Today I attended a lecture by interactive multimedia wiz Rich Beckman, Professor at the UNC School of Journalism. Though my blood was close to boiling during his talk, I now feel a pleasant sense of relief. I now can confidently remove the J-school from my list of prospective graduate programs.

Beckman does things with documentary that I dream about being able to do. When I think of "interactive multimedia documentary," I think of his and his students' work. His sites go beyond simple slideshows into documentary pieces that truly utilize the interactivity of the web. See The Ancient Way or his Special Olympics 2007 site, in which "infographics, 3D models and maps" are interwoven with multimedia stories about every single athlete that participated. No one disputes that Beckman wrote the book on what he does.

However, Beckman isn't interested in seeing this kind of digital storytelling used by anybody but highly trained journalists. At least he seemed to insinuate as much in his lecture, so during the Q & A section I brought it up. I said that his brand of digital storytelling had enormous potential for community development if disadvantaged people could tell their own stories (rather than having them told by someone else). I asked, "Do you see these technologies moving to a place where that can happen, and what are the challenges?" Beckman made it explicit: "You need trained reporters, you need trained programmers, you need good editors." With all due respect, Professor, bullshit.

This seems to me the same kind of resistance that traditional journalism exhibits towards blogs. Sooner or later, people will be making interactive multimedia wikumentaries by the bucketful, and the longer stalwarts like the J-school deny that reality, the more irrelevant their students will become. Or, at the very least, they will not be prepared to respond to this question: why would someone let a journalist tell their story when s/he could tell it him/herself?

Now, I'm not saying JOMC's Visual Communication program doesn't have any merit. After all, I considered the program myself, just to get the chops. But there will be a place for multimedia journalism and there will be a place for multimedia populism. The fact that Beckman didn't acknowledge that seems sad indeed.

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