Live from Comm 439... its Vince Duffy

Today in our Comm 439 class we have a guest lecturer, Vince Duffy. Mr. Duffy is the news director at Michigan Radio. Mr. Duffy has been telling us about his job at Michigan Radio, stressing the importance of multimedia journalism. All of the different mediums that we use to consume our news is converging, meaning the boundaries between different media (E.g. television, radio, and the Web) are quickly disappearing. Having a presence online is becoming increasingly important for all news outlets, and Mr. Duffy gives us examples by showing us Michigan Radio's website and Facebook page. Although there are 540,000 listeners who tune into Michigan radio each morning, that number no longer matters - what matters the most now to Mr. Duffy's bosses are the number of fans on Michigan Radio's Facebook page, which after six months has reached about 3000. What this means for journalists is that we must be able to know how to do everything - to write well, audio, video, photography - in order to be successful in this day and age.