Lessons learned

   This is my final blog for this course. I shall miss studying all things social media, but that's the beauty of education...it continues at our own will.

Here a few highlights I learned from this course:

1. The act of doing journalism is a social responsibility that contributes to the democracy of its citizens. A free press enables citizens to stay informed about their local communities, government and school systems, as well as what's happening around the world.
2. Journalists are no longer the sole provider of news. Because of technology, like blogs, Twitter and mobile devices, traditional consumers of news now have the capacity to supply it.
3. Because it's so easy to disseminate news in this electronic age, it's more important now more than ever to teach the traditional principles and standards of journalism. This point is what separates the journalists from the citizen communicators.
4. Journalists can have feelings, too. We can advocate for a cause as long as it's for the good of its citizens. This includes synthesizing complex information, as well as teaching readers about certain topics that otherwise would be hard to understand. This strays a little from the “be objective” role we traditionally hold.
5. Journalism educators have a very important mission of teaching media literacy to every student we can get to listen, including those students who have no intention of entering the journalism field. Citizen journalists now outnumber the legacy journalists, so it's no longer just enough to focus on those who want to be journalists when they grow up.

• One more thing, the Elements of Journalism rocks!

    Everything I learned this semester is sinking in. One major change I'm thinking about implementing next semester is creating a Twitter account for the Intro to Photojournalism class. They're already blogging, but I wonder if that's enough. I'm also considering developing a media literary summer course for the community college.

    Thanks for being a great teacher, John! Your law and ethics classes have helped make me the teacher I am today!