Journalism

Spotlight on New Professor

February 24, 2016

David Grewe
Professor David Grewe

 

Students can find the mentorship and resources they need in the latest addition to the Journalism Department tenure track faculty member at California State University, Northridge. David Grewe has allocated his 25 years of prior multimedia and photo editing experience to the photojournalism emphasis program.

 

Teaching classes in visual communication and photojournalism, he wants to enhance the program by offering storytelling skills.

 

“We are blasted with images but we don’t always know what that means. In visual communications you can understand the content producer’s method and explore why certain pictures or videos were made from a content producer’s perspective,” Grewe said.

 

Grewe carries a resume of leading visual journalism and multimedia storytelling lectures from Washington State University, the University of Alabama and Syracuse University. His professional endeavors include stence with New York City and Chicago newspapers. His photography and multimedia have been recognized by the Online News Association, the National Press Photographers Association, film festivals and more.

 

Beyond the classroom, he wants to inspire his students to take advantage of the evolving digital tools at their disposal and seek opportunities in the field.

 

“Maximize your time here,” Grewe said. “I’ve taught at four colleges and you [should] use the faculty as much as you can. Some students just come here and work and go to school.”

 

The opportunity to network and develop a portfolio can only be enhanced when paired with a mentor. In his courses Grewe emphasizes that there is a learning curve to visual storytelling.

 

He wants students to be capable of understanding how these visual stories organize emotion and five shot sequence into a video or printed page, while also recognizing the common elements of still photography and video.

 

Grewe also emphasizes the importance of students applying themselves properly.

 

“[Students] are not getting out and doing internships, knocking on doors, meeting people and exposing themselves to all the possibilities that they have available to them,” He adds.

 

While Grewe acknowledges his traditional nine-to-five career in journalism offered its own rewards, he is pursuing his own passion now in teaching visual storytelling and in his creative and scholarly activities. His current project is called the “Blackfeet Flood Flood: Mobile and Interactive Documentary Shorts,” and centers around the most devastating natural disaster in the state of Montana’s history.

 

“It’s wonderful and painful when you go out and film 10 hours of stuff and you have to edit it all though, but when you see the final 10 or five minutes, you get to see that’s all of your work and your contribution.”

 

For more information on Grewe’s project and access to portfolios, visit: http://davidgrewe.com.

 

— Jenny Seltzer