Multimedia Journalism Master’s Announced by University of Miami School of Communication
Multimedia Journalism Master’s Announced by University of Miami School of Communication
Coral Gables, FL.- (March 16, 2009) – As print newspapers and traditional journalism jobs are growing increasingly scarce, the University of Miami School of Communication has taken action to adjust to the shifting journalism environment with the announcement of a new graduate program track, the Master of Arts in Multimedia Journalism.
“Print media are facing tremendous difficulty as new media replace them in the minds and eyes of readers and viewers,” said the School’s Visual Journalism Program Director, Loup Langton. “Consumers are turning to the internet for their news and journalists must learn to tell stories through the web.”
The School of Communication is offering an advanced hands-on program that can be completed in 18 months emphasizing two separate facets of multimedia storytelling. The first is for content providers and teaches high-end visual storytelling skills, photography, audio and video storytelling and information graphics. The second emphasis is on multimedia design, production, database-driven dynamic web site generation and advanced multimedia programming languages.
The program is designed for traditionally trained journalists and recent graduates alike. “Journalistic fundamentals and ethics–the ethical practice of telling a story truthfully and working fairly with subjects are still at the heart of the program,” added Langton.
The School already has professional media partnerships with World Press Photo, the Online Newspaper Association and Pictures of the Year International that provide strong professional ties for students with leading media organizations. “The School is rooted in fundamentals, but is also a leading adopter of the new tools that journalists must have at their command to report in the contemporary environment,” says Dean Sam Grogg.
Supporting the new Master of Arts program are award-winning School of Communication faculty who specialize in visual journalism, multimedia, social media and web design, programming and production and have professional backgrounds in converged media. Included in that group is one of the nation’s leading multimedia journalism educators, Rich Beckman, holder of the Knight Chair in Visual Journalism. As former Director of the Visual Communication program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Beckman’s former graduate students are leaders in multimedia organizations around the country, including The New York Times, MSNBC and USA Today. As an online producer, Beckman has led teams that have won many of the most prestigious multimedia prizes in the world including the Pirelli INTERNETional Award for Educational Media and multimedia storytelling awards from the Online News Association, the National Press Photographers Association, The Broadcast Education Association, Horizon Interactive Awards, The Society for News Design and the Pictures of the Year International competitions.
“This innovative graduate program will provide students and journalism professionals the opportunity to work in a multiplatform environment based on emerging and cutting edge storytelling technologies that dominate today’s media environment,” says Beckman. “Our graduate students will work on projects in conjunction with the Knight Center for International Media as we strive to use new media technologies globally to cover the world’s most under-reported stories.”
As newspapers face difficult economic times, this program is designed to embrace the transformation of the profession with advanced education for the current and future journalists. “News may not exist on paper much longer,” says Dean Grogg, “but the new journalists will still get the story no matter how it has to be delivered.”
For more information, visit the School of Communication website at http://com.miami.edu/graduate/for more information.