It has been more than a year since I last added content to this educational blog. I actually thought I would be shutting the site down for good after leaving the classroom to take on an editor-in-chief role at a local newsroom in June 2024. Building a local, startup, nonprofit online newsroom from scratch was a daunting task, but I learned a lot from that experience and I have no regrets.
I left the Free Press in July and went back into the classroom again, teaching UToledo students the skills I have honed over the past four decades.
This week, I'm calculating final grades for my two online, asynchronous UToledo courses: Multimedia Newswriting and Digital Design for Media Communication, as well as building a new course I'm teaching next semester at Wayne State. The class, called Podcasting and Audio Reporting, will focus on helping students develop, produce and publish original audio stories, with an emphasis on journalism ethics, narrative structure and real-world podcast production workflows.
Looking back at my 18-year-old self, I could have never imagined how profoundly journalism would evolve—from typewriters and darkrooms to smartphones, social media and on-demand podcasts. It's a crazy world out here, and although the changes are massive, there are a few things that will always remain the same: journalism ethics and the need for solid storytelling in any format.
Though nobody knows everything, it's always wise to learn broadly because you never know where your career will take you.
