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Hi, I’m Jake Batsell. I’m a journalism professor and
freelance journalist based here in Dallas, Texas.
I spent more than a decade reporting for American newspapers
like The Seattle Times and The Dallas Morning News,
where I also learned to shoot and edit video.
But in 2008, I left newspapers to teach
digital journalism full-time at Southern Methodist University.
I’ve always been fascinated with the news.
Growing up in Prescott, Arizona, I used my
yellow plastic typewriter to start my own paper.
Reading my hometown paper, and combing through
the baseball box scores, nourished my love for sports.
I thought I wanted to be a sports reporter,
so that’s the path I took during my first couple years
at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University.
But I soon found that journalism was a ticket
to a much wider world of news, especially politics.
I interned for newspapers in Washington, D.C., and Zimbabwe,
and later got a master’s degree in government from the University of Texas.
At The Seattle Times, I covered the retail beat,
which took me to Central America for a series of stories
about the global coffee industry.
At The Dallas Morning News, I helped cover the state Legislature
and later became the Metro Desk’s hybrid reporter,
dividing my time between writing and shooting videos.
“OK, so just whenever you’re ready, just please
introduce yourself to us and tell us what’s going on today.”
“All right …”
Here at Southern Methodist University, I tell students in my classes
that it’s an exciting time to be a journalist, because
there have never been so many ways to tell a great story.
Multimedia journalism gives us powerful new tools
to exercise the freedom of the press guaranteed in the First Amendment
of the U.S. Constitution, which is etched on the wall of our journalism complex.
The way we tell stories is changing, but I firmly believe
that good journalism still depends on
the timeless standards of accuracy, fairness and truth.
There’s no shortage of compelling stories in the Dallas/Fort Worth area,
the fourth-largest metropolitan region in the United States
with more than six million people.
Texas is known around the world for big business,
cowboys, longhorns and, of course, American football.
But the Lone Star state and the DFW region
are home to a fast-growing international community,
as well as dozens of historic cultural neighborhoods.
My career as a journalist, and now as a journalism professor,
has shown me that there always is more than one truth.
That’s why I’m so excited to be joining the Video Journalism
Movement – to share some of Texas’ best stories
with viewers like you around the world.
For the Video Journalism Movement, I’m Jake Batsell.