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By Ben Williams Collegian Staff
The three media experts who spoke at Memorial Hall on campus last night all had one thing to say: "get ready for a lot more you in your news."
The lecture is one in a series that the University of Massachusetts journalism department is presenting to have industry professionals talk to students.
Last night's presentation addressed multimedia journalism, and its growing prominence and integration into our daily lives. As journalism professor Steve Fox said, "[it's] all around us, and we don't even realize it."
Patrick Stiegman, executive editor of ESPN.com, thinks media is becoming more of an "interactive, two-way conversation," pointing to the content on ESPN.com. In particular, this is a broadcast where web users can participate in a real-time chat about the program and then have their comments read on the air.
Stiegman says that multimedia reporting is really "a transcendent medium, [with a] transcendent nature of storytelling." He sees the Web as an "inflection point [where] users can come and participate in what we do."
Chet Rhodes, the assistant managing editor of news video at Washingtonpost.com, also sees a lot more user-generated content coming in the next few years, especially on the local level where news companies are using "civilian journalism" more and more to supplement regular journalism.
Chet Rhodes thinks that the "rapid acceleration of change" that brought music from CDs to IPods is happening with online video now. He says "YouTube made everyone understand that video can be on the internet."
Boston Globe reporter Emily Sweeney notes that the Globe recently put a six-figure investment into multimedia, buying equipment such as camcorders for their reporters. She thinks that within the next 10 years, high-definition video is going to be piped directly from internet media outlets to living room TVs and "the walls [between internet and broadcast news] will come tumbling down."
The Journalism department will continue to host prominent journalists at events throughout the year.
Ben Williams can be reached at bwilliam@student.umass.edu.
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