Penn State College of Communications comMedia

Jake, an Arts Fest Children's Day participant, gets a basketball painted on his face by Erin, a Mount Nittany Preschool volunteer. This facepainting station was on the West side of the Old Main lawn on Wednesday, July 7, the first day of Arts Fest, which is primarily focused on activities for children.
—Andy Colwell
Junior
VisualJourn/IntegrativeArts

China was the destination this year for students from the College of Communications' second International Reporting class. They spent spring break doing field work in Shanghai. The students produced more than a dozen mutimedia reports, including stories on China's declining adoption rate, the difficulty of educating the country's vast population and even Shanghai's burgeoning nu-metal music scene. The projects are indexed here and a blog created during the overseas trip is here. In 2009 the class reported from Mexico.

More stories -- Closer to campus, many Comm 498D Convergence Journalism reporters focused on students undergoing unique Penn State experiences. Dan Sullivan profiled a color blind athlete, Ashley Mannings introduced us to a Somali student who grew up in a refugee camp and now studies comparative literature in an honors program. Erin Lane visited the weekly GongFu tea ceremony. Two other students traveled to Bellefonte where Mike Felletter profiled a local kayak coach and Evan Trowbridge visited a glass blower and fire company volunteer. Dozens of new stories are indexed in the multimedia projects section of ComMedia.

Portfolios -- Part of ComMedia's mission is to showcase the best portfolios of student work. Some new additions include broadcast reporters Laura Shay and Samantha Smink, photojournalists Meagan Kanagy and Dave Toczek, and writer Natalya Stanko.

Regular reports -- Skim through an archive of daily radio reports by Comm 360 students. The final spring semester Centre County Report television news show is posted here.

 

Broadcast Television

Broadcast television students get hands-on experience at Penn State, learning the skills needed to tell stories from the field and in the studio. Top students produce programming for the Centre County Report and the Big Ten Network.

Broadcast Radio

Broadcast radio students gain practical experience recording in the field and in the studio. More than 200 students staff Internet-based ComRadio, the official radio station of the College of Communications.

Photojournalism

Penn State photojournalism courses are designed to promote critical thinking and develop visual story telling skills in the context of a rapidly changing technological environment.