A Letter from the Editor:

Thanks for finding your way to Maryland Newsline.

The site launched the week of Jan. 30, 2001, as an effort by the University of Maryland College of Journalism to provide students hands-on opportunities to learn about multimedia reporting, writing, editing and Web production. The site boasts news and features on politics and public policy in Maryland and showcases work from our college's advanced wire service, TV and multimedia news operations. We hope this synergy between the news bureaus will prepare our students for today's newsrooms, which increasingly call on professionals to report or edit for more than one platform.

The online newsmagazine is staffed in spring 2011 by undergraduate and graduate students. Working in the new-media lab in Knight Hall on the College Park, Md., campus, the students will focus on reporting, writing and Web-producing multimedia stories about Maryland that combine original text, photos, audio, video and social media in their storytelling. They will use their news judgment to update the home page and create interactive quizzes and polls, graphics and map mashups for our special reports on major issues.

The site is also stocked with stories reported and written by Capital News Service students who spend a semester honing their beat reporting skills in Washington and Annapolis. These students are increasingly adding multimedia to their storytelling.

And we post the newscasts and some Web-only stories produced by our advanced TV students, who will report and produce packages from the capitals. Their work airs on the campus cable television station, UMTV.

Students in all four of our news bureaus participate in a site blog, send you updates on Twitter and YouTube and write smart Web headlines for stories. And students in each bureau will contribute to The Bay Beat, a site focused on environmental reporting and the Chesapeake Bay.

All four news operations are run and edited by full-time instructor/editors with long careers as professional journalists. We take accuracy and fairness seriously and closely supervise our students.

We expect to update the Web site at least four times a week during the spring semester, which runs from January through late April.

This site builds on the early work of former Associate Dean Christopher Callahan and former broadcast instructor Chet Rhodes, who in spring 1998 co-taught the college's first online journalism lab. Their students built Maryland Newsnet, which Maryland Newsline replaced in 2001.

If you have any questions, suggestions or gripes about this site, please e-mail me at charvey@jmail.umd.edu.

You may also e-mail the other bureau chiefs with questions or story suggestions, or call us on the phone numbers listed in the staff box to the right:

• CNS Washington Bureau Director Adrianne Flynn, at aflynn@jmail.umd.edu

• CNS Annapolis Bureau Director Rafael Lorente, at rlorente@jmail.umd.edu and

• CNS-TV Bureau Director Sue Kopen Katcef.

Staff Box

Who's who at Maryland Newsline and at the college's print and TV news bureaus, spring 2011:

Online Bureau
Director: Chris Harvey
Executive Producer: Sean Mussenden
Phone: 301-314-2696
Student staffers:
Collin Berglund
Maite Fernandez
Alexander Pyles
Madhu Rajaraman
Allie Wilding
Staff Bios
Newsline Alumni page

CNS Washington Bureau Director:
Adrianne Flynn
Phone: 202-628-1677
Student reporters:
Jessica Harper
Steve Kilar
Laura Lee
Andy Marso
Staff Bios

CNS Annapolis Bureau Director: Rafael Lorente
Phone: 410-626-1008 
Student reporters:
Maggie Clark
Kerry Davis
Holly Nunn
David Saleh Rauf
Staff Bios