by Jock Lauterer
Carrboro Commons Adviser

VOTE FOR HER: Outside Carrboro’s Lake Hogan Farms polling place on Tuesday, Jonathan Broun campaigns for his wife, Joal Hall Broun, who is running for re-election to the Carrboro Board of Aldermen.
Cameron Weaver photo

This Election Day 2007 we’re trying something new and different at the old J-School.

Four journalism classes have banded together to produce local election coverage for Orange County and Chapel Hill-Carrboro (or, if you like: Carrboro-Chapel Hill)

It’s up live tonight at www.jomc.unc.edu/elections/2007.

About the Project from the Web site:

“The UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication, in an effort to encourage cooperation across sequences and courses , has brought together four classes during the fall 2007 semester to cover Orange County, Carrboro and Chapel Hill elections. Classes participating in the project include students from Leroy Towns’ political reporting, Jock Lauterer’s community journalism, Ryan Thornburg’s online newswriting and editing, and Andy Bechtel’s copy editing.

Leading up to Election Day, students are covering local issues and races through different media including print, photo, audio and video. On election night, student political journalists will step out of their classroom/newsroom to document the results and reactions to the local 2007 election. But their stories won’t be due the next day. Like professional journalists, students will be expected to work real deadlines and send in their stories for editing and posting to this Web site under the ‘Stories/Features’ tab. Up-to-date blogs will also be kept during election night.

The Election 2007 project allows students to gain knowledge and refine their skills in the traditional form of journalism while also cultivating skills in ‘new’ media such as online news and blogging.”

That’s right; tonight the Carrboro Commons has five student-journalists out there sending in live commentary and photos from Carrboro to Hillsborough. I’ll edit it and post it almost as soon as I get their work. The tech allows us a head-spinning turn-around; and for this old newspaper rat, who cut his teeth on mind-numbing all-night election coverage and lengthy darkroom sessions way before any final result could be printed, this is pretty heady stuff.

Speaking as a teacher, this is the kind of collaborative, real-time, real-life teaching/learning experience that makes a J-school education worth its sheepskin. And I bet I am speaking for the other three instructors when I say, this project is just a lot of fun, too. Thanks to Professor-in-Practice Leroy Towns for dreaming up this initiative in the first place.

Let us know what you think of our our work.