What Should Young Journalists-in-Training Learn to Do?

Interesting discussion over at the blog of my feature writing class concerning the multimedia stuff -- blogs, photos, slideshows, short news videos -- I tried to give them a taste of this semester.

Kids don't think it was a success. Grads think it was a good idea, though the degree of success achieved they cannot judge.

But it is an informative discussion, at least to me. It is not a Socratic question, the answer already in the asker's mind, that answer a gate through which the askees will finally be prodded, as the interrogative mood turns into the imperative.

I really don't know what I should be doing -- if where how, the whole package of puzzlement.

Like the following: worth the trouble??

Field Trip

Took the feature writing class down to Salon (the online magazine) today. Brother Kevin Berger, the power editor, hosted, and Katharine Mieszkowski, the elegant feature stylist, sat in. I don't particularly remember anything that was said -- since I agreed with all of it, right down to Kevin's unwillingness to let anything slip off the record and Katharine's getting into the business by taking an unpaid internship at a trade magazine that covered the restaurant business.

What I liked was how interested the students looked from where I sat near Berger at the head of the long conference table. Sometimes you take a class somewhere and the boredom is palpable. And you are vaguely ashamed, though perhaps you have done a good job of teaching, without which good job the boredom of your students would be sodden, overwhelming, coming down like the damp.

Perhaps, today it was just good manners. But one needs to buck oneself up.