Have you ever had a moment when you were incredibly impressed by the work your peers were doing on the Tufts campus?
That happened to me last week when I visited Tufts University Television's (TUTV) new Web site at
www.tutv23.com/beta where I found pages of student-produced content — from news commentary to spoof comedy.
I have commented on the need for nascent publications to explore creative outlets beyond the written word for their ideas. TUTV is pioneering new resources now available to students, making the world of video accessible to the campus.
The Tufts Roundtable — the campus' new multimedia hub, online at www.tuftsroundtable.org — is making great strides to this end. It still has a print publication, but the editorial board has put great thought into tapping into multimedia outlets. Its blogging interface creates a framework for new thoughts and ideas, and it has tapped into the world of TV to give all members of the Tufts community a digital soapbox.
Interested in law? Take a camera to events at area law schools and post videos online. Fashion design? Film a student runway event. Politics or international affairs? The Roundtable has set a standard.
Indeed, I challenge student organizations to make better use of available multimedia. The Daily has done a fantastic job of showing video clips on its Web site, but there must be even more ways for speeches, rallies, meetings and other events on campus to find their way online.
One of the most important reasons to work in new media is that it is quickly becoming the national standard for journalists. Journalists today must be part of the global digerati as well as the literati. Getting this experience on campus is critical to future careers in the media. At The Boston Globe, traditional print reporters are learning to edit video in a state-of-the-art lab. At GlobalPost, the new international newswire, correspondents have been equipped with flip cameras to capture video that accompanies photos and the written word.
Flip cameras started a revolution in the aftermath of the Iranian elections this summer — videos of anti-Mahmoud Ahmadinejad demonstrations circulated the world over and sparked a global outcry for election reform in that country. This is an extreme example of the role of video in the modern media, but exemplary of the experience TUTV is offering student journalists.
What separates campus media from national organizations? Why do we read the Observer and not just reach for Newsweek or Time? Certainly it is the locality of coverage, and the fact that media here sometimes scoop national sources — as the Daily did with its coverage of the roommate sex policy. But campus media also exist because they represent how students perceive issues relevant in our time. Alan Khazei, Massachusetts candidate for U.S. Senate, says he follows campus media closely to understand better what young people care about. National news networks are in trouble, and we can take a step toward helping the industry by showing we care about forms of new media and preparing future journalists to contribute to a new era of news.
If you're accustomed to HD-quality splash screens, CNN or ESPN, you might be turned off by content produced without the resources of national media organizations. Instead, I expect TUTV to provide original, thoughtful programming and to impress me with the work our peers do outside of the classroom.
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Duncan Pickard is a senior majoring in history. He is the Public Editor of the Media Advocacy Board and his opinions are strictly his own. He can be reached at tuftspubliceditor@gmail.com or through his blog at www.tuftsroundtable.org/publiceditor.
