Car crashes, fires, burglaries. While the news presented by journalists on a daily basis may not be the most optimistic, neither is the news facing journalists. But, that doesn’t stop one professor at Quinnipiac from being optimistic, and spreading it with every class he teaches.
Professor Brett Orzechowski is the online producer for the New Haven Register and is a first-time Quinnipiac professor teaching the reporting for the web course.
Originally from Long Island, Orzechowski attended St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York and since then has worked in North Carolina, New York and has been in New Haven for four years now.
“I’ve known Rich Hanley for a few years, and he said this was a class that needed a professor,” Orzechowski said. “He [Rich Hanley] and Margarita Diaz run one of the premier communications and journalism programs in the North East and it’s a privilege to teach under their guidance.”
Working with the online portion of the newspaper, Orzechowski certainly knows where the future of journalism is headed.
“There is a seismic shift going on in the industry, it’s the best time to be a journalist in America. Newspapers and broadcast industries are in a tough spot right now, and it opens the door for invention and experimentation,” Orzechowski said.
“He has so much enthusiasm and optimism about the world of journalism,” Mary Catherine Dolan, a junior broadcast journalism major, enrolled in Orzechowski’s course said. “I come out of this class learning at least five new things every day.”
In a world surrounded by stress and chaos, the professor aims to stress optimism in his course.
“Everyone reads about doom and gloom in the news. I try to give them one optimistic thought a day,” he said.
Orzechowski also makes sure that his students know that there is still plenty of room for journalists in this ever-changing media.
“Every student realizes that the industry has changed. I want them to leave here knowing that print and broadcast opportunities aren’t completely shut off, but that there is a whole new platform in the web. The industry needs invention. All these tools are so new, and equipped with these tools, they can leave here as multi-media journalists,” he said.
While Orzechowski loves teaching, he spends much of his time working on an outside business venture with two of his colleagues. The project revolves around the concept of “crowdsourcing,” which outsources a task that would normally be performed by one individual, to a large group or “crowd.”
One such project is what Orzechowski referred to as the “democratization of sport”. He and his colleagues are experimenting with the crowdsourcing of business decisions made for a baseball team in Torrington, Conn. In their project, every individual who purchases a $100 season ticket has voting rights and plays a large part in determining the decisions made for the team.
“Hundreds of thousands of people can’t be wrong,” Orzechowski said.
The professor said that this concept also carries over to the world of journalism. There are a good amount of media outlets that are experimenting with crowdsourcing, including Spot.us, which according to the website is an “open source project to pioneer ‘community powered reporting.’” Essentially, it allows practicing journalists to throw out story ideas and gather information by using crowdsourcing.
This practice is exactly the type of thing that Orzechowski tries to incorporate into his teaching style. By using non-traditional tools and technology, he allows his students to explore the changing landscape of media.
“All I can do is teach what I know and teach what’s out there. As gratifying as it is for my students, it’s equally as gratifying for me,” Orzechowski said. “This course is what they make of it, it’s a hands-on experience. If my students are able to master these tools, I’ll be happy over the summer. I would love to come back in the fall!”
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