New Media Workshop

Eileen Shim (Yale '12) shows how bloggers, such as those at Talking Points Memo, have impacted political discourse during the "New Media Workshop". (Photo Credit: Brian Rokus '99)

By Tasnim Shamma (Jamaica, NY)

So for the first year at the Princeton University Summer Journalism Program, we had a "New Media Workshop" taught by Ben Crair (The Daily Beast), Eileen Shim (The Yale Daily News) and myself (The Daily Princetonian). Eileen and I were both students at the program in 2007 and 2006, respectively, so it was an honor to lead the workshop for the 2009 group.

Ben and Eileen led a lively discussion about the difference between new media and old media and it was surprising to see the number of sources that the students said they get their news from listed under "New Media". We also talked about the impact of new media on aspiring journalists and how new media is essentially a "parasite" in that most content is from "old media" (the traditional establishment of journalism).

We also discussed the impact of new media -- twitter on the Iranian election, user-generated content driving the news, bloggers and its important role in politics.

We also did a short tutorial on basic editing using Final Cut Pro (see video below for our final product from the workshop) and throughout the week we will hopefully be incorporating new media into our reporting and activities through this blog, video and audio slideshows and podcasts.