College | Caffeinated

Wow. Haven’t seen one of these around here for awhile. Are they becoming extinct? No, they’re just busy being turned into papers, projects, or ideas for various orgs. A ton of exciting personal news to update, but that’s for another day. Now, for the main attraction:

Note: This post isn’t an attack on Brian Brooks, the person. This is an opinion of the decisions he made and how I see them as indicative of problems within the J-School.

Now, if you look to your left, you’ll see the major debacle over the Brian S. Brooks, the Associate Dean at the Missouri School of Journalism, e-mail(s). Depending on who you talk to, Brooks effed up big time with the first e-mail, and even the second e-mail, according to some. I’ll let Justin Scott explain. Or you can check out his screenshots – e-mail 1; e-mail 2. Short summary? Brooks pissed off a bunch of people by using an unfortunate incident at the Black Culture Center (BCC) as a handjob for the Journalism School and it’s students. In the first e-mail, he uses “sexual…preference” and “tolerance”, which many found offensive (read Justin’s post for more). The second e-mail, an apology (I use that in the loosest sense of the term), also ruffled feathers. He stated the first e-mail was to “support MU’s African American students” (it didn’t), apologized, turned the handjob on himself, apologized again, then took the hand back towards the students (that sounds wrong – no more handjobs in this post).

If you want my opinion on this incident directly, read Justin’s post – it’s a pretty good mirror of my thoughts.

This is a post on the larger impact. How does this incident affect the Journalism School beyond the here-and-now.

These e-mails represent the overarching mentality of J-School administration – that the norm is fine. There is no rallying cry from our “leader”. There is no call-to-action, no plan or steps to make things better for our School or the University. Both e-mails have a “we’re fine as we are” theme. Brooks does not put anything out there to say, “hey, here is why this will never happen at the Journalism School…”, instead, he just says, “hey, don’t do this shit. I don’t want to be embarrassed.”

Apply that sentiment to other situations within the School. Over the past year, there have been a number of events, groups, and student out-cries for innovation and change in the Journalism School’s curriculum and the way it approaches things. However, outside of a few individual professors, change seems to be nonexistent. We keep hearing that we’ll “be fine”, while other schools aren’t settling for “fine” – their administration is gunning for unchallenged best. Frankly, I don’t see that in the Mizzou Journalism School administration, and this e-mail dictates that.

Many Mizzou J-School students are already ‘elitist’. Brian Brooks did nothing to help this. Actually, he did quite the opposite. In an e-mail that should have been about bringing people together, Brooks chose to segregate, using terms like, “…the best students at MU are Journalism students.” Is that a joke? I know plenty of Journalism students who suck at journalism, and at being a student, in general. Why? E-mails like these two make them think that simply by having “University of Missouri Journalism” on their degree means they’re set for life. These are the writers who “just really want to be Bill Simmons”, but without the work ethic. These are the broadcast students who think Anderson Cooper’s job is cushy. These are the StratComm students that left Broadcast for StratComm because they “want to make more money”, are “really creative”, or are “really, really good at talking to people!” (barf).

The administration is not in tune with the students. This point ties back to the first, but it deserves it’s own recognition. Simply put, the students and the administration are usually on entirely different wavelengths – in entirely different galaxies. Brooks will pop up every so often, get some face-time and maybe even make the obligatory “we’re working on it” statement. That’s it. Not once have I seen Brooks reach out to students on a personal, unforced basis. Many students see him, but feel like he is unapproachable. How difficult would it be to do a lap around the J-School and RJI every so often, talking with students and asking what they think of such-n-such.

Yes, this is a two-way road. Next week, I am going to e-mail Dean Brooks asking to meet with him, preferably over a casual lunch. Maybe in the J-Cafe. I’ll student charge it. You know, nbd. Not to grill him, not to harp (or even mention) this incident, but to talk about journalism and my beloved (if occasionally misguided) Journalism School.

These three things are what I immediately picked from the e-mails.  There is a lot to disagree with, sure, but what happened… happened. I know it’s cliché, but college is one big cliché so far.

It’s your move – student, faculty, and administration alike. We can continue to look backward and use this as an excuse, or move forward and us it as a catalyst.

I’m moving forward. Are you?

screenshot from http://snackr.net/

Sometime around last Thursday, I did an intense cleansing of my computer. After moving a massive amount of photos, docs, and mp3s to my hard drive, I was finally able to do everything I have ever dreamed of (at that moment): install Snow Leopard and other cool new toys.

sidebar: when I say intense cleansing, I mean INTENSE. Did you know that when your Macbook’s Hard Drive runs out of available space, it spells it out for you? When I saw, “Available: Zero KB”, I knew I needed to get cracking.

The first toy I downloaded was Snackr. Best. Decision. Ever. If you’re not using this FREE app, ummm, why the hell not? Especially as an ad-freak, PR enthused, closet tech-geek, journalism student, this thing is SO COOL. It’s a news ticker for your laptop. The ticker shows headline, source, how long ago it was published, and a preview (should you choose to click the headline). Yo Anderson Cooper, what you got on that?

How am I using my Snackr feed? After toying around with different ways, I’ve decided to use it as a compliment to my Google Reader (which I use solely for blogs that I NEED to read daily, or, postly?). Essentially, it’s a news feed of what’s interesting to me. I’ve got a bunch of feeds from various areas or authors on Advertising Age, True/Slant and Wired, the ‘Comment is free: America’ feed from The Guardian, Mashable, and more of the like. These aren’t places I am able to read every article every day. It’s pleasant, and easy, to have them roll across the bottom of my screen and pick what to read, when to read, without having to untangle the web.

How can you use it?

• Journalism students: Subscribe to your favorite news sources, specifically for in-depth news. You know where you’re going to get your breaking news (iPhone, Twitter, etc), but wouldn’t it be convenient to have a ticker full of the numerous places/journalists publishing fantastic, in-depth stories? Get snacking.
• Other students: Whatever your emphasis is, there are news sources for it. It’s the Internet. If you were majoring in Canadian fur trading, I’m sure you could find things (btw, that’s actually a class at University of Minnesota-Duluth). A friend of mine who is a nursing major asked why she would use it. Well, there is Nurse.com, MedicalNewsToday.com, and probably a gazillion (exaggeration alert) other news sources for the nursing industry.
• Communications Professionals: I can see this tool being useful in many ways, but two in particular:
  • Follow feeds that pertain to the industry of your client(s). You won’t read every article. Nor should you have to. But you will see the headlines, and Snackr even has a nice ‘preview’ feature for you. If the same topic keeps scrolling by, maybe it merits some further digging.
  • Get a feed of your favorite news sources on the roll. You’re busy keeping up with your client(s) all day, right? Well you can still know what’s going on outside of the clientsphere- without wasting interwebz time.
• My Mother: My mom loves looking for new recipes, cooking tools, and the like online. Instead of wasting time combing through different sites to see what looks good, why not have them scrolling across your desktop? “Green Bean Birthday Cake” doesn’t sound too great, so don’t click on it. “Deep Fried Green Bean Birthday Cake” sounds interesting, I might click the preview on that.

Indulge your craving, become a Snackr.

photo credit: law_keven