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How Journalism Education Can, and Should, Blow Up the System
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Social Media
A Newsroom Primer: Starting Fresh With Google+ Brand Pages
If newsrooms avoided creating an account on Google+ when the product asked brands to stay away, the time has come to build your brand inside the social-networking tool. Last week, Google opened up brand pages for all to use. But before you set it up, there's an important thing you need to know: You can set up a brand page...
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Social Networking
A Journalist's Primer to Google+
After a few months of chatter, Google+ has opened up to everyone. As a journalist, Google+ is something you need to explore. Its simplicity of broadcasting your message is worth understanding and using to connect with news consumers. I jumped into the new social space within 24 hours of its release. I'm an early adopter, and I love to share...
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Social Networking
Newsroom, Community Use Facebook as Key Hub After Joplin Tornado
When Joplin, Mo., was hit with a massive tornado, I knew my community would react. Even though we're nearly 250 miles away, many people in Columbia and mid-Missouri are either Joplin natives or have family there. My newsroom's normally local-focused Facebook page quickly became a clearinghouse for updates about how mid-Missouri could help the tornado-ravaged community. Fans are using the...
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EducationShift
Live-Blog at RJI: Fellows Share Lessons from Spot.Us, NoozYou
COLUMBIA, MO. -- I am live-blogging from the Reynolds Journalism Institute, which is holding a week-long RJInnovation Week. It's a chance for the Institute to look at an incredible number of projects and ideas that are flowing through the organization. Today is focused on the 2010-11 class of RJI fellows. Each fellow gets 45 minutes to present what they worked...
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EducationShift
Blizzard Builds KOMU Community with Mobile Video, Facebook
I've always dreamed of a time when my community could come together with the help of our on-air and online collaboration. All it took was a blizzard to make it happen. Mid-Missouri was hit with a blizzard-like storm that dumped 17.5 inches of snow into Columbia, Mo., and even more south of the city. The entire viewing audience of KOMU-TV was home and stuck inside.
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Social Networking
Public, Closed or Secret? How to Use the New Facebook Groups
I was wrapping up a normal evening of checking through my newsroom's content before bed when I noticed I had been invited to a Facebook group. This was about seven hours after Mark Zuckerberg and his team introduced a number of changes to groups. The change that most piqued my interest was the new groups process. So when I noticed...
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EducationShift
How to Conquer Journalism Students' Fear of Technology
In a time and age when many of my generation assume the younger generation understands technology, I have been surprised by the number of students who walk into my class and announce that they "don't know anything about computers." It's a rampant attitude. I beg each and every student who says this to pretend they never said it and try everything I introduce to them in my class.
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EducationShift
Learning From Failure in Community-Building at Missouri
I recently had an opportunity that is rarely handed to a journalism school professor: The chance to be a member of the inaugural class of the Reynolds Journalism Institute Fellows in the 2008-09 school year. I already have a unique job.
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