• Corvallis Gazette-Times, Monday, March 13, 2006 11:30 AM

Want a glimpse of what media executives of the future are studying today? A program that got underway at Oregon State University only three years ago offers a pretty clear picture. New media communications, as the program is called at Oregon State, focuses on storytelling through various media forms--video games, the Internet, television, newspapers, and movies. "New media specialists... anticipate new technology to stay ahead of the market," says a story in the Corvallis (Oregon) Gazette-Times. "Joel Thierstein, a former lawyer and director of OSU's new media communications program, [mentions] multi-sensory television and movie watching, where viewers experience sensations of touch, taste and smell, as just one example of technology not so far down the road." According to Thierstein, there are myriad job opportunities for students in the program. Public relations, advertising, radio broadcasting, television broadcasting, film production, print journalism, and video-game design all rely on mediated communications. Academic programs such as OSU's used to be called simply "journalism" or "communications," but with the advent of the Internet and all the options it opens, a term such as "new media communications" may be a better descriptor for the current multi-platform era.

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