Dean's Message
Responsive, responsible Web use is the promise of SJMC 'Resolving Door'

Dean Paul S. Voakes

One of the School's most basic challenges is to prepare students to succeed as media professionals. Lately, that simple goal has started to look like a moving target. A very fast-moving target.

What on earth is happening to journalism? Everyone who is invested - civically or financially - in the survival of journalism wants answers. Fortunately, some groups are willing to put up funds to enable curious minds to experiment and explore for answers. The McCormick Foundation is one such group, and so this fall we were fortunate enough to receive a $110,000 grant to explore interactive, multimedia "citizen journalism."

Citizen journalism starts with the assumption that trained professional journalists are not omniscient - nor are they omnipresent - and that "amateur" citizens also can contribute useful information to the public domain. It's easy for traditionalists to scoff at the Web's cacophony with the advent of bloggers, Facebook and YouTube, but the coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign has convinced me - and many others - that this phenomenon is here to stay. Our greatest challenge is how to embrace these technology-enabled phenomena without sacrificing journalism's treasured values and principles. Is that even possible? There's one way to find out.

Of all the millions of possible directions that citizen journalism might go, we'll focus on one: solving common problems in a local community. A new Web site, dubbed "The Resolving Door," will invite readers/members to pose questions or problems. Instead of reporting the answers themselves, the student journalists in charge will prompt, organize and reward "user-generated" answers in ways that lead, we hope, to increasing degrees of substance in the issues posed and solutions offered.

Will anyone participate? We know that teens and young adults - most of tomorrow's media audience - no longer read newspapers or watch TV news in great numbers. We also know that they are avid readers and prolific "producers" on the Web - especially when it comes to social networking. So the Resolving Door team will start experimenting to find out how a Web site can be attractive, "user-generated" and social while moving toward substantive issues, and in ways that build community. It's a lofty goal, but if local journalism is going to survive amid a Web-based informational free-for-all, we'll need some creative suggestions.

So look for the Resolving Door by mid-March (the School's Web site will link to it), and feel free to take part. I realize, of course, that no single project is the panacea for what ails the journalism business, but we can take pride in this School's ability to be among the nation's innovators in the search for what's next.