A bit about me

Carrie Buchanan. Photo by Katie DeBaun.

After asking my students to write about themselves in their blogs today, I should share a bit about myself. I have already mentioned here that I am Canadian. I spent many years as a journalist, first in Montreal and later in Ottawa, where I worked for 12 years at the Ottawa Citizen, the major newspaper in Canada's capital city.

I came to Cleveland in 2006 so it's been 10 years, and I'm feeling more like a Clevelander every day. It has been so exciting to see the Cavaliers win the NBA title, to see the Republican National Convention coming to town, and to observe Cleveland's renaissance prior to these events, that seems now to be fully flowering.

Montreal is a bicultural city and I grew up as part of the minority English culture in a primarily French province (Quebec). This made me interested in other cultures, and I have been happy to discover a rich diversity in Cleveland, where African-American culture adds so much to the environment of this city. Meanwhile, the city's white community of primarily European immigrants -- many of them from Ireland and many more from Eastern Europe -- have a tremendous set of cultural institutions as well. Between them, Cleveland's diverse communities have produced some of the finest music and arts in the country, including a vibrant theatre scene and one of the world's finest orchestras, as well as a collection of top notch museums. There is also great jazz, blues and gospel music in this city, which I truly enjoy.

I won't run on any more about myself, but encourage anyone who is interested in my work to visit my website at www.carriebuchanan.com.

The class meets

Our course began today and I was delighted to see most of you in the classroom, even some who have internships that we feared might prevent you from attending. Anyone who can't attend a class due to an internship can do it online, but it's always best to be there if you can.

We had a great discussion about the RNC Convention that's coming up next week and some of the meetings of delegate committees already underway, such as those working on the platform and others working on the rules. Some are attempting a Dump Trump move, using the rules, that should be exciting, whether or not it succeeds.

We also discussed how media cover election campaigns and why, as well as the benefits and drawbacks for democracy of the current state of flux in the country's news media. While traditional media -- which we talked most about today -- are struggling, new media are filling some of the gaps in coverage left by staff cuts and declining advertising revenues that leave old media short of money to support the best journalism.

And we had an introduction to the politics of political conventions from Colin Swearingen, the political science professor who is teaching the course with me. This is very interesting to me, as I'm Canadian and did all my journalism there, so I haven't covered a U.S. political convention. The idea of a "contested convention" is not new to me because Canadian conventions are always contested. We don't have primaries the way the U.S. does. I do understand why the primaries were opened to the public in the 1970s, but I always like the drama of a convention where the outcome is unknown. This is one of those, despite the fact that Donald Trump has enough delegates committed to vote him in as the nominee on the first ballot. That's because the aforementioned Dump Trump movement is trying to free up enough of those delegates from their commitment to Trump (by changing the rules) to make that first ballot less certain. We'll see what happens on Thursday and Friday!

I'm truly enjoying sharing this experience with students and also the fact we have several types of majors in our course -- mostly communication and political science, but we also have a graduate student and an adjunct professor whose PhD is in history. And the political science expertise of Dr. Swearingen. I have already learned some new things about how conventions here work and the political forces behind them.

I'm also enjoying reading the introductory blogs by our students, getting to know them a bit and learn about the volunteer experiences and internships many of them are doing. It's going to be fun, sharing their experiences through their blogs and the class discussions.

See you tomorrow!

Canvas site will soon be open

NASA image, public domain

Hi everyone,

Two days till blast-off! Are you ready?

For those taking my course with Dr. Swearingen, the Canvas site for the course will soon be published and you'll get to see what the first week will cover. For those doing the course online this first week, you may be especially anxious to get started, since you're going to be pretty busy during the week doing your internships. I get that.

Because you may be anxious to get going, I'm going to publish the main site, called RNC Convention 2016 (which none of you can see now) before I'm actually finished loading everything.

Remember, there will be three sites for the course, of which each student will see TWO:

1. RNC Convention 2016, which everyone can see, will include lecture slides, readings, and resources that the whole class will use, from both Dr. Swearingen and Dr. Buchanan. It will also include short quizzes for those of you doing the course online, to take after viewing the lectures and doing the readings. This will count toward your Participation grade. Those taking the first week in-class will join in discussions which will test your knowledge the same way, and count toward the Participation grade instead of the quizzes. 
2. CO 295-51 Sp Tp: Rnc Cleveland 2016 is for those of you in the Political Science side of the course. It is already published. 
3. CO 399-51 Sem: Pol Com: Covering RNC 2016 is for those on the Communication side of the course -- whom I will call "the Commies" for short. It will contain all the Assignments and related materials. It has not been published yet but will be by Monday, July 11, because the first Assignment will be your blog, which you need to start right away. BOTH sides of the class will be doing these blogs, so I'll make sure Dr. Swearingen gets the same materials I'm using on my side, to post on the CO 295-51 site. 

For those doing the class online, we are planning to videotape our lectures in the classroom and post them, by the end of each day, on the main RNC Convention 2016 site. If this doesn't work as planned, you will have the slides from those lectures and the readings. But we do hope the lectures upload conveniently and you can access them without any trouble. We'll use a YouTube platform to upload them, which I have done often before, so I don't anticipate major problems. 

That's all for today, folks!

Dr. B

Advance coverage of RNC worth watching and following

Hi everyone. I was just on Twitter and found a Henry Gomez post that illustrates why you should begin following the news about the convention now, rather than waiting.

This is what's known (at least where I came from) as an "advancer" -- a story written before a big event or the beginning of something new, that predicts what might happen or what movement(s) might be building that could influence what happens:

http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2016/07/the_dump_donald_trump_movement.html

The "Dump Trump" movement is a big deal in this story and others that political journalists all over the country are doing this week. So is the possibility that something interesting will come out of the pre-convention meetings on Thursday and Friday (July 14-15) about the Rules -- I use a capital R for that because these are significant, and could either help or hinder Trump in his nomination bid. Here's another advancer that focuses on the Rules:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/your-complete-guide-to-the-coming-anti-trump-rebellion-at-the-rnc/

We will be talking about The Rules in class and reading some. This is why you -- and all journalists and political scientists interested in the convention -- need to do that. Even if they're dull.

Exercise for today: See if you can find the Rules for the 2012 RNC online.

Have a great day!
Dr. B

The RNC 2016 app

I found this in Politico's "Playbook" email today. Playbook is one of the most popular news emails for policy wonks, and I recommend it. It does tend to be written in this boring style, however.

STATE OF THE ART - Republican National Convention app launches: "Users will be able to watch our YouTube 360-degree livestream broadcast of the convention floor ... stay up-to-date on the Convention schedule, find your way around Cleveland and the Convention Complex [including the nearest restroom], check out your favorite speeches, or watch the proceedings live." Screenshot http://bit.ly/29w7nxA ... The app in the Apple Store  http://apple.co/29vRJ5j ... Google Play  http://bit.ly/29jJXXs

If you're a policy wonk, you're used to boring. If you want to be a journalist, get used to boring because it's your job to translate the boring -- when it's significant -- into the interesting.

In the RNC course Dr. Swearingen and I will be teaching next week and the final week of July, some of the readings will be things like the Republican National Convention's rules from previous year(s). "BORING!" you may say. But this year, journalists have to read them because they are definitely NOT going to be boring this year. Fortunately, we have lots of journalists preparing to translate them for us, into something interesting. I want you to watch how they do it.

In this course, we are not only going to make you blog, I'm also going to make my CO students tweet. I am trying to figure out what's a fair number of tweets to expect from you. I have settled on 50, which would be the total expected during the entire three weeks, including the convention week. However, the rule is YOU HAVE TO BE THERE to make tweets that count. That is, you must be in attendance at the event you are tweeting about. And you must use a special course hashtag, #CO399, though you can also use whatever turns out to be the trending hashtag at the time. You will learn how to do this in class, but if you are doing this online, I will also post (I hope) a Jing -- a narrated screenshot video showing you how to do this, in case you don't know how. This will be a first for me. I have just downloaded Jing, which is an app that allows you to do this. I'll post it here when it's done. That might not be today :)

I am considering making it possible for you to "live tweet" as if you were at the actual convention, which will be televised on the app described above. Let me know in the Comments if you think this is a good idea.

Have a great day!
Dr. B

We are finalizing plans for the course

Today, Dr. Swearingen and I met and finalized our plans for the course. We are completing the syllabi -- one for each side of the linked course -- and posting things on the Canvas site, which we haven't published yet.

You will be using two Canvas sites:

• The first one is called RNC CONVENTION 2016, which is the main site that both classes (CO 399 and PO 295). 
• The second is specific to your section: either CO 399-51 Sem Pol Comm: Covering Rnc 2016 OR PO 295 Sp Tp: Rnc Cleveland 2016. 

The main site (highlighted in green above) will use to find out what we're doing each day, the readings for that day, the lecture slides, and -- if you are doing this online -- videos of our lectures and short quizzes you will take after viewing each lecture to ensure that you have absorbed the material. If you are not doing the first week online, you won't have to take the quizzes. Instead, we'll have class discussions and your participation in those will be graded. For the online students, the quizzes will count for your participation grade for that week.

The section site (the CO side, with orange highlighting above, or the PO side, with turquoise highlighting above) will be for Assignments, which are sometimes different between the sections, though some are the same in both sections.

ALL ASSIGNMENTS will be explained in the Assignments tab of the section site for the side of the course you are in. You will file some assignments online, though some will be done elsewhere (for example, the CO side will be live tweeting, and everyone will be blogging -- both those things will be done on other platforms). But for every assignment, click on the Assignment folder, then the specific Assignment name, and inside there you will find these things:

1. an explanation of what's expected 
2. a rubric for grading that you can see ahead of time
3. the deadline for that assignment
4. how you will submit it -- for example, the blog assignment will require a link so we can find your blog on the internet

Each section will have its own Syllabus, but the Schedule attached to it will be identical for the two sections. You will all receive the same lectures and readings, but what you do with them -- the assignments -- will differ sometimes. 

I hope this is clear. If not, feel free to post questions in the Comments section, since it will probably help everyone to get the answers. 

Dr .B

Keep posting daily if you're going to be a blogger

Photo by Erik Drost, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

It's a holiday, I know, but bloggers need to keep posting, preferably daily, to keep their followers happy. At least, this is highly recommended. I'm not sure whether a daily dose of poorly considered verbiage is actually preferable to a less frequent, but well-thought-out epistle. But it's the standard. Anyone who wants to chip in on why this is so, please comment below! 

A blog is supposed to be informal and therefore easier to write than a news story. But if you're a journalist or aspiring to be one, it's essential to be as careful with your blog as you would with a news story. It's a publication. Your reputation depends on the reliability and accuracy of everything that appears under your byline (for those not familiar with this term, it's refers to the "By Carrie Buchanan" (that's my byline) that appears above a news story, or wherever the author's name appears). Your byline is your reputation. Take it seriously. 

We will be learning about verification techniques in class. My favorite resource is online here: The Verification Handbook. Check it out. Note: YOU DO NOT NEED TO PAY FOR IT. There's a button that says "Buy the Book" but the PDF downloads are FREE. It was created a couple of years ago by a group of leading journalists, most of whom write with an international focus. The one I know is Craig Silverman, from Montreal, who also does a column for the Poynter Institute, another great source of journalism training and resources.  Silverman is the founding editor of Buzzfeed Canada and has established a rather good reputation for Buzzfeed in that country, I have learned from another excellent journalism outlet, the podcast Canadaland. The podcast's focus is critiquing Canadian media, and it's one of Canada's most popular podcasts of any kind. 

Nuff about Canada. I will spare you any more, especially on the Fourth of July! I will be sharing many U.S. based resources, including media criticism, on the RNC Convention 2016 course page, which is soon to be published. Stay tuned!

Dr. B

PS (You may notice that I did not post on Friday, July 1. That's Canada's national holiday.)