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The Texas Journalist is a publication edited and produced by students enrolled in reporting, photography and design classes of the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin.

Web journalism a growth area

By Lorraine Branham

Each semester students in the reporting, editing, design and photo classes come together to produce a newspaper we call The Texas Journalist. Over the years they have taken on such issues as immigration, gentrification, hurricanes and national elections. This semester we decided to turn our attention to an issue so broad and multi-faceted I worried that we might be taking on more than we could handle: growth and development in Austin and the various problems it has wrought.

Once again our students have proved that they are up to the task. With the guidance of their professors and teaching assistants, they have managed to navigate this complex topic and produce a comprehensive overview of Austin’s maturation from small college town to a booming urban center of technology.

This issue of Texas Journalist provides a look at how Austin has grown, the economic benefits that have come with that growth and how that growth has affected various communities, including our own university. It also explores problems with planning, land use, transportation and the environment -- as well as community efforts to ensure that Austin remains a desirable place to live, work, and play.

This issue also represents a growing acknowledgement in the School of Journalism of the importance of multimedia journalism and online newspapers. There has always been an online version of the Texas Journalist. But in the past it has simply been a matter of putting the printed edition online. This year’s online edition doesn’t simply replicate the newspaper version; instead it provides a wealth of additional content and multimedia stories only available on the Web.

This change reflects not just a change in editorial philosophy but a recent change in our curriculum, which now requires every student, no matter what their major, take a course in the fundamentals of multimedia journalism. Newspapers all across the country are now putting more resources into and emphasis on their Web sites as readers and advertisers make it clear that this is where they want to be.

If our students are to be competitive in the marketplace, they must have new skills and an awareness of how to tell stories online. So our newspaper majors are learning how to shoot video, create podcasts and do slideshows for the Web. We also offer courses in Web publishing and blogging.

This doesn’t mean that we have abandoned our traditional core of writing and reporting courses. And we continue to stress ethics, accuracy and critical thinking skills. But it does mean that we have ceased pretending that the newspaper is the predominant way to communicate with readers.

Most of our students have long since turned to the Web for their daily dose of news and information, disinclined to read newspapers in print except when strong-armed by their professors into doing so. They realized what the newspaper industry and now journalism schools have slowly, slowly come to accept: If you want to reach young readers and a growing number of older ones as well, you are going to have to do so online.

I expect that our curriculum will continue to evolve as the news business undergoes what many have described as the most dramatic transformation since the invention of the printing press. Our job as journalism educators is to keep up with these changes while remaining true to our primary mission: to produce thoughtful, ethical and culturally competent journalists who embrace their work as public service and honor the importance of the First Amendment. We remain true to those values – in print and online.

Still, the Web is the future. And the Texas Journalist is now there. Please read even more about growth and development in Austin on our Web site at:

http://tj.journalism.utexas.edu

Lorraine Branham is a professor and the director of the School of Journalism at the University of Texas.