The Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications (ACEJMC) applies nine standards in evaluating university programs:

• mission, governance and administration;
• curriculum and instruction;
• diversity and inclusiveness;
• full-time and part-time faculty;
• scholarship: research, creative and professional activity;
• student services;
• resources, facilities and equipment;
• professional and public service;
• and assessment of learning outcomes.

The ACEJMCC has awarded accreditation to 109 university and college programs of study in journalism and mass communications.

Without any further ado, here is the non-scientific Journalism Hope list of Best Journalism Schools.

• University of Missouri – Columbia
• Columbia University in New York, NY
• Ball State University – Muncie, IN
• University of California – Berkeley
• Ohio University – Athens, OH
• University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, SC

Agree or disagree? Leave a comment below and let us know what you think.

Photo Journalism as an Inexpensive Link-Building Tool

When I evaluate a method of link-building, I consider cost per link to be an important metric. While I realize that cost per link is limited in that it assumes all links are equal, I think it’s good to consider cost per link when forming a long-term SEO strategy and suggesting a client budget.

When I first considered hiring a photographer to help me create link-worthy content, my initial instinct was that the cost per link would be significantly higher than other forms of link building. However, when I compared the cost per link of photo coverage to a more mainstream link-building tactic like guest blog posting, I found the results to be favorable.

Hiring a photographer to cover that car show cost a little less than $200, with another three hours of  time to needed to organize the images, write the post, etc. If we assume writing a post and organizing photos has a cost of $75 per hour, and if we assume that we received only six good quality links, the total cost per link was just about $70.

Read more: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/link-building-with-photo-journalism/28740/#ixzz1HgGR6sn7

With the current revolution in technology and journalism, many journalism pundits are blindly advocating non-technical journalists learn programming and web development skills. Programming, as opposed to coding HTML or CSS, takes a considerable time commitment to learn and may or may not come natural to the average journalist. via 10k words h/t to Journerdism

Simon Owens

On the day the AP Stylebook announced it would change the requirement that its users refer to online destinations as “web sites” to the more widely-used “websites,” I sent a message to a person named Justin LaBerge requesting a phone interview. He responded quickly saying that he was “about to go meet up with my GF for our Friday night plans (In light of today’s event, we have much to celebrate!)” When I spoke to him a few days later he said he was mostly kidding about the celebration part (he had been planning to go out with his girlfriend already) but that they did raise their glasses to “toast” the news. “You wouldn’t believe how many emails and Facebook messages I got when people saw that,” he told me.

Source: Bloggasm

Last week, journalists reacting to the Associated Press’s announcement that it would replace “Web site” with “website” in the AP Stylebook pushed the phrase “AP Stylebook” onto Twitter’s trending topics list. (FWIW, OJR’s style for the past several years has been to use “website.”)

Most journalists approved of the news, though a few skeptics, such as the University of Florida’s Mindy McAdams, demurred. Though I disagree with her on this, I loved the snark of her Twitter response: “Everyone but me is cheering AP style change to website. I think it resembles parasite.”

I jumped in with this: “If you’re publishing online, Google style (i.e. SEO) always trumps AP style.”

And… “Really, j-schools need to ditch AP style and start teaching their students SEO instead. More valuable to their careers.”

As much as I enjoy provoking folks from time to time, I am serious about this. The newspaper industry developed a common style, maintained by the Associated Press, to meet the communication needs of a print-based industry trying to most effectively communicate with a broad audience.

Today’s online publishers, editors and reporters need a new style that most effectively allows their words to reach their intended audiences. Unfortunately for them, the print-inspired AP style is not that. Today’s (and tomorrow’s) journalists need to learn search engine optimization [SEO] techniques as much as, if not more than their predecessors who worked the print industry needed to learn AP.

Source: OJR with a hat tip to Journerdism

Recent technological developments, particularly with regard to internet technology, have dramatically increased access to information and facilitated the proliferation of information sources. The need to instantly access this information and to allow the spread of digital information on the internet has eroded the capacity of professional journalists to create and disseminate news. A significant reason for this is that a new class of journalists – aptly referred to as citizen journalists – have exploited the new medium and the new information age.

Citizen journalists are not professional journalists – they are members of the community who contribute to news production through various types of media, and participate at different levels of the news production process. They may gather, process or disseminate news of all kinds, particularly on the internet using web logs or “blogs.” Their contribution is, however, immediately controversial. In the industry they may be considered a valuable resource for more accessible news, for example the popular CNN iReport function, which relies on news and information from citizen journalists. Others consider their contribution a threat to journalistic standards, and to the industry at large.

I consider that if the growth of citizen journalism remains unchecked, the news industries and consumers accessing the news stand to lose on various fronts. A consequence may be that declining standards of news production will reduce the value and credibility of news made available to the public.

Go read the whole thing.

Two military journalists behind an ambitious NATO International Security Assistance Force project to traverse Afghanistan in one month and file daily reports in words, photos and video recapped their experiences in a March 25 “DoD Live” bloggers roundtable.

The Web-based project, titled “30 Days Through Afghanistan,” concluded, March 15. It was the brainchild of Air Force Tech. Sgts. Ken Raimondi, whose background is in broadcasting, and Nathan Gallahan, a photojournalist. Both are based at ISAF’s Joint Command in Kabul.

The complex logistics required to reach all five ISAF regional commands in Afghanistan ultimately stretched the project an extra five days. From start to finish, Raimondi said, 90 percent of the encounters they had with coalition service members and with Afghan civilians were positive.

“The whole 35 days through, we saw almost endless opportunity and good spirits out there, and it was really a morale booster for us about the whole mission,” he said.

He added that no restrictions were placed on their coverage. “There was no approval chain. What we saw, we talked about,” he said.

And they pulled no punches in talking candidly with those they met. Raimondi recalled speaking with a sergeant stationed in the south who had witnessed 117 “ramp” ceremonies conducted planeside for fallen soldiers. “It was just crushing, really, knowing that there are people out there that have seen that many ramp ceremonies,” Raimondi noted.

Gallahan said the greatest challenge to keeping up the pace of daily reports was finding Internet access with enough bandwidth to upload video material to their Web site. The easy part, he said, was finding stories to tell.

“There are so many people in this country who have so much to say, and there’s so much to talk about, that I could have spent 10 years blogging every day and could have found something new to talk about,” he said.

Both reporters said they were gratified to read comments submitted by some of the several thousand followers of the blog, which Gallahan wrote, and the video log postings, which Raimondi produced. Although they would have liked the Web site to have attracted a larger audience beyond the military community, they said, they hope their approach has opened doors for others.

The airmen added that while “30 Days Through Afghanistan” may have broken new ground in contemporary military journalism, it really represents a return to the personal, frontline interview style of famed World War II reporter Ernie Pyle.

Gallahan said his two regrets about the project are a lack of time to plan out logistics and having to wrap up after just skimming the surface of the country.

“I would like to continue to try to tell the entire story of Afghanistan so people can make their own judgments,” he said.

To the list of the enemies threatening the security of the United States, the Pentagon has added WikiLeaks.org, a tiny online source of information and documents that governments and corporations around the world would prefer to keep secret.

The Pentagon assessed the danger WikiLeaks.org posed to the Army in a report marked “unauthorized disclosure subject to criminal sanctions.” It concluded that “WikiLeaks.org represents a potential force protection, counterintelligence, OPSEC and INFOSEC threat to the U.S. Army” — or, in plain English, a threat to Army operations and information.

WikiLeaks, true to its mission to publish materials that expose secrets of all kinds, published the 2008 Pentagon report about itself on Monday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/18/us/18wiki.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

How Will The End Of Print Journalism Affect Old Loons Who Hoard Newspapers?