The Daily Plan-it / Dean of Students Blog, Columbia J-school

I wanted to draw your attention to the launch of “Immigration: New Voters, Old Fears,” the Columbia News21 project for “What’s At Stake: Election 08,” http://newsinitiative.org/project/immigration_new_voters_old_fears

From a creative, animated home page to the wide array of richly
interactive, multimedia stories inside, “Immigration: New Voters, Old Fears” is a remarkable and innovative news website.

It was created by 10 News21 Fellows working in the 801 Lab under the guidance of project coordinator John B. Judis of The New Republic, along with Adjunct Prof. Adam Glenn as managing editor, and Dean of Students Melanie Huff. Also consulting on the project were Prof. Duy Linh Tu, coordinator of the New Media Program, and Adjunct Prof. Russell Chun, along with New Media Fellows Dave Mayers and Kenan Davis, and J’07 grad Ahmed Shihab-Eldin.

Over 10 weeks, the fellows traveled around the country to better understand the political impact of immigrants and immigration. A massive wave of legal - and illegal - immigrants is transforming the United States, changing the way we live and vote, inspiring hope of national renewal, but also provoking fear and resentment. Our team of journalists explores the impact on this year’s election, and beyond.

The News21 project is a journalism initiative of the Carnegie and Knight foundations and 44 students from five universities (Columbia, UC Berkeley, USC, Medill, Harvard) worked on an overall site, “What’s At Stake:
Election ‘08.”

This is the third year of a three-year cycle for News21. The program recently was expanded with new schools and renewed for another three years. Watch for news this fall how members of the Class of 2009 can participate next spring and summer.

Congrats to the entire team!

Please take a look at their work at:
http://newsinitiative.org/project/immigration_new_voters_old_fears

The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences has just announced the Webby award winners for this year.

The 2008 Webby Award for the best student site was awarded to Defining Middle Ground: The Next Generation of Muslim New Yorkers - http://definingmiddleground.com/

It is the 2007 Master’s Project site of Tara Kyle, Bilal Qureshi and Ahmed Shihab-Eldin.

Webby Award Winner Announcement

Kyle K. Murphy, a former lieutenant in the New York Police Department, is a current M.S. student at the Columbia Journalism School. He has a major op-ed in Sunday’s New York Times about the Sean Bell shooting case.

Here’s how it begins:

The New York Times
April 27, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor

The Fear Behind the Badge
By KYLE K. MURPHY

THE first time I almost shot someone, I wasn’t that scared.

It was 1986, and my partner and I had responded to a report of a man waving a knife inside the Port Authority Bus Terminal. When we arrived, I saw the knife in the man’s outstretched arm. I drew my weapon, and I yelled at him to drop the knife. My partner began inching his way toward the man, pleading with him to put the knife down. I made up my mind that I was going to shoot if the man lunged toward us. My partner got close enough to swing his nightstick down on the man’s arm. The knife fell to the ground and we quickly handcuffed him.

Why wasn’t I scared? Because I could see the threat clearly; I knew what I was facing. There were plenty of other times during my 20-year police career, however, when I was afraid. Usually it was when I couldn’t clearly see a potential suspect and didn’t know if he had a weapon. For a police officer, if a suspect is ignoring your commands and you can’t see his hands, you will feel that your life is in danger.

Read the rest of the piece: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/opinion/27murphy.html

Three of the five 2008 Foreign Press Association Scholarship Fund awards have gone to students from The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

First Prize: Anup Kaphle, M.S.

Second Prize (one of two): Vinod Jose, M.A.

Third prize (one of two): Lam Thuy Vo, M.S.

CONGRATULATIONS!

FLASHBACK: Student work starting a few hours after the towers fell on 9/11/2001…
http://www.jrn.columbia.edu/studentwork/terror/

Dear Students:

Five years ago, on a bright Tuesday morning, members of Columbia J-school’s
Class of 2002 hit the streets for the second week of RWI, their reporting
and writing course. It was Primary Day, which meant our students were spread
out across the city, including parts of downtown and what would eventually
become known as Ground Zero.

As the catastrophic events of that day unfolded, our students became part of
the reporting corps that covered the attacks and their aftermath. In
addition to writing stories for their classes, many of them became New York
correspondents for their hometown media outlets across the country and
around the world.

More than 130 of these print stories, including 43 from that Tuesday, were
posted on a hastily-created site, “Terror & Response.”

Prof. Sig Gissler reminded me that it might be a site worth bringing back to
the surface. Here it is:
http://www.jrn.columbia.edu/studentwork/terror/

From the introduction:

“For students at the Graduate School of Journalism, the attacks on the World
Trade Center represent a watershed event in their education and careers.
They are covering the main story and its myriad after-effects, emphasizing
the views and voices from their neighborhood beats throughout the city.”

Pictures taken by our photography students, some touching our school’s
cameras for the first time that week, have been posted recently by Prof.
Sara Barrett on the bulletin boards on the third floor. Please stop by to
take a look.

We will see if we can unearth the radio coverage by the broadcast majors.

If you have comments about any of this, please feel free to post them in the
comments section at the bottom of this DOS Blog posting:
http://deanstudents.blogsome.com/2006/09/08/student-work-911-stories-from-20
01/

- Sree Sreenivasan

From Prof. Laura J Muha, coordinator of ColumbiaJournalist.org:

Many thanks to everyone who contributed stories for yesterda’s launch of
columbiajournalist.org. It’s no exaggeration to say we couldn’t have done
it without you.

For obvious reasons, the election stories were posted first (and as of this
morning, were still being posted), but in the next couple of days, some of the
other pieces you sent will be starting to go up.

One request: When submitting stories, please make sure your e-mail is at the
top of the piece. I have several stories I want to post, but because they were
written earlier in the semester (or, in the case of part-timers, as far back
as last spring), they need to be updated first. In most cases, that won’t
involve much more than a change in wording, but I need your approval to do that,
and if I have to track down your e-mail address first, it will delay posting of
your piece.

Thanks,
Laura Muha
ljm31 [at] columbia.edu

From Prof. John Dinges:

Colleagues, here is the link to tonight’s radio broadcast, 8-10 pm, on the
elections and New York grassroots politics.
Feedback appreciated. - John Dinges

http://www.jrn.columbia.edu/academics/studentwork/radio/174/2005-11-08/broadcast.asp

Memo from Prof. Laura Muha, coordinator of the ColumbiaJournalist.org project.

The long-awaited student web site, columbiajournalist.org, will be
going online next week, just in time for the election. The site is
the product of nearly a year and a half of planning and hard work,
which began in the summer of 2004 and continued through this fall
as web staffers Branwynne Kennedy; Pablo Calvi, J’01; and Muon Van, along
with other members of the staff and faculty, finished hammering out
the details.

Our goal was to create a year-round site that would showcase the
best of what we do here at the J-school in one easy-to-access
place; it will replace what was essentially a patchwork of sites
put together by individual classes and largely operating only
during the spring semester.

On the new site, we’ll be able to accommodate just about any type of
story that would run in any newspaper: breaking news, features,
enterprise, pieces on the arts, science, medicine, immigration,
foreign affairs, national affairs, investigative stories, religion,
education, cops, crime, courts, business, opinion, etc., etc. And
broadcast majors can rest assured that we’ll also have the capacity
to post radio and TV segments.

In addition to appearing on our site, stories with an appeal beyond
New York City will be considered by Columbia News Service for
national distribution – a great way for students to get print
clips. (The first CNS wire went out last week, using the system
that was already in place, and Prof. Porter tells me that several
stories already have been picked up.)

Because everything that appears on the site represents not only its
author, but also the school, we’re looking for only the
highest-caliber work. If a story wouldn’t be publishable in a daily
newspaper or top-quality magazine, it won’t be publishable on our
site. You should think of web publication as a reward for work well
done, not an entitlement.

Stories will be submitted by your instructors, but as the
managing editor, I’ll make the final decision as to whether they
get posted. Obviously, I’ll consider subject and execution, and
will make sure the story doesn’t duplicate something we’ve already
posted, but small things count, too. The likelihood that your piece
will go on the web decreases exponentially in relation to the amount
of time I have to spend correcting it for things such as grammar
errors and AP style – in other words, all the “little” things your
instructors have been after you about all semester.

One request: If I e-mail you with questions about a story I’m
considering posting, please get back to me promptly – the longer
you wait, the less likely it is that the piece will be useable.

Stories on the site will be searchable by section (national, metro,
science, features, etc.), subject (education, religion, politics,
arts, etc.) and byline. But when the site is fully up and running –
something that, depending on staffing, may or may not occur by next
semester – we’ll also have a special student section that includes
everyone’s bio, photo, and clip portfolio, which will make it easy
for prospective employers to look at your work. (And, judging from
experience with the class sites we’ve had in the past, potential
employers do look at your work online.)

While we can’t promise there won’t be glitches that need to be
worked out in the weeks after our launch, we do think the new site
will be a great resource and opportunity for you while you’re here
at Columbia, and I hope to have the chance to work with all of you
on it between now and the end of the year.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at
ljm31@columbia.edu.

— Laura Muha