Rethinking Online News: New Ideas, More Content for Tulsa Street Stories

By John Coward
Faculty of Communication

Tulsa Street Stories was started two years ago as an online journalism project of the News Gathering class at The University of Tulsa. The idea for the site was to give TU communication and journalism students a chance to report on a variety of Tulsa topics and to practice some online journalism.

The project got off to a fair start the first year, largely due to my own efforts as the class instructor and on-line guru. I made the story assignments, prodded the students, edited the copy and posted the stories. The result was that the class learned something about the online media world, though our stories and postings were fairly tame (some were too boring) and definitely low tech.

Last fall, the Street Stories project lagged. I wasn't able (or willing) to do all the Internet work, so the postings slowed and then ceased altogether. It wasn't really the students' fault, since I focused on other classwork and let the blog assignments wither away.

This year, however, I'm optimistic that the News Gathering class can reinvigorate the Street Stories site. I have in mind more original stories and some true multimedia content. That means I'm going to work with the students to cover and develop new stories ideas and see if we can't generate more photos, some soundbites and audio content, and even some video.

Also, we will look for ways to link the site to Facebook or MySpace, two sites popular with students. Surely, there are ways to create interesting news and feature stories that other students would like to see.

I want students this year to develop their own stories ideas and supply photos, audio and video. One of them can be the editor as well, giving them good experience and, not incidentally, relieving me of this task.

That's not out of the question for a beginning journalism class, even one taught by a relic of the print age (Yes, I'm that old. I used to write on a manual typewriter. You can see that very machine in my office in Oliphant Room 128. Knock first, please.)

Check back at this site in a few weeks for some new (and exciting) content from Tulsa. Until then, check out the Oklahoma Prison Project, an online journalism project produced earlier this year by the Documentary Workshop class. A link to that site can be found by clicking here.