Tips, Tools and Plain Talk about Journalism's Future
We journalists have always been good at sharing what we know–but we’ve never been good at sharing how we know it. That can and must change as the internet enables us to collaborate with more people doing journalism, as journalism and how we do it is constantly and quickly transformed, as we all become students and teachers of journalism.
We need to learn about new tools, new equipment, new methods, new ways to interact and collaborate with our communities. We need to teach each other as we experiment, succeed and fail.
That’s what this site is about. The CUNY Graduate School of Journalism offers Digital News Journalist as a place to exchange practical tips, lessons, and reviews for digital news people, whether they are staff reporters, remade professionals, bloggers and community journalists, students, or teachers.
There are other great resources for these groups on the web today. The Nieman Journalism Lab blog is becoming the place to analyze and discuss the major issues facing journalism as a profession and industry today; the Poynter Institute similarly offers invaluable news and analysis. Mashable is the place for the technically able to learn what’s new and how to do it.
The Digital News Journalism (DNJ) aims at a spot midway between those resources with practical information and advice on how to use new tools to improve our journalism. Among its features:
- A couple of times a week, DNJ will offer how-to pieces; product reviews of hardware, software, and services (with our students doing the testing); best practices, and useful tips.
- A weekly feature by CUNY faculty and guests will report on how journalists made good digital journalism — from a local blog photo training session to The New York Times’ use of multimedia in its Afghanistan coverage.
- Constant aggregation of relevant news and tips from elsewhere.
- Discussion.
- Hits & misses in digital journalism.
We hope that journalists at every stage of their development – and these days, everyone is developing – and however and wherever they work will find DNJ useful. Please let us know what you’d like to see us tackle.
