Late last week I did something I secretly have always wanted to do since graduating college nearly four years ago: I gave a guest lecture to a college class.

World Web Editor Brianne Pruitt and myself gave a lecture about the brave new world of online journalism to the Jorunalism 101 class at Wenatchee Valley College taught by Andrew Wahl, former World features editor and editorial cartoonist (he also operates a community blog here on wenatcheeworld.com)

I’m not much of a public speaker so I was more than glad to let Brianne do most of the talking, but I chimed in quite a bit and I think I added some good insight to our presentation.

The lecture was more or less Brianne and I sharing our thoughts on social media, newspapers and the future of journalism on the Internet. But the best part of the experience wasn’t standing in front of a classroom filled with college kids talking for an hour. The best part of the experience was all the intelligent and interesting questions the students asked us when we were done talking.

Most of the questions were about the future of the industry (in case you haven’t heard, a lot of newspapers aren’t doing so well right now) and the great part about those questions was that Brianne and I didn’t have the answers.

That was great because, well, at the moment there aren’t any real answers to the questions the students were asking. This is why it’s exciting for me to be a journalist working at a newspaper right now because I get to work on finding solutions to some of the problems that have been plaguing the industry.

Overall, giving a guest lecture was a positive experience and I’d be happy to do it again if I am lucky enough to be asked back. The presentation is below the jump if you’re interested.

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