“My innovation plan seeks to infuse that passion to the communication department at large – to groom independent, critical thinkers that can serve the greater good of the public. To show people the information that they have the right to know and need to know.”
Part A
Why? We believe today’s students are the vanguard to a free and open society.
How? Journalists challenge worldviews by pursuing accurate and credible information about our world.
What? We provide learning opportunities to grow and to make a difference in the world.
Part B
Reflection
Journalism is a passionate endeavor, maybe even a narcissistic by some views, because so many journalists that I have met are compelled by a deep sense of wanting to know why and how things happen.
Simon Sinek spoke about the Law of Diffusion of Innovation in his TEDtalk and showed the graph of typical patterns of adopters of innovation. It fits the vast majority of journalists I’ve ever worked with or met – the desire to know information first and coupled with the desire to tell everyone about it.
Those are the same ideals I’ve tried to include in my Part A of Why, How and What. It is extremely difficult to confine my description to such a concise definition – especially the Why because there are a litany of reasons why journalism is important – emotional and rational, that I want to tell.
For my Innovation Plan, translating the passion to some colleagues is difficult. Essentially, only one or two colleagues really share a passion for journalism as we are the only journalism instructors and the others, if passionate about what they do, don’t really show any passion about anything at all, certainly not in the classroom – and students seem to be all too happy to tell anyone about it.
Journalism is about taking risks. Risking a second look at the mundane to ask Why. The Six Elements of News taught to every journalist is Who, What, When Where, Why and How – and appear in every story from Watergate to the weather report on your local TV station.
Journalists risk reputation and objectivity every time they ask a person in powerful position a question. It is not uncommon to be scorned or dismissed when asking questions or seeking access to those things the public holds dear. Oftentimes the public does not know what it holds dear until they are told. For example, in what is neither an endorsement or condemnation, the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 also known as the USA Patriot Act of 2001 passed after the tragedy of the 9/11 attacks promoted and codified electronic surveillance domestically and worldwide on an unprecedented scale. Despite concerns voiced by multiple journalistic institutions and a handful of Democratic and Republican congressmen and one senator, the bill passed in House and Senate one day after being introduced.
The bill’s passage was broadcast on C-Span and live on the web. Fast forward more than a decade later with drips and dribbles of releases of classified material, it wasn’t until the mass release of information gathered by Edward Snowden and Wikileaks that public controversy became widespread across large segments of the public domain.
Journalists covering Wikileaks releases were often chided for looking to the web for credible information. While the credibility and intentions of Snowden and Wikileaks is still open to debate, the release of the information it self, is not. The classified information breached a wide-ranging set of security protocols and journalism brought surveillance to the public eye as a matter of discourse still being discussed four years later, albeit it mostly unresolved.
The passion of journalists following seemingly disreputable information brought to light events that are significant and suggestively involved in actions (at taxpayer expense) that are highly questionable and of interest to the public worldwide.
That passion, that drudgery at times, must be cultivated and coached to students in world overwhelmed with information, data and partisan shenanigans.
My innovation plan seeks to infuse that passion to the communication department at large – to groom independent, critical thinkers that can serve the greater good of the public. To show people the information that they have the right to know and need to know.
That passion starts on the local level often in the simple newsroom or classroom of your local high school or nearby college campus. We all should be encouraging young learners to explore and question the world around them, all the time. To question is not some ploy to usurp authority, it is the foundation of a true liberty-giving, freedom loving society. To do anything otherwise betrays the very ideas lain down in the US Constitution and the First Amendment.
So yeah, passion and sense of believing in ideals of something larger than self and to serve a greater purpose is something to be conveyed to our learners and to be revived in our faculty at large. Our new dean and chair are enthusiastic about what our mission should be and, as evidenced by their work, are passionate about journalism as a transformative force working for a greater good.
John Kotter’s Sense of Urgency video accurately highlights the challenge of my innovation plan – the process has been in motion, of sorts, for almost two years. I’m currently “pushing” urgency on several levels explained below.
The plan for the University Press is essentially complete and timeliness essentially my first year of the DLL program. Other than a few logistical processes my innovation plan has been implemented with only minor problems mostly related to coordinating peer teaching components that coincided with the semester calendar. For example the regular semester had already been in progress for about six weeks when I decided to formalize an innovation plan and begin implementing specific processes for the students to engage. In addition, as I have entered and completed successive sessions of the DLL course, I have had additional frameworks identified that I needed to label as part of my innovation plan.
The departmental plan in suspect is going to be a longer endeavor. I approached stakeholders in Fall 2016 and while met with enthusiasm there has not been much progress, other than discussion, to move the plan forward with a sense of urgency I think that is required.
The sense of urgency I compel to others is that we have students graduating every semester and the elements of innovation need to begin sooner because those students are missing out on things they should be learning from a credible program. In addition, I have instituted a career/alumni oriented speaker and mentor program (UPLift October 2016 published on my eportfolio blog) that brings in younger professionals that formerly worked for the UP to talk and visit with current students in formal and informal events on and off campus.
These younger professionals, I think, can relate to our students on their own terms differently than I or older faculty and staff can do at times. While I, and many of my colleagues, have a great rapport with students, students like talking to someone closer to their age and experiences.
This interaction promotes a sense of urgency from outside of campus as well. Additionally, the initiatives of other departments on campus and those of competing institutions provide another sense of urgency. I frequently share details of what colleagues at other institutions or professional organizations and businesses are doing. While journalists are among some of the most competitive folks I’ve ever known, we are a collaborative bunch and often willing to share what we do with others (well, maybe not always our sources) and journalists love to show off.
And this is part of my process and so far my greatest challenge.