Multimedia today

I feel like the things covered this semester have been very helpful to all who wish to work in mass communication after college, whether one aspires to be a journalist, advertiser, public relations agent or anything else in media. Obviously the Internet has changed how businesses, groups and publications alike must work at getting audiences' attention, so it makes sense that your skills in this area must expand.

I only wish these topics were brought up sooner in one's university education, and I'm sure they will be in the future. It seems almost every class I've had over the last two semesters had stressed the same things; even in print reporting classes convergence almost always hangs over what we are doing. I've noticed a huge spike in the amount of stress given to multimedia reporting over the last half of my education at Texas State, and feel young students in the future need to be exposed to this and have interactive access to the software, skills and guidelines as soon as possible from now on. I think as the media arts get more saturated with convergence journalists and other professionals, having dabbled won't be enough. Students need to refine these skills beyond that.

Right now I'm not sure if I wish to continue pursuing journalism, but the multimedia aspects are very appealing, if only to try new ways to produce stories. I had fun doing my video project for Bobcat Living and will try more of that in the future. I think print will always have a place for harder, dense news, but seeing as I have never been that interested in news, I'd like to get better at convergence reporting and move towards features that bring individuals stories to light, stories that might not have been told in the past.

For example, I was watching a sports show on TV that ranked the top inspiring stories of all time. One was Jason McElwain's performance after being inserted late into a high school basketball game last season. McElwain was a senior and the manager for the Greece Athena High School boys basketball team in New York, but has autism and as such did not play during the season. But at the end of the season he got in the game and hit six three-pointers and scored 20 points in four minutes, much to the enjoyment of his friends, family and teammates. This was one of the few inspiring stories that wasn't filmed professionally, and wasn't about pro sports. I thought it cool that years ago people wouldn't not have known what McElwain did.