Evaluations
During the final lecture of each course the students fill out a self-made evaluation form. Completely new for me was teaching blogging within a School. The fourth-year students work in a crossmedia lab, using mostly radio and television, and had to now integrate Campusblog.nl in their schedule.

Some comments:

“Blogging is not scary at all, I can actually do it myself”
–
“It was very cool to hear about Web 3.o, as a person who is interested in Internet-related news I didn’t realise what impact it has”
–
“Blogging is not just for people who like to write about themselves, you can use it as a journalist. I think I’ll start setting up a blog with my work soon”

Freelance theory evaluations
Another course that was new to me is Freelance Theory. As a freelance journalist myself I had to now tell about 60 eager-to-learn third and fourth year journalism students about the mistakes I’ve made, how I survive financially and how I cope with doing my own administration. Luckily I had tons of guests and a great book to help me out. See my previous blog post for more.

Some comments:

“I now know how to get started. I really need to work on my network”
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“I really loved listening to all the anecdotes and practical hints and tips, this was very useful”
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“Before these lectures I didn’t know if I wanted to take the risk and start my own text writing company. I was worried about the financial side and the administration. Thank you for clearing up a lot of the questions I had”
–
“It’s really not that difficult as I thought. You just need to DO it and not just THINK about doing it. I will become a freelancer, I’m 100% sure now”
–

Buzz buzz
I did learn that all students apparently need a break between the hours during every lecture. It was normal for me to keep on going for two hours in a row but today’s climate is more relaxed then it ever was, which means coffee at the start of the class, during the break AND afterwards. Buzz buzz

Tight deadlines
Other students first complain about the tight deadlines I set, only realising later on that it helps them get through the course. Others find the assignments difficult, but challenging a student can be very rewarding. Many students now realise that being a freelance journalist doesn’t just mean having as many holidays as you want.

I hope to continue lecturing at the end of this year and I will obviously take all the comments from the evaluations with me.

How do you set up, create and sustain a professional network? How do you pitch a story, find new clients and keep in touch?

Other topics involve the Chamber of Commerce, paying tax and insurances. The students also make a number of assignments, they have to write a freelancer profile, make a business plan and visit a media cafe to network with fellow journalist.

Its necessary to teach students about being a freelancer in these financially messy times and to be able to survive on their own.

Guest speakers

We also have a number of guest speakers and so far we welcomed: Tom van der Leij, Bas Maliepaard, Sander Zurhake, Herman Spinhof and Ilvy Njiokiktjien who all shared their experiences in the freelance world.

Take a look at the slideshows of the first 2 lectures here and here. Please note that there are in Dutch.

Awesome book

Also, without the ‘Handboek Freelancen 2008-2009‘ from Tijs van den Boomen and Wilma van Hoeflaken it would have been impossible to explain tax and administrative issues. The book is now required for each Freelance student in my class.

Before you realise it’s Friday and a whole week of publishing about fact checking is over. The first year journalism students in Utrecht were taught to work in a Content Management System, to phone journalists and sources to confront them with the facts from the articles, upload their post and multimedia onto the blog and interview guest speakers.

The week combined practical work, journalistic basics (fact checking) and multimedia blogging in one. Some of the findings are remarkable, like press releases that newspapers just copy and paste without checking  (also copying mistakes) and publishing graphics about the US elections with the wrong amount and numbers.

There are also newspaper articles with only one source (while we all know that one source equals no source) and articles were the opinion of the journalist is difficult to distinguish from the facts.

Most students are positive, giving responses like

“I couldn’t believe that we were able to find so many mistakes and write so many blog posts in just one week”

to

“I’m glad that I now understand how a CMS works, I can now post my own blog and that is good to know”

It was a great pleasure to work with about 25 enthusiastic, clever, first year Journalism students and to be able to pass on my practical knowledge and examples. I would also like to thank our guest speakers Miro Lucassen, Patrick Pouw, Peter Olsthoorn, Thom Meens and Patricia de Rijck who were all able to keep the students motivated and answered all their questions patiently.

These practical lectures can easily be adapted into a Master Class in journalism or be part of a media training for beginning journalists. If you need more information you can always e-mail Elvira.

This upcoming week the first-year students of the School for Journalism in Utrecht, The Netherlands, will experience their first Orientation Week.  The students have the whole week to get familiar with a certain journalistic medium, in this case new media.

We have organised a week around the theme ‘Fact Checking’, an important topic to deal with in a journalism department. During the week all students will research Dutch regional and national newspapers and check the facts. Guest lectures by Miro Lucassen, Patrick Pouw, Peter Olsthoorn, Thom Meens and Patricia de Rijck will give the students examples from ‘the real world’.

After one week of research the students will publish the results on our new weblog, factchecking.nl