I sent the following to the UA's Journalism department and to the student newspaper's editor. Seems like there must be more students who will be interested in particpating so I'm writing an entry. Pass this information on to anyone you think might be interested. BTW, if you're at the UA, alert others to OSCR's Gear to Go.
Hello from YouTube!
My name is Olivia Ma and I'm the News Manager at YouTube. I'm writing to let you know about YouTube's first journalism program, launching in September. It's a contest for aspiring reporters to tell stories that might not otherwise be told, and we are reaching out to the best journalism programs in the country with the hopes that some of your students and faculty at Arizona's journalism community might get involved.
Technology has fundamentally changed the way we produce, gather, share, and consume news -- and thousands of people from every corner of the globe are using YouTube to share important stories with the rest of the world.
The goal of this project is to provide people with a platform to tell stories that aren't traditionally covered in the mainstream media.
The first assignment is simple - profile someone in your community that you find compelling and think the world should know about. All videos must be three minutes or less, submitted in English, and can only contain original content created by the reporter him or herself.
Please see the pre-announcement video for the contest here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIivlrNoyVU
We'll announce more details on prizing (which includes a very exciting opportunity for any aspiring journalist) and how the contest will be judged in a few weeks, but I wanted to give you a heads-up in advance.
We think this could be a perfect opportunity for your students, and we wanted to see if you had any interest in promoting it to your student body, or even making it an assignment in some of your classes this fall semester. We would love to work with journalism professors to see if there are ways to integrate this into the curriculum.
If you have any questions or would like to discuss, please let me know. I'm eager to get Arizona's journalism community involved, so let's set up a time to chat if you think that makes sense. Or, if there is someone else you think I should be in touch with, I would greatly appreciate that introduction.
Thanks,
Olivia
Olivia Ma
News Manager
YouTube News & Politics
oma@youtube.com
http://youtube.com/citizennews
