Kirsten A. McKinney

This coming May I’ll be lucky enough to travel with the University of Richmond Jazz Combo on their tour through Costa Rica.  As the social media reporter and documenter for the group, I will be video taping the combo’s performances, tweeting out about their adventures, and posting to Facebook and Flickr as we learn and play our way through Costa Rica.

The concept of an embedded reporter is of course familiar to most of us. Instead of blocking the media from telling the story of the Iraq war, the U.S. Government opened the door to reporters who signed contracts limiting what they could report. While I will not be “a reporter attached to a military unit during conflict”, my mission for Costa Rica is similar. The interviews and images gathered on the trip will be used to tell the story of what it’s like being a liberal arts student at the University of Richmond – including the great opportunities that are available, such as traveling with your jazz professor to Costa Rica.

Think of all the tools that available to all of us to tell a story. We have blogs to tell our personal or business stories. Flickr, YouTube, and Vimeo provide the visuals. Twitter is our town crier to attract readers to these images and stories, with Facebook as the community where we share it all. And these are only the popular platforms.

Years ago, before digital cameras were readily available, I sent along disposable cameras with a group of students attending a billiards tournament in California. I asked that they take pictures of the competition, maybe themselves and their surroundings or arm and arm with new friends they’d meet at other institutions. Do I have to tell you what came back from the trip? Dozens of pictures of laughing students in a hotel room surrounded by beer cans. Not exactly helpful in telling the story of the University’s new women’s billiard champion.

If you can now imagine a group of twenty-something music students traveling outside of the country (possibly for the first time) ON TOUR (also, possibly for the first time) you’ll probably understand why they might not be interested in recording their every move. With entirely new cultures and customs to experience, let alone the bonding of a band on the road, “the jazzers” could not possibly be expected to deliver a measured and balanced retelling of the group experience.

And so, I will attempt to document this “beta trip” as a means of creating some best practices for other higher education communications professionals looking for ways to harness new social media platforms as an effective means for telling their university story. Stay tuned.