SMAD Students Learn Reporting in Urbino, Italy

Posted by SMAD July 7, 2011
Story by Staff

A group of 13 JMU students traveled to Urbino, Italy this summer for a multimedia reporting project under the direction of SMAD director Dr. Steve Anderson and assistant professor Ryan Parkhurst. Ten of the thirteen students were SMAD majors. The students developed multimedia journalism stories to document the people and places of Urbino and the Marche Region of Italy.

JMU students had a chance to work with two Pulitzer-prize winning journalists and studied with students from other universities including Iowa State University, Emerson College, Ryerson University, Louisana State University, Westminster College, The University of the South, Nanyang Technological University and The University of British Columbia.

The project is available at: http://2011.inurbino.net.

SMAD students included Grant Bell, Robert Boag, Jared Carpenter, Kerri DeVries, Kristina Elliott, Mojan Nourbakhsh, Steve Odorczyk and Martin Steger. Lindsey Kreger and Madelyn Wigle worked on the production of a magazine. School of Communication Studies students Caroline McGraw, Cara Prodanovich and Greg Wahler also participated in the multimedia reporting project..

Students learned how to navigate as professional journalists in a foreign culture by working with Italian interpreters and crafting ready-to-publish features and news stories. They also studied "survival" Italian to learn about the history and culture of the region.