University locksmith have worked tirelessly to make this system work.
Finally, we needed to move the Digital Journalism classes directly inside the Journalism experience. Until this year, the
digital curriculum was simply part of the elected course list,
making them entirely optional. With the new major, this all
changes: Now every Roger Williams University Journalism
Major must take Digital Journalism I and Digital Journalism
II.
This is no small matter. This is a major shift in the direction
and purpose of the journalism discipline at Roger Williams.
Establish a Culture of Journalism
Its one thing to tell students to go out and cover news events;
its an entirely different thing when they find their way there
on their own. At most institutions, the student newspaper is
the resource aspiring journalists use to build news clips packages and experience. But, after decades of neglect, the Univer82

sitys student newspaper, The Hawks Herald, is a dismal, malnourished excuse for a student publication. Absent the viability of this vehicle, our students really havent had a resource to
exercise their passion for news writing. As a result, Roger Williams has been absent any instances of news enterprise. Because the newspaper is considered a club on campus, it remains beyond the reach of the Communication Department
and, as far as Im concerned, has the same social standing as
the student-run Dance Club, as a vehicle for public media.
In an effort to counter-balance this, the Communication Department generally, and Prof. Paola Prado specifically, helped
the journalism students launch Rhode Islands first Society of
Professional Journalists chapter. Though seemingly minor,
this student-run organization has the potential to build the
roots for a viable culture of journalism. At this point, I remain hopeful for its development and its future.
Create a Journalism Major
Clearly, Ive written quite a bit about the method that lead to
this development. In the adjoining display, you will see the
catalog text for the new major. We wanted to define the new
major as something that evolved from the traditions of news
gathering and writing. From there, we seek to lift the students
up and advance their understanding to include Digital Journalism tools. It is our belief that a student who can research, report, write and edit will be prepared for a traditional newsroom; given an advanced understanding of Digital Journalism, they will be ready for any professional experience.

The Journalism Major*

At its core, Journalism isregardless of the mediuma
writing major. The purpose of the Journalism major is to
teach students the craft of news gathering and writing.
The curriculum begins with an emphasis on the rigor and
traditions of news reporting before introducing tools and
training for electronic-based media production. As students move through the major, they will add to their writing skills an appreciation for digital journalism. With
completion of the Journalism major, students should
have excellent writing and verbal skills, an understanding
of media history and ethics, a proficiency in digital journalism and a superior understanding of news in all its
forms.

*From the RWU FY 2012-2013 Course Catalog

Whats Next?

Just so were clear, let me summarize my method here.

I arrived in Fall 2007 and spent a semester becoming
83

familiar with the Roger Williams University community. I taught classes assigned to me and I piloted The
Feed as an example of the potential of Digital Journalism.

Begging the question: What do we do now?

From there, I chose a direction: I selected video-based

multimedia for several reasons but, key among them,
was the fact that there really werent any electronicbased news production classes and teaching video-forthe-Internet was a way to shape student like Lorin Richardson for a position in traditional (and possibly nontraditional) TV news programming.
Planet Forward pressed me to accelerate my understanding of digital media tools and teaching methods.
By the completion of the first Planet Forward (RWU)
1.0 session, I had a clear model in my head.
Once the direction was clear to me, I channelled my energies towards the goal of creating a Journalism major.
Why? The major -- to me -- was a declaration to my
peers in the news industry and the academic community that Roger Williams University was serious about
the discipline of Journalism studies.
So, here we are on the eve of my tenure argument and
-- Voil! -- the major is in the books.
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S ECTION 2

Future Goals

F UTURE G OALS
1. Build the Newsroom of the Future
2. Establish journalism core values
3. Gain national recognition for the major
4. Raise the rigor in the curriculum
5. Establish an advisory board
6. Fortify the internship experience
7. Launch a mid-career certificate program
8. Hire a third full-time Journalism professor
9. Win a national grant for research
10. Publish academically

The Inception
My interest in Roger Williams University was borne from the
potential for Roger Williams University. Prior to my position
here, I was a member of the Journalism Department inside
the Roy H. Park School of Communication at Ithaca College,
my alma mater.
When I graduated from Ithaca College in 1987, the school did
not have a journalism major. Instead, it had a handful of journalism classes hidden inside the Communication major; the
instructor was a former deejay from WBZN-Boston. In 1988,
the journalism curriculum was established and by 2005, the
year, I began teaching there, Ithaca College was well established as one of the leading institutions for journalism studies.
Now, having been inside the program, I can say that there are
some clear problems with the structure of the curriculum but
the education is world class. At the center of the program is a
scholarship program called the Roy H. Park Scholarship,
which is a merit-based full-ride given to 30 handpicked students annually. This scholarship has single-handedly elevated
the academic rigor across the Communication School simply
by injecting Ivy League-quality students into the classrooms.
During the Spring 2006 semester, I learned first hand the
power of an academic shift of this magnitude can have on the
teaching experience: In one 20-student class, I had eight Park
Scholars in the classroom. By the third week, I had to rewrite
my syllabus simply because these students were so aggressive
and engaged, I had to accelerate my method and feed their in85

terest. Clearly, the culture of learning at Ithaca College had become very fertile.

In the middle of all this, a caucus of students debate ordering

a pizza as two others go about brewing a fresh pot of coffee.

This is the teaching environment Im seeking for Roger Williams University. The question is how do we get there?

THIS is what I want to see in Global Heritage Hall. I want the

administration to complain about the noise -- the energy! -spilling out of the editing suites, which are constantly teeming
with students. In fact, I want students to complain to the dean
about the lack of proper editing space and the obsolescence of
the editing software and computers.

The Vision
Its 3 a.m. early on a Thursday morning just days ahead of
Spring Break, and the ground floor of Global Heritage Hall is
teeming with students. At least two dozen students are flowing in and around the editing suites complaining that the
spaces are overcrowded and inadequate. Collectively, theyre
working to finish a project -- something Planet Forward like -and, after weeks of working at it, their deadline is looming.
They have until 11 a.m. that same morning to have everything
in the can.
The lights in the building are on, an aura of light is beginning
to halo over the Portsmouth side of Mount Hope Bay, and in a
corner of the space, a drip coffeemaker is smoldering, filling
the room with the stench of scorched coffee. No one notices.
Inside the editing suites, four teams are working aggressively
to finish four different video stories. The images are crisp, the
audio is perfect, the narrative is pure journalism. At this point
in the production cycle, the work is nearly complete as students track final voice overs and post lower thirds underneath subject interviews.

To me, these will be symptoms of our success.

Looking Forward
During the next five years, I would like to achieve the following goals:
1. Build the Newsroom of the Future
2. Establish journalism Core Values
3. Gain national recognition for the major
4. Raise the rigor in the curriculum
5. Establish an advisory board
6. Fortify the internship experience
7. Launch a mid-career certificate program
8.Hire a third (and fourth) full-time Journalism professor
9. Win a National grant for research
86

10. Start a School of Communications

Gain National Recognition for the Major

11. Publish academically

Right now, 75 percent of the students attending Roger Williams University come from New England. Im fairly certain
that the same is true for the Communication Department.
Looking forward, Id like to see the profile of our students
turn more national. Id like to think that the chorus of information flowing through the classroom will have a more national
appeal. I think all our students would benefit from such a conversation.

The Newsroom of the Future

At a recent presentation about the new major, I told the audience that our next task was to build the newsroom of the future. And to illustrate this, I placed a picture of the bridge of
the U.S.S. Enterprise from the last Star Trek movie. I did
this to illustrate a few things: first, the space needed to look
like it was from the future; second, were not entirely sure
what that newsroom should look like.
Right now, the Communication Department is debating a
model for that newsroom. The idea is to create a teaching
space that simulates the newsroom experience... and yet, it
must also be the setting for a newsroom that hasnt been developed yet. The purpose, of course, is to challenge our imaginations and create an academic setting that encourages creativity and excitement.
Establish Journalism Core Values
There are many lists outlining ethics in the media. Our job
now is to identify the one with the richest idea of ethical news
gathering and declare that as our model. From there, we will
weave those values into the fabric of the university major. We
believe that the habits and practices they develop as undergraduates will likely define who they are as professionals.

Raise the Rigor in the Classroom

This is just a matter of getting all the faculty in agreement on
direction and content. Given the convoluted structure of
COMM 111: Writing for Mass Media, I pressed to add JOUR
170: News Writing & Reporting I knowing that adding that
class would create a true point of entry for the new journalism
students. In this class, we can clamp down and elevate our expectations. As part of this, we added a minimum GPA requirement that allows for us to raise the standards from the bottom
up.
Establish an Advisory Board
This is a tricky endeavor. Advisory boards are created for a variety of functions and assigned appropriate authority. The
Communication Department needs to be careful what it does
here and how it does it. The purpose is to draw a closer tie between what goes on in the classroom and whats going on in
the industry. Towards that purpose, an ideal advisory board
87

will include members of the press, other educators, industry

leaders and media consultants and experts. A proper board
will likely function in a mentoring capacity; it may also be a
source for fundraising, academic standards and student internship opportunities.
Fortify the Internship Experience
During these last few years, the prospect of student internships has evolved. When the university added Carolyn Tidwell
to the RWU community, the internship program professionalized over night. What is lacking, right now, is an understanding among the regional media community that were generating students with Digital Journalism skills. Id like for this to
change.
In a few years, Id like to think that well be dealing our best
students out into the media community knowing that, on the
other end, theyre being employed properly and getting the
academic experience wed like for them to get as they survey
these active newsrooms.
Launch a Mid-Career Certificate Program
This idea has been on the table for some years now. The idea
here is to allow practicing professionals to take a weeklong
practical course in Digital Journalism. Ideally, these reporters
will learn how to shoot and edit video during the class and
then take those skills back to their professional newsrooms.

To make this work, Roger Williams University needs to fortify

its reputation as the center for Digital Journalism. To do this,
we need to simply move successfully forward into our development of the new major. I suspect, given a few semesters of
practice, we will be generating the kind of journalists wed like
to see out there practicing in the professional world.
Hire a Third Full-time Journalism Professor
Right now, there are just two full time professors serving
roughly 75 students in the Journalism major. I suspect, given
some success, we will begin seeing more and more students
declaring the major. Contractually, each faculty member has
25 advisees, which means -- right now -- 25 students are assigned to faculty members outside the discipline. I think, for
this to be a successful program, all of those students should be
assigned to journalism faculty members.
Further, as it stands right now, Paola Prado and I have complimentary skills but not interchangeable skill sets. As a result,
she is married to one half of the curriculum and I am married
to the other half; adding a new faculty member to the discipline will immediately add some variety to the academic experience for all involved.
Win a National Grant for Research
There are lots of fellowships, endowments and institutions issuing grants for Journalism research. Given the entrepreneurial nature of our curriculum, I believe that we have one of the
most forward-thinking journalism programs in the nation;
88

winning a substantial research grant from the Annenberg

Foundation or the National Science Academy or the U.S. State
Department will only validate my belief that we are leading
the charge forward.

Rhode Islander; and finally -- as a point of discloser -- hes

also a former professor of mine and a dear friend.

At this point, we must decide what direction to take our academic experiment and then ask the grants office to help us
find an appropriate grant.
Start a Communication School
I think this is the next logical step in the development of the
University. We already have schools for architecture, business, education, engineering, law and the sciences. The next
likely step and the most lucrative in the academic tradition
would be a School of Communication. Under this umbrella, it
would be entirely possible to unify several loose ends here at
Roger Williams University. I mean, consider the idea of housing advertising, computer information science, film, global
communication, graphic design, journalism, marketing and
public relations under the same roof and then adding -- lets
say -- computer gaming, strategic communication, political
communication, social networking... and so forth. There is an
absolutely opportunity here to become the premier communication school in New England.
Now, in the previous chapter, I went as far as to actually name
the new program after James Carey, the late communication
theorist. I suggested his name simply because he really is one
of the leading thinkers on communication theory; hes also a
89

S ECTION 3

Personal Goals

P ERSONAL G OALS
1. Publish academically
2. Attend more conferences
3. Produce a comprehensive piece of Digital
Journalism
4. Write a textbook

Publish Academically
Both the chair of the Communication Department and the
Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences have been pressing me
to publish in peer-reviewed journals. I understand the energy
behind this and appreciate their interest in my development
as an academic. As Ive written, I believe that theory is an integral part of my development as a Journalism professor and
the writing that often appears in academic journals traditionally focuses on theory.
Until very recently, the entirety of my written work has been
journalism. And journalism, the purists argue, must be devoid
of any bias; now, I never fully subscribed to that belief but my
writing has been tortuously edited by these purists who insisted on culling any editorializing or theorizing from my
work. Think of it this way: Imagine you were born left-handed
but the batting coach insists that you bat right-handed; humans have the ability to adapt, but often something is lost in
the transition. In my case, Ive been batting right-handed for
18 years and now, in this new academic world, Im being
pressed to switch back. Again, the transition has been rough.
In 2010, June Speakman and I co-published a piece entitled
Teaching Civic Engagement in the Global Classroom, which
was presented to the American Political Science Association.
This academic piece focused on our teaching relationship with
a U.S. State Department program called the Middle East Partnership Initiative.

90

From there, Communication Department chair Roxanne

OConnell has been vigorously pressing me to publish elsewhere. Of course, my interests are many and varied: Id like to
write about journalism and communication history; but Id
also like to write about my exploration of digital journalism;
Id also like to share my experiences from my pedagogical experiments. But the process here remains slow simply because
all of this is alien and new to me.
In fact, Im in the process now of writing two academic pieces.
The first is a look at the external forces that prey upon War
Correspondents as they attempt to practice of the craft of journalism out in the field. As part of this, Im looking at the experiences of World War II war correspondent Ed Kennedy who
had his career destroyed after he broke a military embargo to
publish news that the war with Germany was over.

In the past, this relationship was artificial. Now, the Google

Doc program actually duplicates the word editing platforms
used in most traditional newsroom.

Attend More Conferences

Right now, I have a series of conferences on my list of annual
events. Those include attending Vis-Comm, an annual meeting of Visual Communication professors and professionals
who sit and discuss their research interests. This event continues to be one of my favorites.
Im also active in the New York State Communication Association which is the defacto association for the Northeast. This
group meets in October and -- again -- Im becoming a regular
at this event because it is a fruitful place to learn about Communication theory and teaching practices.

The second is a look at how Google Docs can be used to enhance the teaching experience. In this story, I reveal how Ive
moved most of my students out of static programs including
Microsoft Word, and instead, have them writing in Google
Documents. I also have my students share one Google Doc,
which acts as a class notebook and bulletin board.

Im also a general member of the American Journalism Historians Association; Association for Education in Journalism
and Mass Communication; the Eastern Communication Association; and New England Newspaper & Press Association.

If you dont know, Google Docs allow for more than one person to work on a living word-processor like document at a
time. So, as my students are home writing, I can literally log in
and look over their shoulder. The effect is transformative simply because it allows me to establish a real writer-editor relationship with my students.

I left the Planet Forward project intellectually exhausted. By

the end of the first round of video, I had spent most of my creative ideas and Ive been waiting since then to find some inspiration. Ive also been refining my video skills.

Produce a Piece of Digital Journalism

So far, Ive been hard pressed to find some inspiration.

91

A few months ago, I decided to track down an old story Id

written and try to tell the same story using video. The purpose
here was to simply examine the
difference between the two meA Life in
dia -- traditional newspapering
v. video -- and I was surprised
by the dynamic.
The story I selected was about
Robert Fletcher, a watercolor
painter I know from my hometown in Warwick, NY. In 2005,
I first discovered Robert and
wrote an 800 feature essay
about his passion for painting
U.S. war veterans. That work appeared in the local newspaper,
The Times Herald-Record, on
July 4th and was very well received.

To be fair, video is a lot tougher than text. When I wrote the

text story, I had been practicing journalism for two decades
and was very aware of the various newspaper feature forms.
Watercolor
That interview lasted about 90
minutes, which was more than
enough time. In fact, when I got
home, I actually over-reported
the story calling at least a dozen
people looking for quotes about
the quality of Roberts work.

(Press the Arrow to view the video.) This is a video

profile of Robert Fletcher, a painter from Warwick, NY.

In 2012, I decided to return to the story and try telling it again

using video. To do this, I drove to Warwick and met with Robert and his grandson. It took roughly three-hours to get all the
video I needed to tell his story. I also got written permission to
reproduce images of his paintings. And I purchased the licensing rights to a three-minute song that plays beneath the narrative.

With video, the images certainly

carry a lot of weight. And when
I got home, I feared that I did
not have enough quality B-roll
to actually help illustrate the
story.

What I learned
In many ways, video can be very intimate. To tell the story I
told, I needed to peer well inside Roberts world and that presence can be very intrusive. And yet, Robert was very accommodating. In many ways, youre capturing bits and pieces of the
subjects work space and youre taking them home with you.
Access is clearly key.

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I also attempted to interview a local expert. And, in fact, I

spent an hour with her, shooting her insights about Roberts
work. But, when I moved into post-production, I felt that her
comments didnt quite fit in the narrative of the story I was
telling and I left her out of it.
Finally, I learned that music can certainly sway the mood of a
story. If you listen, the music is lightly playing in the background, but it is certainly setting the tone for the story. Again,
there is an intimacy that comes with video.

Looking Forward
Im sure I could generate something for the academic journals
based on the Robert Fletcher experience but theres more Id
like to do.

digital textbook and publish it in this format. This software,

iBooks Author, co-mingles media better than the traditional
Internet; it also allows the writer to change and rewrite sections and chapters. Given these components, its absolutely
possible for an academic like me to write, edit and publish a
realtime Digital Journalism textbook, which can be published
on iBooks and distributed annually.
As youre reading this, the Fall 2012 semester should be well
underway. This semester, Im teaching a section of Digital
Journalism I; in the Spring 2013, Im teaching a section of
Digital Journalism II. By the end of the 2012-2013 school
year, I will likely have the notes, the syllabi and samples of
course work pooled together. The next phase, of course, will
be drawing up an outline and moving through the process of
writing the text.

Right now, Im searching near and far for a project that will allow me to layer several video stories, one upon the other, and
publish them as a collection. To make this work, Im searching
for a story with a deep and multifaceted narrative thread.
Years back, as an example, I was considering a piece on the
Erie Canal, which -- given its history, culture and economic
legacy -- could prove to be the very story Im seeking. But my
commitment to this idea has been wavering, so the search continues.

Write a Textbook
Now, one of the things Ive gained from this digital experiment is the growing confidence that I could actually write a
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C HAPTER 6

Post-Mortem

Forgive this indulgence, but I thought this narrative

needed a final chapter and, as such, Im writing
here.
Unlike most faculty candidates, I drove into Rhode Island; I
didnt fly. My interview was in early April and Ithaca had just
gotten bombed by its fifth or sixth snowstorm. During the
course of my life, I knew that the weather in central New York
was harsh but I really love that part of the world. I studied
there as an undergraduate and teaching at Ithaca College
really gave me a chance to reflect on where I began, where Id
gone and where I was headed. A part of me really wanted to
stay in Ithaca... but another part of me knew better.

So, when I got in my four-wheel-drive Ford Ranger and drove

East to Rhode Island, I knew I was leaving more than the
snow. The history of central New York is very rich and my relationship with the city and community of Ithaca runs very
deep.
Odder still was the fact that I knew very little about Bristol,
Rhode Island or Roger Williams University, for that matter.
When I arrived, someone on campus actually apologized for
the weather -- it was windy, gray and in the middle 40s -- but
the spring-like weather was refreshing. After six months of
winter, the gusts of salty wind ripping off of Mount Hope Bay
were encouraging. Much of my visit to RWU was too.
The daylong visit was also very revealing: it didnt take me
long to catch some of the tension brewing among my future
colleagues, the facilities were in varying states of modernization, the students were passively engaged and the interim provost at the time went to extraordinary lengths to make me feel
comfortable about it all... and the future at Roger Williams.
When the visit was finished, I saw a chance to move forward
in the universe and I accepted it. My decision was borne from
a bit of advice I gained a decade before.
During a chance encounter with NBC-NY Newsman Chuck
Scarborough, I asked him for some career advice and he answered me by telling me a story from his career: He said when
he was just starting out as a TV news reporter, he had an opportunity to join the top station in western Texas, or a growing station in southern Mississippi: I chose the station in Mis-

sissippi, he said. Why? I wanted to be in a place where I

could make a difference.
He then explained that leading institutions fight to simply
maintain their ground; while emerging institutions fight to
grow. In Mississippi, he helped to grow a station. What he
failed to tell me was the fact that, while working to grow an organization, one cannot help but grow with it.
This, I think, is what Ive gained from my relationship with
Roger Williams. During my time here, Ive had an unfettered
freedom to explore and experiment. I think there is ample
proof that Ive had some impact on the institution and I believe that I have changed substantially since I arrived in Bristol, Rhode Island.
Given the chance, I can see myself staying here at Roger Williams University for a very long time. There is a lot of good
work to be done and much more growth to be had. My hope is
that you agree.
Sincerely,

Michael Scully

October 1, 2012
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