Evolving with Journalism

through Technology

By: Charlee Russell

My relationship with media/

graphic design first be-gan the summer before my senior year of high school, and InDesign was my first suitor. I was an editor of my high school’s yearbook staff that year, and InDesign was being used to put the yearbook together for the first time. I loved clicking around to see what cool things I could do with InDesign, but when our yearbook was done that was the end of me and InDesign’s relation-ship for awhile. When my freshman of college year started, the major I decided on was “Pre-Grady/Public Relations,” so needless to say I never expected to work personally with InDesign again and I didn’t really have the desire to.

Then my lap-top broke

after my first se-mester at UGA. As unfortunate as this situation was it actually turned out bet-

ter than expected. I was able to get the whole Adobe Suite installed on my new laptop for free, but at the time I only planned on maybe using InDe-sign for a project or two. I took ad-vantage of having InDesign right away for a project in my Intro to Pub-lic Relations class, but when I real-ized how much I had forgotten I just ended up making one flyer (Fig. 1.1). After finishing the project on my own at the end of the semester, I knew I was in the right major and couldn’t wait to apply to Grady.

Fig. 1.1

Public Relations was my first

choice major, followed by Advertising then Magazines. I ended up getting into Grady, but not with either of these majors. Instead I was assigned to the “Publi-cation Management” major. I was not fa-miliar with this major at all, but I had got-ten into Grady so I was content and ready to learn more about my new major. Jour-nalism seemed to be the main fo-cus of this major, and even though I liked writing, I did not want to spend se-mester after semester JUST writing. Plus al-most all journalism publications seemed to be going completely

digital if not disap-pearing completely. At one point my grandma said “good luck get-ting a job in journal-ism after college,” and believe me she wasn’t the only one with this attitude. I knew I had to get into the technol-ogy side of journalism to be “competitive” and look good to potential

employers after col-lege.

Pulication Management?

After reading a sheet titled, “What can I do with a major in Publi-

cation Management?”, I was excited to see “layout and design specialist” as one of the entry level positions listed on the sheet (Fig 1.2). After that, I de-cided I wanted to pursue a career af-ter college in the field of layout and design. I was ready to get started and have a “refresher” course on InDesign and any other program they threw my way. Grady only offers a few graphic design courses each semester, and after I found out the Public Relation majors had first priority for this course over anyone else in Grady, I was not happy. My advisor informed me of other ways to get more experience in layout and design and website building. After fail-ing to get into UGA’s New Media Cer-tificate program and having a “layout and design” internship for a semester that involved neither layout nor de-sign, I became worried that I really wouldn’t be able to find a job after col-lege.

Fig. 1.2

I was going into the summer before my senior year of college, and I knew the

time I had left to get experience was running out. I wanted to get hands on experience in InDesign, but I didn’t have any InDesign work samples and all the internships in Ath-ens seemed to require them. My first internship

thankfully led me to a real layout and de-sign internship at Ath-ens Magazine where I became an expert in InDesign and learned other Adobe programs like Illustrator and Photoshop. After this all kinds of doors involv-ing technology seemed

to open up for me. First, I was given a POD for the New Media Production: Website Develop-ment course, that semester I was taking two journalism courses, and I began a layout and design job at the Red & Black. I knew if I couldn’t survive this semester, my fate in jour-nalism was doomed.

Ex. of Red & Black page on next page:Fig. 1.3

Fig. 1.3

My website design

class was more of an “independent learning” process and everything seemed to hap-pen very fast. The skills I had from InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop helped me become quickly familiar with the design aspects of Adobe’s website design programs, Dreamweaver and Flash. This allowed me to spend the major-ity of my time on my websites’ functionality first, and then I could go back and deal with design quickly in the end. I wish I had become more of a expert with both Adobe web design programs, but since they’re both similar to InDesign, click-ing around later on should bring my previous skills back to mind. I decided not to continue in my pursuit of the New Media Certificate, but I’m glad I gained website design experience and an online portfolio to showcase all my work from this class (Fig. 1.4). I am hopeful that the design skills I have in all these Adobe programs will lead me to more job opportunities in digital journalism or the digital corporate world.

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Fig. 1.4: mynmi.net/student/charleerussell/press

My job at the Red & Black worked out perfectly for me. I get paid

to design, while getting experience and more work samples for my portfolio at the same time. I have learned even more about the interworkings of InDe-sign, and I can now say I am an ab-solute expert with the program. I have no desire to work for a newspaper af-ter college, but working with InDesign two-three times a week keeps all the concepts of InDesign fresh in my mind. I wish I worked with Dreamweaver and Flash as much as I worked with InDe-sign. There seems to be the most jobs available now in website design, “ju-nior” website design in particular. I’ve applied for a couple of these positions, but because my experience in web de-sign is pretty limited I don’t think I would be qualified without being taught more about the programs.

My Magazine Writing class was also very beneficial to me. We had a

guest speaker almost every day, but there was one in particular that was the most beneficial to me. Our class attended a session being led by Rebecca Burns, for-mer Editor-In-Chief of Atlanta maga-zine. She told us a lot about where the journalism industry is now digitally, and where she thought it would go in the future. Burns really put things into per-spective when she showed us how digital magazines have become. You can read/view almost any magazine on an IPad Application called, “Zinio Magazine Newsstand & Reader (Fig. 1.5)” today. On iTunes’ website Zinio is described as:

“… the world’s premier high fidelity mobile reading experience, with the best magazines from around the world, in pure digital form. Zinio lets you read and share articles from top titles, buy digital subscriptions or single issues, and manage your library on multiple de-vices.”

At the time, It was unreal looking at this app, and thinking that I could be contributing to this revolutionary digital publishing and marketing industry after college.

Rebecca Burns

Fig. 1.5

Iwas able to talk to Burns at the end of her lecture, so I asked her if I would look bet-

ter to employees than other journalism majors since I have experience with different digital programs. In her response she emphasized how different technologies are being developed ev-eryday and that things are changing at a rap-id pace. She said even by the time I graduate in May, there will probably be a new program magazines are using that everyone has to be taught. She makes a very good point, but I’m glad to know I have background knowledge in layout and design programs along with web design programs. I’m fortunate to be able to “show” what I’ve done in my online portfolio.