Berkeley J School Goes To Prison

UK Berkeley's Behind Bars

I have a fair amount of experience with Graduate Schools of Journalism

I myself gradated from Columbia's in 1983.

I taught at Columbia for 8 years and then taught at NYU's Journalism school for another 8 years.

I used to tell my students on the first day, 'go to the bursar's office, get your money back, go buy a camera and get on a plane'.

Thus, I was just astonished to see the quallty of work that has come out of Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism in a special program entitled "Behind Bars".

This is a joint program between Berkeley, The University of Nebraska, and City University of London.  The participants spent talking to prisoners and their families, working with the California Dept. of Corrections.  They produced a series of videos you can see on Youtube by searching Berkeley Behind Bars.  I have posted one of about a dozen. They are all stellar.

I have been in this business for nearly 25 years now. I have seen a mountain of crap produced by J-School students. A mountain.

This is not crap. This is better reporting and often filmmaking than you see on the best network news channels in the US or the UK.

Just take a look.

And then look at the number of views.  200. 300.

This should be on Nightline or CBS News.

They have a real command of using video to communicate information and ideas and facts.

And they also have brought a very personal intimacy to what could have been cut and dried reporting - or, if done by a network, a lot of predictable crap and stand ups.

Not a stand up in sight.

Kudos, Berkeley.

Great job, students.

Great job.