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USC’s Newsplex, a high-technology “newsroom of the future,” got its first real taste of action March 20 when S.C. ETV trained its cameras on the facility and several USC faculty and staff in a three-hour broadcast entitled “The Nation at War.”
Charles Bierbauer, dean of the College of Mass Communications and Information Studies and a former CNN correspondent, moderated the live program, which showcased the multimedia newsgathering efforts of USC students and faculty members.
“This is a live convergent news broadcast, which means we are gathering information from news sources all over the world—from print, the Web, radio, TV, live call-in, and expert guests,” said Kerry Northrup, an executive with the German-based Ifra Foundation, which provided start-up funding for Newsplex. Northrup is director of Newsplex for its first year of operation.
During the live broadcast, students acted as news resourcers, combing through diverse Web sites and looking for tidbits of breaking news and interesting background facts.
“I found a Web site that had comments from two women who are protesters in Baghdad; they gave an account of what happened during the first hours of missile strikes in the city,” said Emily Bomar, a senior journalism student. Fellow senior Sara Garner came across another site that featured Iraqi citizens commenting about the start of the war.
“It seems like we’ve heard from everyone about the war but the Iraqi people,” she said.
Many of the students had stayed at the Newsplex until 3 a.m. the night before, gathering information for stories and links at a Newsplex Web site that can be viewed at www.scetv.org/war. During Thursday night’s newscast, several faculty members from the School of Journalism and Mass Communications also were posted at Newsplex workstations, gathering multi-media images and compiling information that had been gleaned by the students working at computers behind them.
While faculty members Tim Brown, Van Kornegay, Cecile Holmes, and Scott Farrand worked the computers, two other faculty members—Doug Fisher and Dan Barron—observed the students to measure their performance under the glare of studio lights.
“We’re trying to get a sense of how accurate they can be in gathering news on the fly from diverse sources,” Fisher said. “That’s one of the challenges of convergent media, but it’s important because it can mean better information for journalists and—the bottom line—better information for the public.”
The actual broadcast of the show was only the beginning for the students, Barron said. “We’ll be debriefing them after this is over to evaluate how well they did. One thing we’re seeing already is that they need to do a better job of summarizing the Web stories and giving appropriate citations.”
During the broadcast, several USC faculty members were interviewed by Tom Fowler, public affairs director for S.C. ETV. Harris Pastides, dean of the Arnold School of Public Health, commented on safety precautions for possible terrorist attacks in the United States. Peter Sederberg, dean of the Honors College who has written extensively on terrorism, spoke about the likelihood of a terrorist act on U.S. soil. Jan Love, a religious studies professor, was interviewed about religious implications in the conflict, and history professor Walter Edgar conducted interviews on other aspects of the war.
The Newsplex might be used for another S.C. ETV broadcast on the war with Iraq in the next few weeks.
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From left, Harris Pastides, dean of the Norman J. Arnold School of Public Health at USC, and Peter Sederberg, dean of the USC Honors College, talk with SCETV commentator Tom Fowler. In the background, Charles Bierbauer, dean of the USC College of Mass Communications and Information Studies, reviews his onscreen notes. 
