Though the St. Edward’s University journalism program is small, journalism students at St. Edward’s have two professional journalists as teachers, Tony Plohetski and Michael Barnes  of the Austin American-Statesman. Last week, St. Edward’s hosted a former New York Times journalist, Joseph Treaster.

Treaster discussed what he called “hybrid journalism,” in addition to two online publications he has created.

The Kozmetsky Center at St. Edward’s invited Treaster to campus from Nov. 7-11. The Kozmetsky Center hosts different individuals for one or two weeks at a time, according to Christy Torres, a St. Edward’s student who works as an intern at the Kozmetsky Center.

“Every month has a different theme,” Torres said. “November’s theme was ‘the future of broadcasting and communication in the age of the journalism.” Hybrid journalism requires that journalists be tech-savvy as well as good writers. Treaster said that this type of journalism will decrease the need for newspapers, but it will still be a long time before they disappear completely.

Online newspapers are becoming more popular as the Internet is made more accessible to everyone.

“Space is unlimited with this type of publication,” Treaster said. This means that news can be delivered in entirely new ways than were ever possible.

“You have to take advantage of tools available,” Treaster said of the different types of news programs found online.

As a journalism professor at the University of Miami, Treaster has used the tools available to him there to create two online publications: The Miami Planet and One Water.

The Miami Planet is a journalism project headed by Treaster that is meant to connect journalism students from all over Florida with professional editors and journalists.

Students are assigned an environmental story to cover the length of a semester. After multiple edits from guest professionals, the students deliver a publishable piece of work at the end of the course.

“We took first year journalism students and made publishable work,” Treaster said.

Treaster said he designed The Miami Planet to deliver more insightful and interpretive kinds of reports.

 “I like to call this thing a laboratory,” Treaster said.

The world’s water challenge is the biggest story of our time, according to Treaster. His other journalism project, One Water, presents stories about water challenges around the globe. One Water is more professional than The Miami Planet and is meant to bring together journalists from around the world.

One issue that stems from polluted water, Treaster said, is the bowel infection cholera. The infection strikes quickly and causes a lot of watery diarrhea. Treaster wrote a story highlighting the recent outbreak of cholera in Haiti that was published on the One Water website.

The website features stories that make people real by writing about situations for a person, a village, or a place called microcosmic stories.

“I like writing how people work and live; about their daily lives,” said Treaster.

The One Water website was created alongside the documentary of the same name that was a collaborative project between the School of Communication, College of Engineering and the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami. The movie and online publication can be found at www.onewater.org.