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Digital Demandsaren’t reading daily newspapers, weshould worry less about the democracyand more about the insularityof our research frame: Journalism isalive and well on digg.com, YouTube,Crooksandliars.com, and The SmokingGun.com. And when our studentschallenge our authority or fact checkour proclamations during class, weneed to stop scrambling for classroommanagement techniques and start addressingthe widening gap betweentheir assumptions about knowledgeproduction and our own.In short, our core mission, as educatorsand as journalists, is platformneutral—even if we are not. And ourcurrency and credibility will dependnot upon our ability to provide accessto equipment or train studentsfor a moribund industry, but uponour capacity to nurture collaborativeinnovation that produces accurate, informativeand interactive content—forevery screen and every audience.Fortunately, our future is as participatoryas it is inclusive; we have allthe intellectual capital we need, rightwhere we live. Her name is UWanna-LoveMe7 and, if we pay attention andadjust our assumptions—and ourpedagogy—accordingly, her generationwill lead us everywhere we needto go. Dianne Lynch is dean of the Roy H.Park School of Communications atIthaca College. On January 1, 2008,she will become the dean of theGraduate School of Journalism at theUniversity of California at Berkeley.Adapt or Die of IrrelevanceThe clash between academic requirements for professors and the education studentsof journalism need to have grows more intense.By Karl IdsvoogI’m doing something few universitystudent journalists ever do. I’mwriting an article to be publishedon the pages of a magazine. There won’tbe an iPod version, or a video to accompanyits eventual appearance online, orinteractivity for discussion anddebate about what I say, or a blogor slide show—just words onthe page. Only gradually is NiemanReports adapting to whatevery journalism student mustadapt to quickly—the evolvingmultimedia environment. Withuniversity journalism education,we can no longer trainprint journalists, or radio or TVjournalists, or photojournalists;today, these are all pieces of alarger pie we call multimediajournalism.Boom! That’s the sound heardas journalism schools blow up theircurriculum. That’s what we’re doinghere at Kent State, and the leadershipcomes from a pleasantly surprisingplace—Fred Endres, the senior facultymember, who is like Thomas Edisonin that he will stop coming up withinnovative ideas on the day he dies. Aformer print reporter turned professor,in 1987 Endres started the computerassistedreporting course at Kent. Hethen developed our first online journalismclass in 1999, and three years laterWith university journalism education,we can no longer train printjournalists, or radio or TV journalists,or photojournalists; today, theseare all pieces of a larger pie we callmultimedia journalism.started a collaborative course whereprint and broadcast journalists fight—Imean work with each other—on newsprojects.“It is all about multimedia, interactivity,24-hour deadlines, and newmethods of delivering the news,” saysEndres. “It’s more than we ever expectedof students 10 to 15 years ago.”In every class, students are forced tothink—and perform—across a varietyof platforms. Photojournalism professorTeresa Hernández observes that“multimedia has become the way of thestill photographer,” and this means thevisual gets immersed in sound.“People want to hear and seethings more and read less,” shesays. “Like it or not, that is thereality.” There’s another reality,too, that every journalismprofessor must recognize—thejob market. “Many of the photointernships are now for multimedia,”Hernández says.Jan Leach, a journalismprofessor who came to KentState a few years ago from aprint newsroom, shares thisexperience. “I’d be surprised if anynewspaper editor would hire a studentright out of j-school who didn’t have agood understanding of writing/producingonline,” she says.In the school’s legal issues class, Barrettv. Rosenthal is to the Internet whatNew York Times Co. v. Sullivan is tolibel, as citizen journalism becomes theNieman Reports / Fall 2007 63