An amazing new media operation at Fudan's journalism school

Rich Beckman

Today I went to the Journalism School of Fudan University to visit the newsroom of the Special Olympics. Rich Beckman of the university of North Carolina, leading the operation, had invited me over. I had already reported about their new media project and braced myself for some surprises, going over.
First surprise happened already outside Fudan University. I was reasonable familiar with the sloppy building that housed the journalism school, including countless other academic institutions at a building opposite the main gate of Fudan University at Handan Road. But the last part of my trip was different from what I was used to and the taxi dropped me in front of an enormous building I had never seen. I had to call for help to show me where to get in, as there were many choices.
One of the students said the building had just opened and she only was it when she returned from her training at the university of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. She was as amazed as I was. "They have studio's huge enough to drive four trucks in," said Rich Beckman.
He was overseeing dozens of mostly unused computers, as his 90 teams were running around in the city to shoot footage, they could use to put online in the evening. For political reasons each district in Shanghai was hosting a different sport of the Special Olympics, creating a logistical nightmare, as the teams had to come back with the material for editing. For the project four editorial rooms at different universities were fully equipped by corporate sponsors. Richman: "In that way no team has to travel longer than an hour to get to their newsroom."
After two days of sporting activities, the process was already running behind on the target, as they wanted to have 7,500 dedicated pages for the sporters online as fast as possible. In tagging technology they wanted to make sure that the right footage shows up at the right page "but it will be almost impossible not to make some mistakes here," according to Beckman.
They decided not to use other tools that belong to the social media, he acknowledged. "When you let people talk back, in all those different languages, you have not way to check who is saying what. Our hosts would not like that."
For the Fudan students this is very much a learning experience. Some went for training to the US, and came back to train their fellow students. Richman and his team arrived ten days before the opening of the Special Olympics to give extra training. "We hope we can leave some experience behind," he says.
On the way back I found the old building of the journalism school back, at the other side of the campus. Much of the road had been restructured, justifying the huge pool of mud Handan Road was for years. Only the at the time promised subways was not there, that had become a tunnel for cars.