The College of Journalism and Communications is no stranger to deadlines.
The college has until Feb. 1 to meet its deadline to use a $400,000 grant for designing an additional newsroom for Weimer Hall. If it does not meet the deadline, the money will be turned back over to the state. The college would get to keep the other $4 million in state funding to finish contruction.
However, the college expects to meet the deadline and is in negotiations with a firm to design the project, said Randy Wright, executive director of the division of multimedia properties at UF.
The addition will be a “convergence” newsroom, built to provide an environment in which students can dabble in various forms of media including television, radio, print and Web.
“This is really geared toward providing students with a cutting-edge, real-life experience and positioning them for what they’re going to face when they get out,” said Larry Dankner, the WUFT director of programming for the division.
The college will begin looking into existing newsrooms that operate with the same premise, trying to identify what works and what doesn’t so its version will run smoothly from the get-go, Dankner said.
“We don’t have to re-invent the wheel,” he said.
The addition will cost about $4 million to build and furnish.
The plan is to add a second story to the annexation made to Weimer Hall in the early 2000s, Wright said. He expects the construction will begin summer 2011 and finish in 2012.
