Better late than never...

Back in April, I made a foolish decision and decided the Tuesday nights of my senior-year fall semester should be spent in a class called Global Media.

Perhaps to some this might not seem like such a big mistake. After all, the course description promised to teach students (myself included) a great deal about media throughout the world and how different social, cultural and political landscapes shape the media. The description read as follows, “An analysis of issues and practices surrounding globalization, regionalization as they relate to media industries, journalism and communication.”

A global tour of the industry in which I hope to someday make a living...What could be so bad about that?

Well, it wasn’t so much that the class in which I had originally enrolled was bad as it was that there was simply a better, and more practical, option. It took me merely 15 minutes into the first Global Media class period, and a quick peek at the University of Miami’s fall semester journalism course offerings, to realize I had made a mistake.

How could I spend the next 15 weeks in a course that would focus largely on ideological and “academic” concepts that would in all likelihood be of no use to me in my chosen career path? Even more so, how could I do so when a course entitled Online Journalism – focusing on the very core of what it is going to take to survive (and thrive) in the print journalism industry – was being offered during the same time period?

I simply couldn’t.

Less than 48 hours after that first Global Media class, I dropped the course from my schedule and added Online Journalism (luckily there was an open spot) to my fall schedule. And now here I am.

While I am likely the last of my classmates to create a course blog, I am sure glad I am doing so. With the many skills I have already attained from previous journalism courses at UM, my freelance work with The Miami Herald, and a summer-long internship with The Observer-Dispatch in Utica, NY, I feel that this course may very well be the means to solidifying my abilities as a journalist in an ever-changing media landscape.

And if not, I’ll just keep working at it until I get there. Better late than never, right?