Thursday, August 23, 2007

Radford Media Studies Dorm Gets CNN... and Some Ink The ink is in The Roanoke Times, along with some digital ink at Roanoke.com, under the headline, "Radford residence hall tunes in to CNN... Madison Hall is a themed dorm for media studies majors." Reporter Anna L. Mallory's story is accompanied by a photo of Chris Carter, the media studies lab and studio coordinator, showing some "computerized digital video editing techniques" to Stephanie Taylor, resident assistant in the new dorm. (Class, does that photo caption really need both words, "computerized" and "digital"?) Almost 120 media studies majors opted to live on two reserved floors of the dorm, which the Times points out is not air-conditioned. However, it is being wired for CNN -- not the usual cable-subscriber version, but the network's "Newsource in the Classroom" feed, which is more like the raw video local TV stations receive. Students will be able to use the CNN video to practice writing scripts, producing newscasts and editing stories about real news events. ("We're waiting for networking to come and put in the cable jack, but that should be in the next 2 weeks or so," Chris said, when I asked whether  my original draft of this post was accurate.) But enough of my paraphrasing... go read the Times and see what a couple of my more video-focused colleagues have to say about the project, along with a comment from the National Association of College and University Residence Halls. Radford combines journalism, video production, Web production and advertising in its Media Studies department, while undergraduate public relations, organizational communication and communication studies are a separate department of "Communication," along with a master's program in Corporate and Professional Communication. The two departments are being brought together in a new School of Communication next year. A search for a director of the new school is just getting underway. 1:15:12 AM    comment []

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