Cronkite professors develop multimedia textbook for journalists

Professors from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University have developed a new textbook for college students pursuing broadcast journalism.

“News Now: Visual Storytelling in the Digital Age” is a highly visual introduction to broadcasting in all forms, combining disciplines that have traditionally been segmented. It looks at the industry not just as television anchoring, producing and reporting but as inclusive of publishing of online media content, social media interaction and other realities of today’s newsroom.

“These days, students are being asked to do all these functions,” said Cronkite assistant dean and news director Mark Lodato, one of the book’s authors. “‘NewsNow’ is able to put these realities in perspective for a young audience and give them an easy road map to success.”

The text authors are Lodato, Cronkite News Service broadcast director Sue Green, Cronkite global initiatives director B. William Silcock and former Cronkite associate professor Carol Schwalbe. Multiple Cronkite professors and adjunct faculty who are professionals in the nation’s 12th-largest media market also contributed their expertise.

“News Now” is divided into four sections: Content, Reporting, Production and Values. The 336-page, spiral-bound book contains frequent images and graphics as well as hypothetical scenarios for students and professors to engage with. It is published by Pearson and contains a foreword by Steve Capus, president of NBC News.

“I have been both impressed and heartened to see the combination of new technology and editorial excellence in the work of Cronkite students,” Capus wrote in his foreword. “Recent graduates are working in our newsrooms. Now the Cronkite Team has taken the forward-thinking approach that produced these success stories and put it on paper.”

Authors have set up a Facebook page and other online components where students and professors can interact and updates may be added.

The book will be in classrooms this fall. Preliminary copies will be available at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication 2011 annual convention in St. Louis, Aug. 10-13. Copies can be ordered through university bookstores. To request a desk copy, go to http://www.pearsonhighered.com/educator/product/News-Now-Visual-Storytelling-in-the-Digital-Age/9780205695911.page.