By Dr. Lydia Reeves Timmins, University of Delaware

A new year, and a new kind of class to teach. My university has “winter session”, a whole semester’s worth of class jammed into the month of January. It’s a whole lot of classtime in a short amount of time (well, short in the academic sense. Not in the news sense).

I’m teaching a basic course on Mass Media in Society. So not just news—but all kind of media. A very interesting change from my usual broadcast and journalism roster. One of the biggest differences is in the students. Because it’s a basic course that satisfies a University-wide humanities requirement, any student can take it. I have a finance major, a nutrition major, a marketing major and a number of undecided majors. I’m discovering that much of the knowledge I take for granted about the way media organizations function is NOT common knowledge.

Most students are completely unaware of the vast machine behind the media in general… today one asked why shows get cancelled if people like them. Isn’t the audience the final decision maker when it comes to broadcasts? The answer evolved into a discussion about advertiser control, the Nielsens, and the ultimate reason that media exist in society today. Pretty heady stuff, huh? I don’t ever remember having THAT kind of discussion in the ol’ newsroom.

Designing the course has been fun, I must say. Trolling YouTube for videos that relate to the topic areas is fun, if time-consuming.  So far, though, the best part has been the discussions. I assign a question to discuss in the next day’s class, and the students are responding quite well. Their perceptions of the media in terms of history and future are unique in many cases. Not wrong, just points of view I had not previously considered. Which is what makes teaching college so much fun!