News Now: Visual Storytelling in the Digital Age

Debuting in its first edition News Now: Visual Storytelling in the Digital Age helps today’s broadcast journalism students prepare for a mobile, interactive, and highly competitive workplace. The authors, all faculty members of the prestigious Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, bring their real-world expertise to a book designed to be a trusted reference for the next generation of broadcast journalists.

In 2010 the Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communication finished first in the prestigious Hearst Journalism Awards and the Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence Awards. Three of the authors of News Now are all full-time faculty members at the Cronkite School, and all have extensive media experience:

B. William Silcock is an associate professor of broadcast journalism and twice was selected as a Fulbright Scholar. He has pioneered research on global television news culture. His work is published in Journalism Quarterly, the field's most prestigious research journal, and in Journalism Studies, The Journal of Mass Media Ethics and the Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media.

Silcock is also an active television news documentary producer. His work "Backstage At A Presidential debate: The Press, the Pundits and the People" won a 2004 juried faculty Award of Excellence from the Broadcast Education Association and a Gold Award of Excellence from the Houston International Film Festival.

His first textbook, Managing Television News: A Handbook/or Ethical and Effective Television News Producing, was published in spring 2005. A former television anchor, producer and news director, Silcock worked for eight years as the managing editor of news at KOMU-TV (NBC) in Columbia, Mo., while a faculty member at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. 

Mark Lodato is the assistant dean and news director at the Cronkite School. As assistant dean, he supervises the television and radio curriculum, including students participating in the Cronkite NewsWatch, a national award-winning television newscast. The live production is broadcast four times each week across Arizona via PBS. Advanced undergraduate and graduate students cover top stories in the Phoenix area and across the state. While expanding NewsWatch in English and in Spanish, Lodato has launched new partnerships with NBC, Univision, MSNBC and Fox Sports Arizona.

Before joining the Cronkite School, he worked for 16 years as a television reporter and anchor in top markets including Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Phoenix.. During his on-air career Lodato received numerous Emmy and Associated Press awards for his live, investigative and feature reporting. He also served as news director at the University of Maryland's Phillip Merrill College of Journalism

Carol Schwalbe is an associate professor at the University of Arizona,where she teaches magazine writing and online media. While at the Cronkite School, her class produces the award-winning Cronkite Zine http://cronkitczine.asu.edu, showcasing the work of Cronkite students. Her own websites have won Best of Competition and an Award of Excellence from the Broadcast Education Association, as well as several Best of the Web design competitions from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

Her scholarly research interests include the role of images in shaping ideas and public opinion during the early years of the Cold War, ethical concerns about publishing violent images, and the visual framing of the Iraq War on the Internet. She has written chapters for several textbooks on multimedia journalism, diversity, and best practices for online companion sites for the classroom.

Schwalbe came to ASU in 2002 from National Geographic magazine in Washington, D.C., where she was a senior articles editor. She was also a senior articles editor for National Geographic Traveler, a member of the launch team for nationalgeographic.com, and the online producer for the Traveler section of the National Geographic website.  

Susan Green is the broadcast director of the Cronkite News Service at the Cronkite School. She came to ASU in August 2006 from KNXV-TV, where she served as managing editor at the ABC affiliate. In her 21 years as a broadcast professional, Green held positions at stations in Phoenix, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and New York City.

In her first year at ASU, Green helped launch the Cronkite News Service to provide student-produced news stories to television stations across the state. Her students' work has been broadcast in Phoenix, Tucson and Yuma. Green has prepared students for live talkbacks on MSNBC. She is also the faculty adviser for ABC News on Campus, one of only six bureaus in the country where students provide content for on-air as well as online.

Green also serves as assistant news directorof News Watch, the Cronkite School's award­-winning, student-produced newscast. In that role, Green helped the program expand from once a week to four times a week.

Green began her career at an NBC affiliate in Phoenix, moving up from associate producer to executive producer. She has also held executive producer positions at television stations in Washington, D.C. and New York City, and she has worked as a writer and producer at KTTV in Los Angeles. She wrote and produced the Telly Award-nominated A&E documentary "The Man Who Would Be Chief" and received a Peabody Award for WABC's coverage of Sept. 11, 2001.