My online journalism class wrapped up the semester with a three-week group project to put together a collection of stories on a single theme. The group, mostly seniors doing their first HTML project, chose a pragmatic topic: What comes after graduation. They called their publication Beyond the Torch,  a reference to the Tennessee Torchbearer statue that stands in front of the  School of Journalism & Electronic Media.

If I'd been able to get them to hang around a couple of more weeks, they could have linked some of their stories to these end-of-semester offerings elsewhere:

• The News Sentinel just finished a week-long series on the "millenial generation," including a piece on the work expectations of recent graduates...
  
  
• And The New York Times offered new grads -- and their prospective employers -- a cautionary tale about adapting to workplace culture: Interns? No Bloggers Need Apply. ("Interns: No Blogging About Work" is more the point of the story. ") Excerpt:
  

  "Most experienced employees know: Thou Shalt Not Blab About the Company's Internal Business. But the line between what is public and what is private is increasingly fuzzy for young people comfortable with broadcasting nearly every aspect of their lives on the Web, posting pictures of their grandmother at graduation next to one of them eating whipped cream off a woman's belly. For them, shifting from a like-minded audience of peers to an intergenerational, hierarchical workplace can be jarring."

Here's wishing them all the best...

2:58:08 AM  #