Robert Huesca
Trinity University

The purpose of this project is to create materials for the World Wide Web that explain, critique, and showcase inventive examples of journalistic expression tailored for the new electronic environment. To achieve this purpose, I will conduct original research, create new instructional materials, and transfer and adapt existing work to digital formats that can be accessed via the World Wide Web. The material created during this fellowship will support an existing course, Reporting on/for the Internet, and will be incorporated into a submission to the open research competition of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

The advent of the Internet and the exponential growth of the World Wide Web have created new opportunities and daunting challenges for communication professionals and educators. The World Wide Web has expanded the abilities of professionals to access information resources while providing new means of reaching readers, listeners and viewers. Yet the nature of new communication technologies themselves has created challenges and difficulties for practitioners and educators who are trying to understand their implications for theories and practices of information retrieval, organization, and delivery. A review of the existing literature in the field of journalism education and practice indicates that, by and large, neither intellectuals nor professionals have responded to these challenges in a critical, creative, or flexible manner.

Indeed, the introduction and rapid spread of Internet applications to the consumer market have sent academics and professionals scrambling to adapt to these changes in the information environment. Within the area of journalism education and practice, nearly all of the responses to the challenges posed by new communication technologies have called for the mere incorporation of the Internet, World Wide Web, telnet, and other applications into the existing norms and practices of journalism (Garrison, 1995; Huston, 1996; Ketterer, 1997; McGuire, Stilborne, McAdams & Hyatt, 1997; Reddick & King, 1997; Wendland, 1996). That is, for virtually all journalism educators and practitioners, new computer technologies represent tools to be applied to existing reporting and writing practices (see Fredin, 1997, for one of the few exceptions to this trend). Specifically, scholars and practitioners consider the Internet and its related applications as instruments that extend informational boundaries in terms of documentation and human sources that leave the essential mission and mode of journalism unaltered, as noted in Reddick & King (1997): "The more access to information reporters have, the better reporters will be able to fulfill their mission to inform the public about key issues and interests of the day. More access to more information can only lead to better journalism" (p. 4).

While journalism educators and practitioners have approached new communication technologies in an essentially conservative fashion--i.e. as tools to maintain the status quo--numerous scholars in the social sciences and humanities have suggested that these inventions herald fundamental shifts in social relationships, symbolic expression, cognition, and in reality itself (Bolter, 1991; DeKerckhove, 1995; Fredin, 1997; Jones, 1995; Landow, 1997; Mitchell, 1995; Turkle, 1995). That is, much of the research into new communication technologies suggests that conventional practices, such as journalism, at least need to be reconsidered and perhaps reinvented if they are to flourish in the new electronic environment. Of central relevance to this task is the work of various scholars who have focused on the implications of new communication technologies on the theory and practice of writing (Bolter, 1991; Fredin, 1997; Landow, 1997). Each of these authors has focused on the radical break from traditional narrative structures suggested both by the hypertext form and the convergence of audio, video, graphic elements, and written text. Bolter (1991) states the case most strongly, writing, "Today we are living in the late age of print. ...The printed book, therefore, seems destined to move to the margin of our literate culture. ...The shift to the computer will make writing more flexible, but it will also threaten the definitions of good writing" (p. 2). Similarly, the definitions of "good writing" and even conventional practice in journalism will undergo significant alterations due to changes wrought by the development of new communication technologies.

For two semesters (Fall 1996 and Fall 1998) I have taught a class at Trinity University that is driven by the central question, "What is the nature of the journalistic narrative in the new electronic environment?" Students have explored notions of the new journalistic narrative in a practical manner by reporting and writing in ways that reflect some of the ideas introduced in the literature noted above. This project intends to take this work to a higher level by supporting the creation of materials that will assist future explorations of the new journalistic narrative and engage the current scholarship in journalism education.

During the period of support, I will carry out three major activities:

The materials generated from this project will contribute to my teaching and research. In teaching, the materials will be incorporated directly into the course, Reporting on/for the Internet when it is taught in the fall of 1999. The utility of these materials will be evaluated by the productive and creative capability of students taking the course in 1999. Their work will be compared to that of students who took the course prior to the development of online tutorials and critiques. Student evaluations of the materials will also form an important aspect of the overall assessment of the effectiveness of the materials.

In addition to the contributions to teaching, these materials will be incorporated into a research paper that will be submitted to the open competition of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. The aim of developing this research is to have a significant impact on the direction of communication education, especially in applied fields such as journalism, public relations, and advertising. Including these materials in a research competition will add to their overall assessment as they will be examined by three blind reviewers and will be subject to a critical analysis by a panel discussant.

I have taught rudimentary web authoring in the course discussed in this proposal, as well as in two other courses: Alternative Media (Spring 1995) and Web Publishing (Spring 1998). I have knowledge of a number of web authoring programs (Web Weaver, Page Mill, Netscape Gold, Netscape Communicator, Front Page) as well as raw HTML coding. I also am proficient with a number of supporting graphics programs including Photoshop, Canvas, Paint, MacPaint, and Imagemapper. Finally, I am knowledgeable of most Internet applications such as ftp, gopher, telnet, etc.

The university is fully equipped to support this project. The library's Instructional Media Services have several excellent slide and print scanners. The Department of Communication also has a print scanner, a digital still camera, and a digital video editor. From my office I have an ethernet connection to the Internet and to the university's server. My office computer is equipped with all of the necessary software except for Photoshop. Finally, the university is an affiliate with the Communication Institute for Online Scholarship, which will facilitate access to its databases.

Robert Huesca
Department of Communication
Trinity University
Phone: 210-999-8169
Fax: 210-999-8355
rhuesca@trinity.edu