Author: By Marie C. Franklin, Globe Staff

Date: SUNDAY, April 4, 1999

Page: L5

Section: Learning

Click on to 1999: Sinatra, 22, is an associate producer at ABCNEWS.com in New York City. She writes Web site news, programs digital graphics, and creates Web links to related news sites.

"I guess you could say St. Michael's dragged me into the on-line world and I ended up loving it," Sinatra said.

In less than a year, Sinatra has exchanged a dorm room in Winooski Park, a tiny hamlet outside Burlington, for a Brooklyn rental; she has pursued her dream to become a journalist, although her first job is in a virtual newsroom rather than at a newspaper; and she has become one of the first successes of new-media education at St. Michael's, a liberal arts college of 1,800 students.

A few years ago, the college's journalism department merged its print, electronic, and public-relations tracks and revamped its curriculum based on new media, said Diane Lynch, department chairwoman. For Sinatra, that meant mastering the new technologies: desktop publishing, the Internet, digital photography, video, and digitized audio.

This new-media education may also be one of the reasons Sinatra landed a $35,000-a-year job with ABCNEWS.com "less than a week after graduation," she said.

"To have graduated from a school so small that is so advanced in new technologies that I could compete for jobs with students from major journalism schools says a lot about the foresight of the professors," she said.

Whether it was foresight or the fear that new technologies would render traditional print journalism programs obsolete, Lynch said her department had no choice but to change. "Academics is supposed to be cutting edge," Lynch said. "Our role is to prepare students for the future, to be ahead of the curve."

Chris Morrill is editor of electronic media at the Hartford Courant newspaper, where St. Michael's journalism major Jim Welch did an internship last summer.

"Jim had strong support from his faculty adviser, and I was very pleased with his work," Morrill said. "I had the sense that the college really cares about their students succeeding in the real world."

Morrill said that journalism schools need "to work particularly hard these days to give students a taste of both traditional newsroom skills and newer Web-based opportunitities. Newspapers are very much in need of creative, smart, young talent, especially in our new media departments."

Steve Klein, former sports editor at USA Today, and a journalism instructor at George Mason University, said that much of the credit for the innovative program at St. Michael's is due to the "energy and the creativity of one person -- Diane Lynch."

Lynch says she has been a "new-media zealot" since she discovered the Internet five years ago. "As soon as I realized the implications that new media had in the marketplace, I realized that we had to slow down, even start all over and rewrite our curriculum so our students could succeed," she said.

The first thing the department did in the 1996-1997 school year -- one in which the college spent $10 million to wire every dormitory and classroom for cable TV and Internet access -- was to upgrade its own equipment. The journalism department invested in 30 new computers, digital photo equipment, software, and scanners "to assure that students had access to technology," said Lynch, who writes on-line columns for the Christian Science Monitor and ABC News.

Next, the department went to the heart of its offerings -- the student-run newspaper, The Defender, and chose a separate student staff to launch an on-line Defender. At first, students were reluctant to go on line for campus news, said senior Jeffrey M. Coburn, student director of new technologies. But two recent on-line stories are changing that, he said. One story gave students a virtual tour of campus housing options as residence staff conducted the annual draw for dormitory rooms.

"We had 360-degree photos of different rooms, a virtual tour to give students an idea of what's available in on-campus housing," Coburn said.

A few weeks earlier, the on-line Defender scooped the print version when it filmed the buzzer shot that gave the college a win in a New England basketball championship. "Since we posted that shot, we've had a lot of positive feedback," Coburn said.

Traditional journalism schools "are playing catch-up with new-media technologies," said David Mindich, assistant professor of journalism at St. Michael's and author of the recently published "Just the Facts: How Objectivity Came to Define American Journalism."

He said many of the larger journalism schools in the country have a high percentage of tenured faculty, many of whom lack training in on-line media. "Every other advertisement I see in professional journals is for a professor with a new-media background," Mindich said.

Mindich said he has no plans to jump ship and leave St. Michaels to teach at a larger institution. His colleagues are all well versed in new media, he said, and since St. Michael's is the only college in Vermont with a journalism program, "we're a mecca for professional journalists from the area who wish to teach part time."

In fact, the Vermont Press Association operates out of offices in the college's journalism department, which is also helping to launch graduates into other good jobs, Mindich said.

"The Internet is the great equalizer because it gives access to news and information no matter where you are," Lynch said. "It's no longer the case that in order to report the news, or learn how journalism works, that you have to live or study at a major university in a big city.

"Geography is no longer a barrier," she said. "A school like ours, even if we're out in the boonies, can successfully compete against larger universities."

Certainly, this is what senior Carrie Ann Simonelli, 21, of Chelsea is hoping. Editor of the print Defender, Simonelli came to St. Michael's aspiring to work for a newspaper after graduation.

"But now, she said, "to be able to put on my resume that I know desktop publishing, Quark Express, Photoshop, and other new media, and that I've developed my own Web page, these are things I think will really help in the job search."

MFRANK;03/16 RMCDON;04/05,22:00 STMIKE04