University of Miami

Knight Chair in Visual Journalism

Rich Beckman

Biography

Rich Beckman began his career as a photojournalist and is now recognized as one of the country’s foremost ‘new media journalism’ educators of our time. As a photojournalist, he specializes in environmental journalism, working extensively with endangered predators in Alaska and Africa. As a producer, he has led teams that have won many of the most prestigious multimedia prizes in the world including a Pirelli INTERNETional Award for Educational Media, and multimedia storytelling awards from the Online News Association, the National Press Photographers Association, The Society for News Design, Horizon and the Pictures of the Year International competition.

Beckman spent 29 years teaching and leading new and visual media projects at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he served as the James L. Knight Distinguished Professor. During that time he served two terms on the Faculty Council; won the Tanner and David Brinkley awards, in recognition of excellence in undergraduate teaching; was a Fulbright Senior Scholar in South Africa and Spain; and served as a charter member of the UNC-CH Academy of Distinguished Teaching Scholars and Carolina Speakers. He held the Julian Sheer Term Professorship given for overall excellence in teaching, research and service. He has twice been chairman of divisions within the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

He has taught Summer School Study Abroad courses in seven countries, led alumni tours in Alaska and Africa, been a visiting professor in South Africa and has a permanent faculty appointment as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of the Andes in Santiago, Chile. He has successfully implemented ambitious multimedia projects in Spain, Chile, China, South Africa, and Peru.

Portions of this biography were derived from the webpage of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, <http://www.jomc.unc.edu/faculty/richard_beckman.htm>

Grant Background

The Chair in Visual Journalism will lead the Knight Center for International Media in maintaining a cutting-edge relationship to the developing professions of visual journalism by fostering projects and experiments that will incubate new techniques of visual and interactive reporting and storytelling. During the chair’s five- to seven-year term, s/he will work closely with center staff on its projects, bringing international attention to the center’s work through participation in conferences and seminars and by publishing and disseminating the results of work done at the center. (2007)

Recent Activities

• Knight Chair Rich Beckman is directing The International Multimedia Workshops for Ethical Reporting on the World’s Most Under-Reported Issues. Reporting on this project is being generated by establishing partnerships with universities and colleges worldwide to create multimedia content on progress and well-being in communities around the world. Two workshops were held in 2009, the first in Hong Kong for Asian journalism professors and the second in South Africa for African journalism professors. Participants make a written commitment to contribute multimedia stories from their own classrooms over the next two years. During the first phase of the project (2009-11), the stories are focusing on poverty, environment, migration and gender equity.
• Prof. Beckman and his students launched Multimedia Standards (multimediastandards.org), a web site dedicated to helping journalism professionals, educators and students learn about, improve and participate in the development of cutting edge multimedia storytelling techniques and standards. The site includes audio interviews with leading practitioners, a variety of self-help resources, relevant links and an area for publishing and critiquing multimedia.
• In fall 2009, the University of Miami’s School of Communication launched a new graduate program in multimedia journalism and enrolled an initial class of 14 students. The 18-month professional program features tracks for both content gatherers and producers/programmers.
• Prof. Beckman continues to mentor journalists on the theory and practice of visual journalism and multimedia storytelling. He is part of the team training reporters and producers at NPR, one of three multimedia faculty members at the annual Eddie Adams Workshop, and directs the university’s Beyond Bootcamp Workshops each January for 120 journalists from around the world. He helped the school form a partnership with the Online News Association (ONA) to host their annual OJA awards judging and various other events.

Media Innovation

Rich Beckman’s innovations can be best understood by looking at his work in terms of cross-border communication and the empowerment of journalists and the subjects – individuals whose voices are represented in the multimedia stories that Prof. Beckman helps tell. The web sites that he builds with colleagues and students are always at least in the language of the country in question and in English. The network of journalism teachers that is being built for the World Cities project is empowering and enabling journalism teachers, and in turn their students around the world, to relate underreported stories using multimedia tools. Web sites like http://live.specialolympics.org, for example, are not only empowering for the hundreds of young students from around the world who get to work on building the site, but also for all the athletes who get to tell their stories that can be then searched, streamed or downloaded and distributed around the world in the appropriate language.

Filed Under:

Rich Beckman University of Miami Knight Chair in Visual Journalism