Every week, I give students the chance to report “differently.” They have a chance to work with broadcast students who are working on “traditional” news while they can take the topic and expand upon it. What is fun is seeing the amazing work the students came up with. They ranged from audio slideshows to a couple of different interactive maps — one an interactive Flash map, the other an interactive Google map. I’m really proud.
The massive fires in California were an amazing opportunity for journalism. Poynter has a TON of interesting thoughts and perspectives from journalists who covered it. One of the recent entries that I’ve read is about a professional photographer who allowed anyone to use his photos as long as he was given credit. He did it by using Creative Commons on Flickr. I actually use Creative Commons on my personal pictures as well… Although most are private. Look around Twitter! You can find amazing stories being told there. I can’t say I would have imagined that possibility a few months ago. I saw it as a great way to communicate information to a newsroom, but I hadn’t seen it as a direct way to communicate to an online viewer. Now I see it as genius. A small newspaper was broadcasting live information on Justin.tv. Anyway, there are many websites out there that have documented the amazing out-of-the-box thinking from journalists this week. I love all of it!
