June 16, 2003
Sybril Bennett to Lead New Journalism Program
Belmont University has hired Sybril M. Bennett, Ph. D., as executive director to lead the university's restructured New Century Journalism program. Belmont is revamping its journalism program to meet the multi-faceted needs of media in the digital era.
Bennett, who holds a Ph.D. in higher education from Vanderbilt University, and comes to Belmont from The News Channel 5 Network in Nashville, where she served as reporter, is the perfect choice to lead the New Century Journalism program, says Thom Storey, associate dean of the School of Social Sciences and chairman of the Department of Media Studies. "Dr. Bennett has the perfect blend of experience, in real-world journalism and in higher education, to help lead Belmont's program."
Bennett has been in the television news business for more than 10 years with behind the scenes positions at CBS in Chicago and ABC in Milwaukee. She served as a tenure-track assistant professor of electronic media journalism at Middle Tennessee State University, as well as Senior Public Affairs Officer and special assistant to the Vice Chancellor for Media Relations at Vanderbilt University.
This fall, Belmont launches its revamped journalism program, designed to prepare journalists to work in the increasingly digital, multi-media, consolidated business world of the media.
"The journalist of the future is going to be someone who is trained from the beginning to be flexible and work in an environment that mixes digital images, sound, text and the Internet as well as traditional newspapers, magazines and television and radio broadcasts," says Storey. "Belmont’s new journalism program will offer a highly competitive undergraduate program for 21st century journalists reporting for the digital age."
The revamped journalism program will provide students with opportunities to use state-of-the-art technology and students will learn how to produce news for print, broadcast and online media.
The need for journalists with multi-media skills was made very apparent by the recent war in Iraq, where broadcast journalists filed stories via satellite video phones that were often made available on the networks' websites, along with additional text reportage, interactive map features, digital photos, and personal reporter weblogs.
Graduates of the program may still specialize in one form of media, but will increasingly need to be knowledgeable in the converging news reporting technologies and businesses, says Storey.
Belmont's New Century Journalism program represents an advancement over the long-traditional university journalism program that offered students either a "print" or “broadcast” track. Storey says the convergence of media technology and media businesses means journalists will need to able to shift across technological dividers - writing stories for print, publishing to the web, working with digital images, and more - and work within journalistic enterprises that aren't restricted to just print or broadcast.
Journalism students will be immersed in the practice of journalism for four years, focusing on print journalism their first year, digital journalism in year two and broadcast journalism in year three. In their fourth year, students will produce a "multi-media thesis."
A key feature of the New Century Journalism Program is a requirement students enroll in a "Journalism Practicum" course each of the first three years. Each practicum will feature instruction from professionals-in-residence and Belmont faculty in a variety of topics.
"The thing that sets this apart from any other program I've seen – and I've run this by a lot of people - is the practicum," says Storey. The practicum will put students on the cutting edge of journalism, learning various aspects of the business and the profession from professionals involved in it. The topic studied will be determined by the changing tools of media. "In two years, we might have someone in here teaching how to write for the cell-phone," says Storey.
The New Century Journalism program launches this fall. Starting in 2004, students enrolled at Belmont and wishing to study journalism will have to apply to be accepted into the journalism program, as they would an honors program or a graduate-level program, and high school students wishing to study journalism at Belmont are going to have to submit a portfolio in order to be considered for admission to the program.
In addition to Dr. Bennett as its executive director, Belmont's New Century Journalism program has attracted several nationally-respected journalists to serve on its board, including:
• Former Nashville broadcast journalist Al Tompkins, now the Broadcast/Online Group Leader at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies.
• Wanda Lloyd, executive director of the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute at Vanderbilt University and a former editor at several newspapers including The Greenville (S.C.) News and USA TODAY.
• Brice Minnigh, Asia-Pacific Bureau Chief for Reuters/Basis Point Business Wire, based in Hong Kong.
• Former Nashville broadcast journalist John Seigenthaler, anchor of the weekend editions of "NBC Nightly News" since July 1999, and anchor of the documentary series "MSNBC Investigates."
• Scott Simon, National Public Radio's Peabody Award-winning correspondent and host of NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday.
Tompkins praises the program for being designed be both "ethics-based and multi-media in tone" and says both of those characteristics are "dead-on to what the professional community demands and what the public needs from journalists."
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