Location: Nassau County, New York (Long Island) 

Focus: news and information covering Hempstead, Uniondale, Roosevelt, and Garden City municipalities; heavy multimedia; sections include news, business, politics, sports, features, and religion

Started: February 2009

Staff: student project of Hofstra University School of Communication undergraduate and graduate journalism program led by Assistant Professor Mo Krochmal

Funding: university

Site: nassaunewslive.com

From About Us

Located in Dempster Hall, Nassau News Live starts with the goal of creating a trusted serious news website and fostering new connections between Hofstra and the people living in the surrounding communities while enhancing the education of journalism students with the opportunity to work in a 21st Century news organization.

Students will collaborate to produce and report area news in real time with a combination of pressure-tested live blogging and live video webcasting as well as multimedia interactive news packages, information graphics and digital and still photography.

Sample Stories: “Supporters, Staffers of Nassau County Democratic Party Celebrate, Wallow, and Wait on Election Night”; “Mayor Hall discusses Village of Hempstead’s waning recession”; “Restaurant servers finding a tough economy”; “Unofficial Nassau County election results”; “Nassau County high school football playoffs announced”

This is an interesting project in Switzerland, made from wood, by students, and just a good little video to go with it. Have a look if you have a minute.

EVOLVER: The viewing experience

Location: Philadelphia

Focus:  news and information from 27 neighborhoods in the city; a “Multimedia Urban Reporting Lab” project by Temple University’s journalism department. Similar to University of  Southern California’s Intersections: The South Los Angeles Reporting Project.

Started: March 2009

Staff: project co-directors are Linn Washington, director of News-Editorial sequence in the Temple University journalism department, and Christopher Harper, an associate professor in the department. Journalism students contribute content. 

Funding:

Site: http://sct.temple.edu/blogs/murl/

From About

[Multimedia Urban Reporting Lab] is the cornerstone of the Department of Journalism’s mission to better tell stories in the under-covered and under-served neighborhoods of Philadelphia. Students tell the stories that represent the diverse voices of the multicultural and multinational Philadelphia neighborhoods. Each semester MURL students concentrate their news coverage in a targeted Philadelphia neighborhood, and then service it with topical information and service news from the community–issues from the school lunch and the missing stop signs–to the people who seek to maintain a livable community. This MURL brand of news provides a form of hyper-local coverage missing from our urban communities: journalism street by street.

Stories: “Gravediggers raise money for Laurel Hill Cemetary”; “Olney: A Look at the 35th Police District”; “Feltonville: Three Children and Woman Killed”; “Fishtown: Vegan anyone?”; “Mantua: Farming Provides Locals with Fresh Produce”

[Eco-Lifestyle Campaign Posters] Selected posters made by Industrial Design students of Institute of Technology Bandung, for Design & Sustainability class (term I/08-09)

[Eco-Lifestyle Campaign Posters] Selected posters made by Industrial Design students of Institute of Technology Bandung, for Design & Sustainability class (term I/08-09)

[Eco-Lifestyle Campaign Posters] Selected posters made by Industrial Design students of Institute of Technology Bandung, for Design & Sustainability class (term I/08-09)

[Eco-Lifestyle Campaign Posters] Selected posters made by Industrial Design students of Institute of Technology Bandung, for Design & Sustainability class (term I/08-09)

[Eco-Lifestyle Campaign Posters] Selected posters made by Industrial Design students of Institute of Technology Bandung, for Design & Sustainability class (term I/08-09)

[Eco-Lifestyle Campaign Posters] Selected posters made by Industrial Design students of Institute of Technology Bandung, for Design & Sustainability class (term I/08-09)

[Eco-Lifestyle Campaign Posters] Selected posters made by Industrial Design students of Institute of Technology Bandung, for Design & Sustainability class (term I/08-09)

[Eco-Lifestyle Campaign Posters] Selected posters made by Industrial Design students of Institute of Technology Bandung, for Design & Sustainability class (term I/08-09)

[Eco-Lifestyle Campaign Posters] Selected posters made by Industrial Design students of Institute of Technology Bandung, for Design & Sustainability class (term I/08-09)

The fifth and final project in the “Roadside Giants of the Lincoln Highway” series is an antique truck celebrating farming heritage. Designed by the Franklin County Career & Technology Center students in Chambersburg, the 1920 Selden Apple Truck replica truck is fully dimensional and features a steering column and bench seat plus wheels that spin. The 11-foot tall, 2-ton antique truck  is located at Shatzer’s Fruit Market along U.S. 30 heading east. A dedication was held Tuesday, June 9, 2009.

The hood sign reads “Lincoln Highway Fruit Growers Serving Franklin County Since 1907.”

Read more in the Chambersburg Public Opinion HERE.

And read about other Roadside Giants across the U.S. in Roadside Giants the book, available from Amazon by clicking HERE.

We’re Live!

Perfect student project, 2 characters, 1 set, simple story brilliantly executed.

I’ve just finished my radio programme (and,  with that, my degree!). It’s styled as if it were to be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 3:45pm on a weekday.

To take a listen, click here – just click play or download to listen later!

Comments are welcome as always.

Early in September, I was contacted by Jennifer Williams from the DIA asking me if I was interested in participating in an exhibition that would include the work of my students. They would shot and print work that would explore the complicated ideas of memory and loss; a daunting prospect to students ranging in age from 14 to 18. If taken on, this project would be aligned to the exhibition called Of Life and Loss: The Polish Photographs of Roman Vishniac and Jeffrey Gusky that would open April 15, 2009. The guidelines set out at that time by Jennifer stated that “The project would use the photos in the exhibition as a catalyst to inspire students to explore themes of memory and place in their own work”. And while student work would not be inside the gallery with the work of Gusky and Vishniac, it would be given enormus respect when it was shown on a screen outside the exhibition.

The students were thrilled about the project from the onset long before they knew that inclusion in this show came in conjunction with a trip to the DIA to view the exhibition, discussion of images, general tour of the museum, and copies of the video and booklet of their work.

I can say without reservation that this project garnered more discussion of images, before and after they were shot and printed than any other assignment that I can remember. The students were engaged from the beginning but something palpable changed after we were visited by Linda Margolin and Jennifer Williams who showed the students the PowerPoint that I had seen in September. The intensity and power of the images and the discussion that followed took some of the students in a different direction; some asking if they could shoot again as they knew that only one image each would be submitted.

The students were humbled by the work they saw that day and felt honored to have their work juxtaposed to the images of Gusky and Vishniac. The fact that Jeffrey Gusky was an “amateur” photographer did little to mitigate their concerns that their work would be worthy of inclusion.

Over the next few months the issue that the students grappled with the most was how to tie their own “short” history, to the monumental history of war torn Poland and other ravaged Eastern European countries. I watched each student deconstruct this concept and reassemble it in their own visual vernacular. All the student interruptions were different and they all made the assignment their own.

Interrupting one’s own identity through the lens of a personal history is a powerful mandate and when explored fully can be a teaching tool that extends far beyond photography and the final image.

The students felt an additional connection to the exhibiting photographers as they all worked in the same medium — black and white film and darkroom printing.
We are now getting ready for our visit later this month. I feel that I can speak for all of us when I say that this will be a powerful and inspiring day.

Michelle Stamler

For a recent class assignment, my sophomores watched the popular “Shift Happens” video. In essence, the video makes a couple of claims:

a) population growth in China and India means that those two countries have the manpower to potentially become very strong

b) the internet is becoming a huge part of our lives, and allows people in those countries to compete

c) “we live in exponential times” the growth of population and technology are so fast that it’s hard to anticipate what the world will look like. in other words, information gets outdated very quickly.

d) shift happens.

The video is a bit “doomsday.” The music is intense, the stats are striking. So I asked my 4 sections of sophomores to respond with their own videos. I think they’re great. I have tried to post them directly as video responses to the original “Shift Happens,” but the creator of that video has yet to grant me permission. As such, they’re a bit tough to track down on youtube, so I wanted to put them here to help promote the work of my students. I hope you enjoy watching them!

CTRL + Shift

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