5/10/01
NEW ONLINE MAGAZINE BY AU STUDENTS FEATURES STATE'S CULTURE
AUBURN -- A new magazine written and designed by Auburn University journalism students and faculty has debuted online and it features stories on Alabama's unique culture.
Expressions: Accents of Alabama will be an annual web magazine produced by AU journalism students in advanced publication design, say Nan Fairley, associate professor of journalism who taught the course.
Fairley said the goal of the inaugural issue was to educate AU journalism students in this new media and to interest readers in stories that have a unique flair.
"The magazine aims to take readers off the beaten path to explore aspects of Alabama culture ranging from rural architecture to sweet tea," she said."This first issue has a wide range of stories focusing on Alabama's culture."
The stories were written by students in Fairley's feature writing class and by students taking an advanced reporting class taught by Judith Sheppard, an associate professor of journalism. Sheppard also wrote some material included in the online magazine.
As important as the stories is teaching future journalists the details of writing for a new type of media, Fairley said. "This is our first effort at bringing in new media education to our curriculum. Students had to learn the difference in writing for traditional media versus writing for the web."
Josh Wyckoff of Fairhope, a senior journalism major who will graduate Saturday, May 12, was the web designer in the class and worked primarily on getting the magazine on line.
"Professor Fairley and I got together last semester and she mentioned the class to me," said Wyckoff. "My job was to take the ideas from the other students and incorporate them into the look of the magazine design."
Wyckoff created the template for the page design, taught other students about web design and wrote the HTML codes needed to get the magazine on the Internet.
"The class was completely different from any class I'd had before," he said. "It was a lot more hands-on and we produced a real project in the end rather than learning about how to do it."
Highlighted in this magazine are a series of stories on the city of Tuskegee and the people who have made it famous, as well as several stories on Monroeville, the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird and its author Harper Lee.
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