Syllabus

JOUR3005: Intro­duc­tion to Online Journalism

Email: marie.shanahan@uconn.edu
Tele­phone: 860–486-8776
Office: Oak Hall 461
Office Hours: Tues­day and Thurs­day 12:30 p.m.-1:30 p.m., and by appointment.

PREREQUISITE JOUR2000W: NEWSWRITING I.

Wel­come to Intro­duc­tion to Online Jour­nal­ism. This course is an exer­cise in mod­ern media-mak­ing, designed to help you under­stand and thrive in the cur­rent media ecosys­tem. It will pro­vide a prac­ti­cal and the­o­ret­i­cal foun­da­tion in dig­i­tal jour­nal­ism, mul­ti­me­dia report­ing, online sto­ry­telling and online pro­duc­tion. The course is intend­ed to build upon the basic jour­nal­ism skills you learned in Newswrit­ing I – writ­ing, report­ing, edit­ing, inter­view­ing, research and use of tech­nol­o­gy. You will learn how to engage online audi­ences whose expec­ta­tions dif­fer from print or broad­cast media.

We will be gath­er­ing news and report­ing it using mobile devices/smartphones, social media and oth­er dig­i­tal tools. We will exper­i­ment with inno­v­a­tive approach­es to sto­ry­telling, assem­bling text, audio, graph­ics, pho­tos, inter­ac­tive ele­ments and video into orig­i­nal mul­ti­me­dia works of journalism. 

Core com­po­nents of dig­i­tal  jour­nal­ism will be pre­sent­ed each week dur­ing class meet­ings, so atten­dance is very impor­tant. Each class will serve as a work­shop on how to cre­ate your own dig­i­tal content.

Out­side of class, there are required week­ly read­ing assign­ments, audio sto­ries, video or news web­sites to eval­u­ate. You will be required to post short response essays (about 150 words) show­ing your under­stand­ing of this mate­r­i­al. All required reading/listening/viewing will be linked from the class Word­Press site or the HUSKYCT site for the course.

You’ll put what you learn into prac­tice through­out the semes­ter by report­ing and pro­duc­ing your own orig­i­nal dig­i­tal news sto­ries. Assign­ments may include craft­ing an email newslet­ter, pro­duc­ing a pho­to sto­ry, cov­er­ing a live news event with social media or cre­at­ing an explana­to­ry sto­ry. All con­tent will be post­ed on our class Word­press site. 

The midterm and final exam­i­na­tions will be admin­is­tered on HuskyCT.

• Mod­ule 1: Intro­duc­tions, Today’s Infor­ma­tion Cli­mate. Basic HTML. Gathering/Verifying online information.
• Mod­ule 2: Mod­ern Media Mak­ing. Dig­i­tal Design. Adding Val­ue. Pho­tog­ra­phy and Image Edit­ing. Midterm.
• Mod­ule 3: Copy­right and Fair Use in the Dig­i­tal Age. Ethics. Data Jour­nal­ism and Data Visu­al­iza­tion. Audio Production. 
• Mod­ule 4: Met­rics. Cov­er­ing Live News. Social Media. Aggregation.
• Mod­ule 5: Sto­ry­board­ing. Engag­ing audi­ences and build­ing com­mu­ni­ty. Explana­to­ry sto­ry project.
• Mod­ule 6: Rep­u­ta­tion. How to pay for jour­nal­ism. Mod­ern jobs for jour­nal­ists. Final Exam.

 

REQUIRED TEXT

Brig­gs, Mark. Jour­nal­ism Next: A Prac­ti­cal Guide to Dig­i­tal Report­ing and Pub­lish­ing. 2nd ed. CQ Press, 2013.

The Asso­ci­at­ed Press Style­book and Brief­ing on Media Law by Asso­ci­at­ed Press, Basic Books, lat­est edition.

FREE SOFTWARE ACCOUNTS

You will also need to sign up for free accounts on:

Google — gmail not Huskymail)
WordPress.com
Face­book
Twit­ter
Infogr.am
Bit.ly
Stori­fy
Scribd
Sound­Cloud

 LEARNING OBJECTIVES

• Rec­og­nize the dif­fer­ence between pro­duc­ing news for tra­di­tion­al, lin­ear media such as print and broad­cast forms and cre­at­ing news for dig­i­tal audi­ences who may access infor­ma­tion through a desk­top com­put­er, tablet, mobile phone or oth­er dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tion device.

• Ana­lyze how audi­ences com­pre­hend tex­tu­al and visu­al infor­ma­tion online rel­a­tive to tra­di­tion­al media.

• Learn fun­da­men­tals of spe­cif­ic tools used in the pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of online news – basic HTML, Pho­to­shop, audio edit­ing, and social media.

• How to inte­grate text, images, audio and video on a web page, using a con­tent man­age­ment system.

• Report, com­pose and pro­duce a diverse set of news sto­ries that exploit the mul­ti­me­dia dimen­sions of the online space to give the audi­ence thor­ough under­stand­ing of the sub­ject that spurs engage­ment and participation.

• How to find and eval­u­ate infor­ma­tion using online sources, includ­ing social media.

• How to con­duct your­self pro­fes­sion­al­ly as a jour­nal­ist using email, social media and oth­er com­mu­ni­ca­tion methods.

 

ATTENDANCE/PARTICIPATION

This is a chal­leng­ing course that moves quick­ly. Class par­tic­i­pa­tion is REQUIRED to receive a pass­ing grade in this course. Your suc­cess in this class requires thought­ful par­tic­i­pa­tion and the com­ple­tion of all read­ings and assign­ments. Each stu­dent is expect­ed to attend every class meet­ing, to be on time, to have read com­plete­ly and with care all assign­ments, and to engage active­ly and intel­li­gent­ly in discussions.

Class par­tic­i­pa­tion can include shar­ing and dis­cussing exam­ples of inter­est­ing online works of jour­nal­ism on the class blog, on the JOUR3005 Face­book group, or on Twit­ter with the hash­tag #J3005.

All in-class work is grad­ed, and grades are post­ed on HuskyCT, so if you don’t attend class reg­u­lar­ly, it will reflect in your grade. Dead­lines are not flex­i­ble.  The assign­ments are due by start of class with­out excep­tion unless spe­cif­ic arrange­ments have made based on an excep­tion­al circumstance. 

If a stu­dent must miss a class due to ill­ness, emer­gency or reli­gious obser­vance, the stu­dent must pro­vide instruc­tor with PRIOR writ­ten notice of absence. Email is accept­able. With­out pri­or writ­ten notice, the stu­dent will receive an unex­cused absence and points will be deduct­ed from final course grade. It is the stu­den­t’s respon­si­bil­i­ty to take the ini­tia­tive to make up missed work by the next class meeting.

Stu­dents who must to miss class due to extracur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ties, such as schol­ar­ly pre­sen­ta­tions, per­form­ing arts and inter­col­le­giate sports, are also required to inform their instruc­tor in writ­ing PRIOR to the antic­i­pat­ed absence and take the ini­tia­tive to make up missed work by the next class meeting. 

SCHEDULE

This class will be held for 14 weeks from Tues­day, August 26, 2014 through Thurs­day, Decem­ber 4, 2014. The midterm exam­i­na­tion will take place on Thurs­day, Octo­ber 2, 2014. No class­es will be held Novem­ber 24–28, 2014. Enjoy your Thanks­giv­ing break. Final exam­i­na­tions take place Decem­ber 7–13, 2014. Exact date and time TBD.

RESPONSE ESSAYS, CLASS BLOG

All class­work will be post­ed on a shared class blog. Stu­dents are expect­ed to keep up with assigned read­ings, and post assign­ments and com­ments to the blog or on Face­book to gain expe­ri­ence par­tic­i­pat­ing in online con­ver­sa­tions and pro­duc­ing con­tent online. Dis­cus­sion ques­tions will be pro­vid­ed when response posts are required. Stu­dents are expect­ed to respond in an orig­i­nal blog post (150 words or so), inte­grat­ing the ideas pre­sent­ed in the read­ings, lec­tures, their own expe­ri­ence and inde­pen­dent research. Use quotes, cita­tions and hyper­links to sup­port ideas.

Spelling, gram­mar and style count. This is a jour­nal­ism class and stu­dents should make the most of all writ­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties. Writ­ing should fol­low AP Style.

Con­sid­er the blog to be a pub­lic research jour­nal. Stu­dents’ writ­ing will be open to the rest of the class. This is delib­er­ate, so col­lec­tive­ly we can learn from each other.

Stu­dents should not post any per­son­al infor­ma­tion that they do not want made pub­lic. All posts are time-stamped and logged.

Stu­dents are also expect­ed to keep up with the news. For online con­ver­sa­tions to be suc­cess­ful, stu­dents should read what oth­ers have writ­ten, and engage and respond with thought­ful com­ments. UConn jour­nal­ism stu­dents are prepar­ing for a pro­fes­sion in which dead­lines are absolute, so late work is not accept­ed. HOWEVER, REVISIONS ARE ACCEPTED. Stu­dents are strong­ly encour­aged to revise/resubmit assign­ments after edit­ing by instruc­tor for addi­tion­al points.

ONLINE STORY PACKAGES

STORY PACKAGE ASSIGNMENTS

Pho­to Gallery.

Data.

Live news package.

Explana­to­ry story.

Sto­ry pack­ages will be eval­u­at­ed for:

Head­line — Key­word-filled, search engine opti­mized, author­i­ta­tive and/or creative

Orga­ni­za­tion – Intu­itive lay­out. Text for­mat­ted for ease of read­ing. Easy to nav­i­gate. Visu­al center.

Writ­ing – Clear, fol­lows AP style, jour­nal­is­tic, engag­ing, accu­rate, fair and objec­tive. No spelling or gram­mat­i­cal errors. Does not pla­gia­rize oth­ers’ work. “Writ­ing” includes the cap­tions for pho­tographs and graph­ics. Include plen­ty of attri­bu­tion. Response essays are expect­ed to include your opin­ion. As a rule in this class, sto­ry pack­ages SHOULD NOT include your per­son­al opin­ion on the top­ic. For all sto­ry pack­ages, inter­view sources and leave your­self out of it. ’

Reporting/Credibility – The most impor­tant cat­e­go­ry. Each and every sto­ry must have at least 3 cred­i­ble, pri­ma­ry sources – NO EXCEPTIONS. Attri­bu­tion for all facts is required. Includes prop­er­ly sourced quotes and cred­it infor­ma­tion for images, graph­ics. Hyper­link to source material/additional infor­ma­tion when appro­pri­ate. Date your work.

Mul­ti­me­dia – Every post on our class blog should include hyper­links and at least one image with cap­tion and cred­it. The web is a visu­al medi­um. Images are essen­tial. You must pro­vide cred­it for all images — pho­tos or graph­ics. DO NOT STEAL IMAGES FROM OTHER WEBSITES. No copy­right infringe­ment allowed. Oth­er required mul­ti­me­dia ele­ments will be indi­cat­ed on each assign­ment by instruc­tor. Types may include inter­ac­tive maps, polls, com­ments, tweets, inter­ac­tive graph­ics, search­able data­bas­es, aggre­gat­ed con­tent, pho­to gal­leries, PDFs, audio or video.

Social Media – As direct­ed, pro­mote your sto­ry on our class Face­book group and/or on Twit­ter using the hash­tag #J3005. Encour­age par­tic­i­pa­tion, com­ments and shar­ing through social media.

UCONN JOURNALISM DEPARTMENT GRADING STANDARDS

 A — No fac­tu­al errors; a first-rate lead; no major mechan­i­cal errors, sound struc­ture, orga­ni­za­tion, through­out; thor­ough cov­er­age of the sto­ry sub­ject; excel­lent writ­ing through­out — in oth­er words, of pub­lish­able qual­i­ty as is.

B — No seri­ous fac­tu­al errors; an accept­able lead; accept­able sto­ry struc­ture, orga­ni­za­tion; very few mechan­i­cal errors; thor­ough cov­er­age of the sto­ry sub­ject; clear, con­cise writ­ing. Could be pub­lished with minor copy editing.

C — No seri­ous fac­tu­al errors; an accept­able lead; accept­able sto­ry struc­ture, orga­ni­za­tion; few mechan­i­cal errors; ade­quate cov­er­age of the sto­ry sub­ject. Could be pub­lished with aver­age copy editing.

D — Minor, slop­py fac­tu­al errors; weak lead; poor sto­ry struc­ture, orga­ni­za­tion; sev­er­al mechan­i­cal errors; inad­e­quate cov­er­age of sto­ry sub­ject; unclear, fog­gy writ­ing — could not be pub­lished with­out sub­stan­tial copy edit­ing or rewriting.

F — Major fac­tu­al errors includ­ing mis­spelled names; pla­gia­rism, missed dead­line; unac­cept­able lead; unac­cept­able sto­ry struc­ture, orga­ni­za­tion; omis­sion of impor­tant infor­ma­tion; numer­ous mechan­i­cal errors — the kind of errors that would cause the sto­ry to be returned to the reporter for a sec­ond effort.

 

COMMITTMENT TO DIVERSITY

The UConn Jour­nal­ism Depart­ment strong­ly encour­ages stu­dents to seek out assign­ment ideas and jour­nal­is­tic expe­ri­ences that will help them hear, under­stand and tell the sto­ries of peo­ple whose cir­cum­stances or back­grounds are unlike their own.

 

FINAL EXAM NOTICE

Final assess­ment week takes place from Decem­ber 7–13, 2014. Stu­dents are required to be avail­able for their exam and/or com­plete an assess­ment dur­ing the time stat­ed in the Reg­is­trar’s Office Sched­ule. If you have a con­flict with this time you must vis­it the Office of Stu­dent Ser­vices and Advo­ca­cy to dis­cuss the pos­si­bil­i­ty of resched­ul­ing this assess­ment. Stu­dents who have a con­flict about which they have or should have had advanced notice (bunched, reli­gious oblig­a­tion, legal/medical appoint­ments…) MUST seek per­mis­sion to resched­ule their assess­ment. Please note that vaca­tions, pre­vi­ous­ly pur­chased tick­ets or reser­va­tions, grad­u­a­tions, social events, mis­read­ing the assess­ment sched­ule and over-sleep­ing are not viable excus­es for miss­ing a final assess­ment. If you think that your sit­u­a­tion war­rants per­mis­sion to resched­ule, please con­tact the Office of Stu­dent Ser­vices and Advo­ca­cy (2nd floor Wilbur Cross) to meet with a staff member.

 

FINAL COURSE GRADES

Final grades for this course will be cal­cu­lat­ed as follows.

In-Class Work­shop Assignments/Response Essays/Participation – 35 percent

Midterm – 10 percent

Sto­ry Pack­ages 1 through 3 – 10 per­cent each

Explana­to­ry Sto­ry Pack­age – 15 percent

Final Exam – 10 percent

 

Final let­ter grades for this course will be deter­mined based on the fol­low­ing scale:

 

ACADEMIC MISCONDUCT and PLAGIARISM

Aca­d­e­m­ic mis­con­duct is dis­hon­est or uneth­i­cal aca­d­e­m­ic behav­ior that includes, but is not lim­it­ed, to mis­rep­re­sent­ing mas­tery in an aca­d­e­m­ic area (e.g., cheat­ing), inten­tion­al­ly or know­ing­ly fail­ing to prop­er­ly cred­it infor­ma­tion, research or ideas to their right­ful orig­i­na­tors or rep­re­sent­ing such infor­ma­tion, research or ideas as your own (e.g., pla­gia­rism). In addi­tion, the UConn Jour­nal­ism Pro­gram is com­mit­ted to the high­est stan­dards of aca­d­e­m­ic and pro­fes­sion­al ethics and expects its stu­dents to adhere to those stan­dards. Stu­dents should be famil­iar with the Soci­ety of Pro­fes­sion­al Jour­nal­ists’ Code of Ethics. Do not pla­gia­rize. Pla­gia­rism involves using anoth­er person’s lan­guage, ideas, pho­tos, graph­ics or oth­er orig­i­nal mate­r­i­al with­out acknowl­edg­ing its source, as if it were one’s own work. Pla­gia­rism is con­sid­ered a breach of jour­nal­is­tic ethics and is detri­men­tal to aca­d­e­m­ic integri­ty and pro­fes­sion­al reputation.

• If you make use of anoth­er person’s ideas, cita­tions must be included.
• If you make use of words and phras­es that are sub­stan­tial­ly sim­i­lar to anoth­er person’s work, you must pro­vide attribution.
• If you make use of phras­es that are iden­ti­cal to anoth­er writer, regard­less of the length of the phrase, you must place these in quo­ta­tions and pro­vide the source of the material.
• If you make use of anoth­er per­son­’s images, pho­tographs or oth­er copy­right­ed graph­i­cal mate­r­i­al, you must pro­vide source attri­bu­tion, includ­ing a hyper­link back to where you obtained the con­tent. You must also obtain writ­ten per­mis­sion to use the content.

Fail­ure to prop­er­ly cite con­sti­tutes aca­d­e­m­ic and jour­nal­is­tic mis­con­duct and will result in a fail­ing grade in the course. Remem­ber: igno­rance is not an accept­able excuse.

- UConn Pla­gia­rism Tutorial

- How to Rec­og­nize Plagiarism

- How to Avoid Plagiarism

 

CLASSROOM MISCONDUCT

UConn is a pro­po­nent of civil­i­ty among mem­bers of its learn­ing com­mu­ni­ty. As such, class­room mis­con­duct includes obstruc­tion or dis­rup­tion of teach­ing, includ­ing late arrival or ear­ly depar­ture; phys­i­cal abuse or safe­ty threats; theft; prop­er­ty dam­age; dis­rup­tive, lewd or obscene con­duct offline or online in class-des­ig­nat­ed spaces or activ­i­ties; fail­ure to turn off cel­lu­lar tele­phones lead­ing to dis­rup­tion of teach­ing; abuse of com­put­er time such as play­ing games or surf­ing the Inter­net on per­son­al elec­tron­ic devices unless instruct­ed to do so; repeat­ed fail­ure to attend class when atten­dance is required; and repeat­ed fail­ure to par­tic­i­pate or respond in class when class par­tic­i­pa­tion is required. Instruc­tors have the right to deny stu­dents access to the class­room if they arrive late and have the right to dis­miss a stu­dent from the class for ear­ly depar­tures that result in disruptions.

 

ACCESSIBILITY

To request accom­mo­da­tions for a dis­abil­i­ty you must first con­tact the Cen­ter for Stu­dents with Dis­abil­i­ties. Locat­ed in room 204 of the Wilbur Cross Build­ing, you can also reach them at 860.486.2020, csd@uconn.edu, or on the web athttp://www.csd.uconn.edu. You must have the appro­pri­ate forms from this office before we can arrange accommodations.