Welcome to Online Journalism... Goodbye.

It's occurred to me recently how much I enjoy this thing called "online journalism." Sure I love the actual journalism aspect of it, reporting, researching, and writing, but even more so I love the videography and design of it as well. As I've been putting together my multimedia package, I've realized how much I've enjoyed making the video more so than writing my story. Unfortunately for me, I have one more package to put together before I return to written journalism for the rest of my college career.

If there's one thing we've learned in this class thus far, it's that online is the future of journalism. Right now, as CNJ442 is my only journalism class, my entire journalism world is online. I haven't even thought of doing work for a newspaper since last semester. It's strange to me right now that when I return to Miami in the fall, I will no longer be engulfed in this online journalism world.

CNJ442 is an introductory course. It may not be titled "Intro to," but it's an introduction to all the different elements of online media. No one without any previous video experience is going to walk out of this class with a mastery of video production. And that's exactly how it should be, you need to start somewhere. But why does my online journalism education stop at an introduction? If this is truly the future as everyone says it is and everyone else believes it is, why are there no advanced classes in online media for journalism students? It's nice that if people want to focus on newspaper writing, they can stay on the newspaper track, but does UM really believe that it's doing its best to prepare these students for the future by allowing them to learn how to write solely for print? And what about all of those students who will never even think of taking CNJ442? They will be entirely left out of this online world of the future.

It seems to me that the School of Communication needs to rethink its journalism program and perhaps bring it into the 21st century. We can't all write for the Hurricane for forever.