The time to start adding multimedia to your program is now
To say that our students need to learn to create and publish their own multimedia videos is an understatement. During his first semester in college in New York, one of my students applied for an internship at a local newspaper. The editor-in-chief, after doing research about this student on the Internet, said he was hired not for his writing skills or leadership positions held on his high school newspaper staff, but because he knew how to make multimedia videos.
Adding multimedia to print-based or online journalism programs can no longer wait. No matter the medium of your school’s publications, multimedia is essential for today’s news consumers.
Why we need multimedia now
In 2010, the Pew Research Center found that more and more media consumers are using digital platforms to digest their news. And Americans love to consume their news! The average time Americans spend with the news is back to levels not seen since the mid-1990s (George-Palilonis, 2013). And one of the fastest growing pieces to consume is mobile video. According to a 2011 Nielsen report, mobile video users grew by 57 percent in 2009 to 17.6 million from 11.2 million people. And Pew has also found that 63 percent of adults watch videos and news videos online. And as we all know as educators working with teens, there’s nothing they love more than being on their mobile devices!
How to get it done
It is time for our scholastic media outlets to catch up to the professionals, and perhaps even surpass them. Already have a website? Just embed multimedia into posts. Only working in print? Create a specialized channel on School Tube, Vimeo or YouTube and direct your readers there with ads in your paper or via social media.
Below is a Prezi that I deliver to my Beginning Journalism class each year, and also presented at the 2014 Spring National High School Journalism Convention. Want further clarification? Have questions? Watch me present the most up to date version at the Fall 2014 Convention in Washington, D.C.
http://prezi.com/bk6z6lomgx0i/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy
