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Ever have the sense that you are so busy teaching students how to blog that you don’t have time to blog yourself?

I’m guilty. For about the past year, I have neglected my own writing about journalism and journalism education. But the things that have kept me busy are good ones. In short, this has been the best and most dynamic year of my teaching career. I’ve learned more in the past 12 months than during any other point in my time on this planet.

In July 2014, I was named as the editor of the New Mexico News Port, a student journalism lab at the University of New Mexico, where I teach journalism. The lab, first funded by the Online News Association and now by the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, serves as a hub for journalism students to collaborate with local media partners including the public television and radio stations on campus as well as the independent student newspaper.

To date, we’ve done three theme-based projects, including covering the mid-term election; producing audience-based reporting based on the WBEZ Curious City model and crafting an in-depth look at New Mexico’s innovation economy. Our work has won several local and national awards.

My work at the News Port includes story planning and editing with students in various classes in the department, overseeing a crew of student employees, and designing and developing our website.

Here’s a look at a student-produced video about our first year. The project continues to expand and grow as we reach out to new partners and help more students publish their work as they prepare for careers in journalism.

In the spring of 2015, I taught the first Mobile Reporting course at UNM. I created and pitched this class, which is cross listed as an elective in the Interdisciplinary Film and Digital Media program and the Communication and Journalism Department here. To fund the iPad kits for students, I wrote my first grant.

In the class, students use an iPad mini to report and produce audio and video pieces that they publish to a group WordPress site. I will teach the class again in spring 2016, and the class has been chosen to be part of a new Innovation Academy at UNM.

Here’s some of the best work from the inaugural class.

Meanwhile, this summer, I started helping guide students at the New Mexico Daily Lobo from a daily print schedule into a twice-weekly, online-first approach. Part of my work with students as their writing coach involves helping them incorporate digital and social media into a new newsroom workflow and mentality. Next month, I will give a training on using Periscope to cover breaking news.

For the fall 2015 semester, I’m teaching a 200-level writing and editing for multimedia class. I was given the latitude and encouragement to shake up the syllabus a bit and run the course more as a newsroom than a classroom. I consider this my tiny corner of the teaching hospital model of journalism education. I believe students can only learn journalism from doing journalism and the sooner this starts in their college careers, the better.

As part of their work in my class, students write directly for the Daily Lobo as well as the News Port. So far, students have been excited to see their work in print and online. To ease students into the idea, I have a student editor in the classroom with me every other week to go over edits and workshop ideas. I think this helps the students feel more connected to the newsroom process.

As this semester progresses, I look forward to reporting back (more often) on this initiative and a few of the other projects I have underway. Stay here or follow my blog for updates.

Kate

With help from $1 million grant, Kewa Pueblo looks to turn iconic landmark into economic boon

Kate Nash | The New Mexican

KEWA PUEBLO — Ray Tafoya’s mind races with all kinds of ideas about how his pueblo can turn an old trading post into the cornerstone of a redevelopment that could bring jobs, business and tourists to this enclave west of Interstate 25.

As he drives from the center of the village here north toward the burned-out 1920s adobe building that will be rebuilt with a $1 million federal grant, he rattles them off.

Horseback tours. Guided hiking and fishing in the Rio Galisteo. A traditional restaurant. Tours of the homes or studios of the pueblo’s artists.

All he needs is money, time, some planning and, of course tourists.

No sooner does he stop his car in front of the ruins of the trading post than two arrive.

The couple, Alan and Bonnie Lurie, are on vacation from New Jersey and a little lost. They are looking for a place to buy jewelry.

These visitors are months too early to buy any handicrafts at this location, but Tafoya chats them up about the pueblo’s plans.

“That sounds like a good idea,” Alan Lurie said. The couple drives back toward the village, in hopes of finding a roadside vendor or home-based jewelry shop.

The federal government also liked the trading post idea and last month decided to give Kewa, formerly known as Santo Domingo, funds to rebuild it.

The grant from the Economic Development Administration means a lot in this dusty and largely unpaved village of about 5,000.

It means economic development, which really means hope in a place where the median household income is roughly $33,000.

Rebuilding the post is probably at least a year away, as community members meet to try and decide what they want to do with the space, and how they want it to look.

That challenge is a tough one, because many history buffs recognize the post as an icon. Travelers on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway stopped in after a small railroad town grew up in 1880 with the arrival of the tracks. The original trading post opened in 1881 and was replaced in 1922.

According to a column in The New Mexican by historian Marc Simmons, “after World War II the trading post began catering more to tourists who were looking for reminders of the Old West. One prominent visitor who got off the train for a quick tour Dec. 7, 1962, was President John F. Kennedy.”

The trading post closed in 1995. In 2001, fire ruined the building, and like the freeway six miles to the east, time zipped by before plans to rebuild surfaced.

Tafoya, the administrator of tribal programs, said the out-of-the-way community needs to think beyond just a new trading post to attract new visitors.

That’s where his tour idea comes in. He pictures people making a whole day out of their time at the pueblo, enjoying a mix of the outdoors and the Native culture.

“Ultimately we want to make this a tourist stop again,” he said. “It’s not just arts and crafts. There’s more to do.”

Visions of a transformation

As a tribal planner, Kenneth Pin dreams big, too.

Standing in front of the former trading post, just feet from the pueblo’s Rail Runner Express passenger-train stop, Pin has the Jemez Mountains over his shoulder and the grassy, plained outskirts of the pueblo in front of him.

He describes what he envisions the area will look like in a year or two.

The trading post will be bustling, with artisans selling pottery, jewelry, weavings and more. Chefs in the restaurant will be cooking up traditional foods including red chile stew, green chile laden dishes, baked bread. Tourists will deboard the Rail Runner and walk over.

But first things are first in this outpost — a wastewater system.

“I see a bathroom,” he says, half laughing.

Those are the types of things the community here needs to think about as it prepares for such a project. Officials are also thinking about road improvements to handle the increased traffic, and maybe a sidewalk or a walking path for the area.

Nearby, Pin envisions that a former manufactured housing construction site can be turned into something new as well. Maybe a place where local potters can share a kiln. Or do soldering that they can’t do at home. Maybe a center for green manufacturing of some kind. Located right on a rail spur, the area easily could receive heavy goods as well.

Those train tracks, in fact, are a key part of the plan. The pueblo is banking in large part on train service to bring visitors.

“We’re using a modern twist on an old idea,” Tafoya said.

A shop just down the street

Mary Louise Tafoya has had her jewelry displayed in museums from Phoenix to Indianapolis to the Smithsonian.

She sells her necklaces, pendants and pins — made from corral, turquoise, serpentine and other stones — at shows including the annual Santa Fe Indian Market.

She’d like to be able to sell more of her work just miles from home as well — a real possibility with the plans for the trading post.

Tafoya said the project could significantly help local artists, some of whom try to make a living selling their artwork at the pueblo’s gas station next to the freeway, or under the portal at the Palace of the Governors on the Santa Fe Plaza.

The 52-year-old, who learned jewelry making from her parents, said the trading post brings memories of when her dad would take her there.

“I saw the two gas pumps in front and those were the coolest things,” she said, smiling shyly while sitting at her kitchen table. “It was a big thing to see.”

Published July 30, 2010.

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

As we start this year, many of my friends (and probably yours too) have taken to social media to ask others to help hold them accountable when it comes to their New Year’s resolutions.

Of course journalists are all about accountability and holding people to their word. But can we cut a quick deal and ignore all the New Year’s resolutions I’ve made in the past? No really, I’ve got a solid one this year. And seriously, did you honestly expect me to give up chocolate for more than 12 hours? And color code my file folders? Yeah right.

Here, then is my 2014 resolution, so you can all ask me about it this time next year, or preferably before.

My goal is to propose at least one new class a semester in the Communication and Journalism Department at the University of New Mexico, where I currently teach as an adjunct instructor.

(While I’ve had this thought for a while, I started thinking more about it after a Facebook request by University of Wisconsin-Madison Assistant Professor Katy Culver, who asked what educators are resolving to do this year. Her request turned into a post with a fun infographic on Mediashift.org.)

So during this first week in January, I’ve already taken one step and finished my first grant proposal. It’s a key part of what I have resolved to do, because we need new equipment to start up a mobile reporting class I’m scheduled to teach this fall. In the scheme of things, it’s a small request, some $6,000 for 10 iPad minis and the lights, lenses and mics that go with them. (Bags, too.)

Please note that I may be cheating a tiny bit on this resolution, because I did get approval for the class in the fall of 2013, but all resolutions have a bit of fudging involved, right? That said, this is the year I hope to complete this task, so let’s just put it in the 2014 category.

Although the amount is small, it’s a big step for me, in part because it is my first grant, and in part because it would be my first time teaching mobile reporting.

It’s also a big step for the department. This will be the first mobile reporting class offered at UNM. I’m thrilled I have the green light. I hope to bring other digital skills classes to the department this year as well.

Entwined in my goal is my hope to give my students the most current and relevant digital skills. I want them to be able to go out and produce a story that’s ready for the web, all on their own, and with accessible and simple equipment. I want them to understand social media, multimedia and the ethical implications of both. I want them to feel confident using new equipment and new apps. In short, I want them to succeed at newspapers and other news organizations once they graduate. (If not before.)

I acknowledge my goal here is neither unique nor new. After reading parts of Searchlights and Sunglasses by Eric Newton during winter break, I know I’m not alone in this and I’m inspired by others across the country proposing similar classes (and projects within classes) that aim to improve journalism education and truly prepare our students. Much has been said about the direction journalism education needs to go, and I’m thrilled to play just a tiny part of helping student journalists keep up with the technological innovations.

I’d love to hear from you throughout the year about your goals and your classes as well.

Happy 2014,

Kate

Over the weekend, I had students in my Newspaper Practice class attend and report on the local Day of the Dead parade. The parade has evolved into a pretty large event, and I spent a good deal of time waiting around to meet up with the students and check in on their reporting progress. As I people watched and took a few photos, I couldn’t help but notice how everyone — including the elaborately dressed grandmas in the crowd — had a smart phone. That meant lots of photos would be posted on social media.

With sure to be powerful images of people dressed in blacks, rich blues and red to honor the dead, I thought the event was just the kind of thing to be curated. As it turns out, about a week ago I had heard about a new tool called Brickflow and I was thinking of trying it out.

As background, I’ve already covered how to use another curation tool, Storify, in this class, and I was pleased when one of my students set out last night to curate the event, which has huge cultural significance here. Now that I have them thinking about and doing curations, it was time to see what other programs I can teach them. I tried Brickflow this morning and I like it. The biggest difference between the two is that Storify seems much more text- and tweet-oriented while Brickflow is all about the photos and videos. Brickflow displays social media content in a playable slideshow while Storify presents the information in a more linear, story like format.

The approach to curation in Brickflow is similar to Storify, though, and is all hashtag-search based. (On that point, I make absolutely sure all beginning social media users understand the hashtag concept before moving on to tools, because it is so crucial for curation and other tools.)

Overall, Brickflow is easy to use and might appeal to student photographers a bit more than writers. After only using it once, I can envision a class assignment where I ask students to use it to curate a local news event, much like I would do with Storify. Of course, a part of the lesson would focus on the ethics of curation and a discussion of how curating a story relates to and differs from traditional reporting of a story.

Overall, I like both programs and intend to experiment more with Brickflow as I show it to students. Here’s a look at my first piece, known as a “flow.”

In part because of a multimedia reporting class I’m taking this fall as part of my master’s program, I’ve been exploring various multimedia publishing platforms. Videolicious moved up on my list after I saw that Poynter this week will host a webinar on using it for journalism. In a class I teach at the University of New Mexico, I mentioned the app to my students, who said they had just learned about it at the Associated Collegiate Press conference in New Orleans. They were willing to be my guinea pigs for the snapshots I took around the student newsroom today.

Overall, it was super simple to use. In less than five minutes, using an iPad, I had a basic, one minute piece published and on Twitter. I chose ten photos from my iPhoto app, and recorded audio over them as I swiped through. You also can record video if you’d like.

While it was simple to produce, the piece is not superb. The photos are nothing more than snapshots and the audio is just audio, but it’s not terrible. With more time, and by paying for more than the scaled down free version, I think the app has some potential for storytelling, especially because of the ability to quickly post on social media.

But I don’t want to sound like an ad here either. I’m not a fan of the automatic Ken Burns effect. And as I scrolled, the mic seemed to sometimes pick up the sound of my fingers moving on the iPad. But overall, it’s a decent choice, especially for students who might be looking for a simple way to publish multimedia components with a story.

In the end, I’d rather teach students how to use more professional video recording and editing equipment, but I know that’s not realistic for many of them. Videolicious helps fill a gap for students who want to learn multimedia, but who don’t have time/access to/patience for more pro tools.

UPDATE, Nov. 15
I had my students try out the app during a class last week. In a really short amount of time, both groups who tried it produced a short video. Nothing too stellar, but decent given the classroom setting I confined them to, and the fact that it was the first time they had seen the app. (Because the app is iOS only, I ended up lending them my iPad and my iPhone, so keep that in mind if you want to try this in your class.)

Here’s a link to the better of the two videos. I gave them no instructions beyond a demonstration and then let them follow the guided information on the app. You can see potential for creating short pieces with the free version.

Bonus instructor tip: remember that you lent your equipment to students so you aren’t wondering how all those really bad pictures of you ended up on your iPhone.

First, my confession: I’ve never watched Breaking Bad. And I live in Albuquerque, where the show was shot and where everyone except me has seen every minute of every episode of every show. Don’t tell my neighbors. Or my students.

But I have watched enough being written about Breaking Bad to know it had a grip on our city like nothing else. I wondered how I could harness that interest for my own journalism education purposes.

For a few years, I’ve used Twitter with moderate success to engage students on the finer points of journalism. I will admit here to the occasional tweet about National Punctuation Day, because I heard somewhere that embracing your inner nerdiness is coming back in style. I am here to say that’s not true.

What I needed was something that captured my journalism students’ attention just like the show. I needed something they were interested in enough to have a conversation about. Something they couldn’t stop talking about. But it had to be about journalism, or at least kind of related to journalism. Turns out the answer was the show.

I got lucky with Breaking Bad. Yes, pop culture and journalism education intersected one day when a local teacher (and if you watch the show you know there’s a teacher as a key protagonist) paid to place an ad in the Albuquerque Journal. The ad was an obit for Walter White, a key character in the show as everyone but me knows. The “obit” did not appear in the obits section, but rather in the news section, along with other ads you expect to see in any local newspaper. It was not marked as a paid ad, but it was in the paper the same day a local reporter wrote a story about the teacher taking out the ad.

That caught my attention. How many other “obits” have run in newspapers about television characters? (I ask that in all seriousness, please email me if you’ve seen one.)

Curious as to what had happened behind the scenes, I tweeted a question to see if anyone at the paper would explain. I got linked back to the story the reporter had written, but not much insight on whether there had been a debate on the issue. I then tweeted this question: #lobocamp students: what do you think of an obit for a tv character in a newspaper? Raises interesting, new questions. #breakingbad #BrBaABQ. (#lobocamp is a hashtag I use with my students; the #breakingbad and #BrBaABQ are used by fans of the show.)

Pretty soon, students engaged. Some would have run it, some wouldn’t have. Others would have labeled it as an ad. I heard from students who don’t speak much in class, and who typically tweet about other topics. Bingo. We even talked about the topic in class later that week.

So for my colleagues who sometimes ask how they can use Twitter as a classroom tool, the lesson I took away from this was to simply find something students care about and relate it back to your topic, even if that link is a bit tangential. I can see now that most students weren’t going to retweet or respond to my thoughts on bad headlines or grammar or newspaper correction policies, try as I may. But a crazy show that has propped up the local economy with blue donuts and meth “candy”? Absolutely.

I say all this with some heartburn, as I want my students to care more about compound modifiers and multimedia projects than t.v. drama. But I’ll take the successes where I can.

While it’s true I am a graduate student this summer, these days I mostly think of myself as a journalism instructor, which is how I wound up at Poynter’s Teachapalooza 2013 and how I came home with more homework than I know what to do with.

See, part of teaching is always learning. That was the key point of several speakers at the three-day conference in St. Petersburg. And part of that learning is studying and reading about new technologies for teaching and for storytelling.

But lest you think I’m complaining, I’m excited to do this homework, because it involves experimenting with some pretty cool looking tools and websites, including Meograph, hackshackers.com and bump, among many others. Also, at the conference I won a copy of Roy Peter Clark’s new book, “How to Write Short.” (Coming out this fall.) That’s on my (going by quickly) summer list now, as is the new book by NPR’s Andy Carvin. I also really want to read “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains” by Nicholas Carr. After all, isn’t reading what summer is for? I also will be reviewing some texts for a journalism ethics class I’m scheduled to teach in the spring, so let me know if you’ve read something really dynamic in that arena lately.

I’ll probably post in a week or two about what apps/programs/books I liked and which ones I think will work for teaching.

In the meantime, you can read more about the conference in this Storify curation I just posted.

[View the story “Amid new tools, journalism instructors must focus on basics” on Storify]