Slides from Link Journalism presentation at New York Press Association 2010

Quick update: I attended the New York Press Association (hashtag #NYPA on Twitter) spring convention this past weekend, where I led a session on link journalism. As I had hoped, the participants asked questions throughout and we had a good discussion.

The slides are embedded below (RSS subscribers will probably have to click through to Slideshare or this post to see it). They are based on a presentation Scott Karp gave at the SPJ national convention in August 2009 and a workshop Josh Korr led at Berkeley last month.

Of course, I added my own examples and personal touch — enjoy!

What’s next? I’ll be returning April 7 to Virginia Commonwealth University, where I visited a graduate journalism class last October. This time I’ll be speaking about new media (can we drop the “new” already?). VCU journalism professor Marcus Messner, who got his doctorate from UM (go Canes!), will be posing some questions before a Q&A with students.

The event, Are We There Yet? A Road Map for Tomorrow’s Journalist, is a day-long conference organized by the student SPJ chapter. Short answer: No, I don’t think we’ll ever be “there.” Things will continue to constantly change, so we need a compass — not a roadmap.

Anyhow, I had a great time during my last VCU visit and look forward to going back. Let me know in the comments if you have any points I should be sure to hit on during the session.

Ideas for visiting Virginia Commonwealth University graduate journalism class

I’ll be trekking down to Richmond, the capitol of the commonwealth I now call home, to speak with a graduate-level online journalism class on Friday evening. My esteemed Publish2 colleague (and all-around awesome dude) Ryan Sholin was not able to attend and I’ve been invited to discuss what we do, how journalism is changing and whatever other topics can fit into the session.

Maybe I’ll even throw in some of the ol’ tips.

As would be expected, I posed a question on Twitter about what I should discuss.

(Tweets curated and published with ease courtesy of this and this.)

Thanks to Craig Kanalley, Adam Glenn, Vadim LavrusikMike Higdon and Yuri Victor for their advice. These are all great topics and I hope to touch on as many as possible.

As I read the responses, I thought more about the best approach for the visit. Here’s what I’m thinking now:

  • Introduce myself
  • Ask students to introduce themselves
  • Discuss their interests and goals
  • Ask what they want to discuss
  • Maybe show some things on the screen
  • Challenge assumptions, if warranted

The last point bounced around my head as I asked the question and read the answers, most likely because it was the topic of my Skype video chat with Dave Stanton‘s senior-level journalism class earlier this month.

Then I saw this and laughed:

  • danielbachhuber: Questioning the assumptions will always produce mind-blowing results.

Daniel and are often on the same wavelength, but this was just a funny coincidence. He sent that tweet via text message and wasn’t responding to me (I doubt he even saw the question).

I will qualify and say I don’t think you will always get mind-blowing results, but we could all use a little more challenging of assumptions now and then. Particularly when it comes to journalism education and how we deal with related conversations.

So let me know what you think of this approach and what would you discuss if you were speaking to a graduate-level online journalism class.