By Andrzej Sienko
Plasma screens constantly feed news into a room packed with computers, cameras and complex equipment. Journalists use professional software to simultaneously publish their stories in newspapers, magazines and online. Video and radio packages are edited on state of the art machines.
And, of course, there is live podcasting.
This newsroom is not at CNN, but is the newest addition to the University’s School of Communication on Dec. 3. The converged newsroom and multimedia classroom, or NewsHub, gives students new tools to work in multiple forms of media, said School of Communication Dean Sybil DelGaudio.
“This allows an unprecedented exchange of ideas,” DelGaudio said during the opening ceremony with University President Stuart Rabinowitz.
“The NewsHub will help break barriers between underrepresented members of the Long Island community,” DelGaudio said. “Students will talk to locals directly using NewsHub resources to report on important social issues.”
Emmy-winning former WNBC-TV anchor Carol Jenkins joined the communications faculty in praising the project. Jenkins, the president of the Women’s Media Center, said working in multimedia may help women get more exposure. She said her women’s radio network, Greenstone Media, had difficulty with distribution in an industry largely dominated by men.
Convergence is a possible solution, she added. Media convergence is print, radio, television and online journalism coming together.
Combining so many digital media is a new idea in journalism. University officials said they only had a few examples to work on, such as Florida’s Tampa Convergence Center. Faculty hope the NewsHub will give students a technological advantage. “This will help students look beyond, into the future,” Rabinowitz said, before formally opening the newsroom in Dempster Hall.
“The NewsHub, with its gleaming new equipment, is an impressive place,” special assistant professor of journalism Peter Goodman said. “Working in it, journalism students will get comfortable with the kinds of work environments they will encounter on the job. The newsroom of the future may very well look like this.
Communication groups run entirely by students demonstrated the versatility of the room. They said the entire event was live on almost every possible medium; from broadcasting on the University radio station, WRHU, to video streaming and even live-blogging on NassauNews, a Web site created to showcase online journalism. The University’s news show, “FYI,” ran on an overhead monitor as broadcast students edited the next episode. The NewsHub even broadcast on television, airing on WCBS news Monday night.
Features of the NewsHub include nonlinear video editing, new software such as iNews, and both PC and Apple computer stations.
James Quinn, the president of Tiffany & Co., said he had trouble finding the School of Communication when he attended the University because it did not exist when he graduated in 1975. Instead, Quinn used to borrow space in Memorial Hall, where he said film, rather than video, was still used for editing.
He said NewsHub demonstrates just how much had changed in journalism, especially at the University.