Abstract
Daniel Reimold’s book is not your typical textbook for teaching journalism. Reimold recognized that when he states on his blog, http://collegemediamatters.com (November 13, 2013), that he is compiling a list. He hopes to gather on his blog a million story ideas (“. . .fun digital story ideas fountain”) from professionals and others to inspire student journalists. His goal, specifically, is “. . . to localize, adapt and reinvent a range of stories—quirky and mainstream, text-based and visual, interactive and investigatory,” and to provide a “barebones blueprint” for writing them.
This, he says, is also the goal of his book. The blog story ideas fountain will keep the generation of story ideas “fresh” and up to date.
Reimold is an assistant professor of journalism and a student newspaper advisor at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. In addition, he is the “College Beat” columnist for USA Today College and a contributor for Poynter, PBS MediaShift, and The Huffington Post. He is the author of the book Sex and the University: Celebrity, Controversy, and a Student Journalism Revolution published in 2010 by Rutgers University Press.
Journalism of Ideas is a valuable guidebook for college-level student journalists. It is packed full of quotations, anecdotes, and words of wisdom that a student might receive from a sage advisor or mentor. The reader of this book, however, can through this one source tap into hundreds of perspectives and pieces of advice from journalism professionals, educators, college student peers, and others. Readers are assumed to be college students involved in campus publications. A student journalist could certainly benefit from this practical book for generating story ideas and for apprenticeship-like support.
From a teaching perspective, instructors who teach beginning-level reporting classes or courses for preparing high school and college-level publication advisors will find this book to be useful for teaching basic reporting, as well as journalism 2.0 techniques. Chapters 1 and 2 set the stage for the remainder of the book by defining the role of the journalist as storyteller and defining the “WOW” story. According to Reimold, a WOW story “possesses all or most of the following buzzwords”—Innovative, Impacting, Accurate, Timely, Interesting, Fresh, Objective, Informative, and Concrete (p. 6). Nearly all of the twenty chapters of Journalism of Ideas follow the same format that includes teaching aids, such as “Assignment Alerts” (i.e. suggested assignments) and “Ideas, Online” (i.e. online exercises). Throughout the book, the author shares Internet links to online information and websites. The chapter headings are indicative of the content within each, such as “Location, Location, Location,” “Data Journalism,” “Building a Beat,” and “Digital and Mobile Story Mining.”
Journalism of Ideas is written in an informal, often conversational tone. This style is sometimes successful and sometimes not. For example, the chapter titled “Trendy Ideas” seems to beg the obvious, including its grouping of popular, vanishing, alternative, and routine ideas. This chapter, like others in the book, does not examine theoretical explanations of social ideas or actions, but rather focuses on informal “spot interviewing” and explorations of what those using social media are doing or saying.
One of the chapters for which the writing and format style is effective is on “Criminal Ideas.” In this chapter, several techniques are used, including brief interviews with field experts. One interview involved a crime reporter from a city newspaper who responds succinctly to questions on the essential characteristics of crime and courts reporting, and another involved Sara Ganim, the crime reporter with the Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, who broke the Penn State sex scandal (pp. 91–93). Cases of crime-reporting stories and techniques from several college and university newspapers are also covered, including the use of some journalism 2.0 techniques. This book’s chapters could be used to jumpstart classroom discussions and critical examination of stories for constructive teaching and learning.
Two of the longest and most useful chapters come at the end of the book, chapter 19 “Field Notes” (pp. 233–301) and chapter 20 “The Sales Pitch” (pp. 302–331). Reimold, suggests that readers of chapter 19 should see this as “the first major chunk of a journalism textbook in which students play a huge role in teaching themselves” (p. 234). “Field Notes” are basically scores of prime story ideas selected to get the creative juices of other student journalists flowing, stories that have been published in college newspapers. These inspiring “Notes,” written by top-notch writers after each item, offer suggestions for story assignments and guidance. Chapter 20, “The Sales Pitch,” advises students on how to apply good selling methods that will persuade editors to publish their stories. “The Sales Pitch” is written in short vignettes and issues lists of suggestions. For example, Reimold has “Top 20 Things to Include in Your Brag Notebook” and a list of what to include in an online portfolio, along with ten portfolio websites as examples.
Journalism of Ideas: Brainstorming, Developing, and Selling Stories in the Digital Age might be a suitable choice for some instructors looking for a popularly written alternative to the traditional textbook. Research for the book is substantiated with a twenty-two-page bibliography and citations for each chapter.