3 Top Florida Papers Extend Content Sharing -- With News Produced by FIU J-School Students

Here ya go, Stasia.

South Florida's three largest daily newspapers are about to announce a new initiative in their three-month-old content-sharing arrangement, the launching of a news service with print and digital articles produced by Florida International University journalism students.

3 Top Florida Papers Extend Content Sharing -- With News Produced by FIU J-School Students

By Mark Fitzgerald

The South Florida News Service will launch in January, Earl Maucker, editor and senior vice president of the South Florida Sun Sentinel, confirmed in an interview Monday.

The news service to be run out of classrooms at FIU's School of Journalism and Mass Communication formalizes even further the news content-sharing arrangement between the Sun Sentinel, The Miami Herald, and The Palm Beach Post that was launched in late August. Under that arrangement, the three dailies can publish stories from each other's print newspaper and online news sites. The content sharing is limited to local news, courts, government affairs, police reports, and entertainment, with investigative series or other enterprise projects not part of the arrangement.

Each newspaper is assigning a professional editor to mentor and work with students, who will have a desk at the newspapers, said Allan Richards, the school's interim associate dean who will oversee FIU's participation in the partnership along with Teresa Ponte, its interim chair of the Department of Journalism and Broadcasting.

"This is going to be much more than an internship," Richards said. "For the students, it will provide not only a whole new level of education, but a whole new level of experience in journalism." And with all of South Florida's newsrooms hit by layoffs, he added, "It not only supplements what the newspaper needs -- it's a great practicum for the students."

The extension to a news service of FIU student journalists was a natural one, Maucker said. All three editors are long-time members of the FIU j-school's Leadership Council, and meet with its dean, faculty, and students on a regular basis. Maucker is the current chairman of the council.

"We already have Sun Sentinel bylines in the Herald, Miami Herald bylines in the Sun Sentinel and the Post, and we (editors) all got together and decided that since we already have this affiliation with FIU, what better way to have new voices reporting?" Maucker said.

"The South Florida News Service will bring in younger journalists, and it would, we believe, energize our own staffs," he added. "All of us have been into pretty aggressive internship programs already, and this would be another way to work with them."

The journalism school is creating two or three classes in multimedia journalism whose students will work on the news service, both producing stories they initiate and taking assignments, Richards said. Each class would have about 20 students, and be taught by the school's teaching veteran journalists Jane Daugherty and Mario Diament.

The news service would be somewhat similar to Medill News Service, which uses graduate journalism students at Northwestern University to produce news articles, but the South Florida service would have a decidedly local news focus, Maucker said. Many of the stories would focus on municipal coverage, FIU's Richards added.

In the joint announcement planned for Tuesday, Maucker, Palm Beach Post Editor John Bartosek and Miami Herald Editor Anders Gyllenhaal said the news service would provide the dailies with "a new approach to covering the community -- in stories, in video, in audio, in both English and Spanish."

"At a time when the news business is evolving every day, we can think of no better partners than the college students who will shape the media of the future," the editors added.

They said in a statement that the news service "will provide FIU students with an unparalleled education in print, video and multimedia journalism and further enhance the SJMC's standing as the powerhouse journalism and mass communication school in Florida."

FIU's Richards said the journalism school has recently been participating in several partnerships with dailies, especially the Herald.

After he and two journalism students returned from a reporting trip about HIV/AIDS in South Africa, students produced in partnership with the Herald a Web-only reality show about a person in Miami living with AIDS. Students have also produced pieces for the Herald's "Sixty Second Profile" series about notable Miamians.

The New York Times Hispanic Student Journalism Institute is also setting up a newsroom at the school next month.

Mark Fitzgerald (mfitzgerald@editorandpublisher.com) is E&P's editor-at-large.

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