The School of Communications organized events that encouraged students, faculty and staff to interact with the news.
Some of the activities asked community members to tweet or post photos to Instagram using the hashtag #ElonNewsEngage. All social media activity was curated and posted to www.rebelmouse.com/eloncomm.
The scheduled activities were:
- Put It in Pictures: A Day of News Engagement at Elon – Throughout the day, Elon students, faculty, staff and community members took pictures of how they and others engage with news. The best shots were posted to the School of Communications Facebook page.
- Where’s the News? – Those in attendance at College Coffee stopped by the News Engagement Day table to write down their definitions of “news.”
- News Is …? – How do you define news? Students were stationed outside Moseley Center, the School of Communications and the School of Business to ask students, faculty and staff for their definition of news. Responses from professional journalists, students, faculty and staff, and the Multimedia Journalism class were all captured on video.
- Hear Ye, Hear Ye – At various points throughout the day, students acted as town criers, shouting headlines on campus from student media and professional media organizations.
National News Engagement Day was an initiative of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. The day was programmed to contribute to an informed society and encourage people of all ages to explore news and raise awareness about the importance of being informed.
The official kick-off on Sept. 23 featured remarks about the day’s importance from Brian Williams, anchor of “NBC Nightly News” and the national chair of the School of Communications Advisory Board.
The committee that organized Elon’s efforts included: Colin Donohue (coordinator of student media and instructor in Communications), Anthony Hatcher (associate professor of Communications), Libby Gormley (senior journalism major), Caroline Fernandez (sophomore journalism major), Gary Grumbach (junior journalism major) and Ryan Greene (senior media arts & entertainment major).