Berry Students Develop Website While Studying In Italy
A group of 15 Berry College students spent their summer in Florence, Italy, learning how to report in an international, intercultural context and share their stories with the world via a Web-based multimedia platform. The result of their hard work is the online publication FlorenceNOW.net, already Google’s No. 1 finding for the search term “florencenow.”
Both the project and the resulting Web site focus on the topic “Florence now, as it was,” which expands upon Florence’s struggles to modernize and meet the demands of its primary industry – tourism – while also maintaining its reputation as the world’s finest Renaissance city. Story topics included infrastructure, the rescue and restoration of art and architecture, local businesses and the challenges they face in a global economy, and the contemporary uses of Florence’s historic spaces.
“This converged approach prepares our students for the changes and challenges in the industry,” said Dr. Brian Carroll, project director and assistant professor of journalism at Berry. “These students have now proven themselves as digital, cross-trained, cross-functional journalists, which makes them extremely marketable to media organizations struggling to conquer or at least adapt to the Web and digital media.”
The Berry students first learned international journalism at the grassroots level, working as foreign correspondents as part of a larger, intense immersion experience. Students received instruction and gained experience in a wide range of areas, including multimedia and Web development, photography, videography, photo and video editing, writing and reporting, and site and page design. The students also took classes on Italian language and culture.
The group was based at Florence’s largest international school, Scuola Lorenzo de’Medici, where instruction and production took place. Each student contributed to three different creative teams, serving as a reporter for one, a photographer for another and a videographer for a third. Students did their own fieldwork and editing before publishing the results to the Web.
“Initially, I was very intimidated by the converged media nature of our project,” said Katie O’Kelley, a junior communication major from Knoxville, Tenn. “I was comfortable with reporting but had no experience with videography or photography. By the end of the trip, I was equally confident [across media] and proud of my finished projects in all three areas.”
A former international business reporter, Dr. Carroll said the future of journalism will be far less medium-dependent, one that is moving away from the silos of print and broadcast toward digital platforms that deliver all kinds of media. The need, therefore, will be for cross-trained, mobile journalists possessing the skills necessary to take advantage of diverse mediums while filing stories on deadline from remote locations around the world.
“The best thing about the project was that we got a taste in all three areas of media,” O’Kelley said. “I now appreciate all aspects of digital storytelling – video, photography and reporting – for every story I come across.”
The Italy multimedia reporting project will be offered again in July 2010.
Joining Dr. Carroll as instructors for the project were fellow Berry faculty members Kevin Kleine, lecturer of communication and student publications advisor, and Curt Hersey, instructor of communication.
Participating students included Briona Arradondo, Anthony Ciavarelli, Jessica Gilker, Megan Gilker, Kathleen Higgins-Thomas, Savannah Jones, Rebekah Larisey, Dustin McCormick, Jennifer Mischler, Katie O’Kelley, Ben Popple, Amanda Powers, Hannah Watwood, Lauren Wright and Caroline Anthony.
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