Devious Design

Today, as I was working on my print design tech quiz, I was removed from class and taken to a room filled with Russian journalists, all speaking Russian, of course. They wanted to know about college journalism in the US and how it covered/affected the recent election of Barack Obama (Hurray!). However, after a few questions about the election, it morphed into an interrogation, and I was trying desperately to defend my own journalistic experiences and education. It was a little frightening, and I wound up offending someone (I don’t know who he is or why he was there) who used to work for the Daily Nebraskan. Whoops. I said the Creightonian had better opportunities for students to have a bigger role on staff and implement changes in the paper because it’s smaller than UNL’s publication. I also mentioned how, though I’m biased, I like the Creightonian better than Lincoln’s paper.  Then he made a snide comment about how the Creightonian is a mere weekly, so I figure we’re even.

Anyway, back to the Russians.

Apparently journalism students in Russia get “on-the-job” training after their first year in college.  The Russian journalists seemed surprised by the fact that at Creighton most students don’t get jobs or internships until their junior or senior year.  At that point, I was very glad that I could at least say I have a job with a major local publication even though I haven’t had an internship yet (because it’s currently the fall semester of my sophomore year – I have plenty of time).  Then the head of the department piped in with all the PR for Creighton, emphasising how CU journalism students get a converged educational experience and lots of opportunities for internships. Then she brought up how Creighton presented a session at the National College Media Convention last week.  I then notified her that I was one of the students who went to KC and said my two to three sentences during the presentation.  So I got to explain to the Russians a little bit about our CMS and the culture change issues that come with an American college newspaper’s transition to online media. Exciting stuff. Shortly after that, Ellis and I excused ourselves from the interview so we could get back to class.  I was disappointed that I missed the day on Final Cut Pro because I’ve never used the program before.  Video is pretty much the only type of media I haven’t really tried to do yet.  So hopefully I’m not too far behind for next week.