What newspapers can do to help journalism educators

By Rich Cameron
Cerritos College
Cal-JEC chair

What can California’s newspaper publishers do for journalism education at the high school, community college and university levels?

That’s one of the questions I will have to try to answer in a 10- to 15-minute presentation I will be making to long-time publishers next December when I report on the state of journalism education in the state of California. As chair of the California Journalism Education Coalition I lead a group that is trying to assess that topic for what we hope will be a bi-annual report. I’m already nervous.

As I woke up under the hot streams of my morning shower this morning –that shower time is some of my most creative thinking time– I pondered possible answers to the question of how they could help. Perhaps in the next six months of research that will go into the report we’ll ferret out specific needs, but I found one general answer this morning: Just talk to us.

Cal-JEC meeting notes

I played host today to the quarterly meeting of the California Journalism Education Coalition board. Cal-JEC is that umbrella group that brings together representatives of the main high school, community college, university, other educational and industry groups interested in California journalism education.

Probably the biggest topic discussed over the day was a long-term project to develop regular “State of Journalism Education” reports for industry leaders. The group is working on a report that would cover the high school, community college and university levels and which would be delivered to the California Press Association next December. The hope is that there will be status reports every other year.

Learning WordPress

Courtesy of Leezel Tanglao (See more photos)

About 20 journalists, journalism teachers and journalism students  learned the basics of WordPress blogging software today at workshop held at and co-sponsored by the Cerritos College journalism program and the Los Angeles Chapter of the Asian American Journalism Association.

A second, more advanced workshop will be held at Santa Monica College next Saturday.