Who: Professor Alison Bass, Adjunct Professor of Journalism
LTS Liaisons: Sarah Walkowiak and Mark Dellelo
Course: JOUR 109B Digital and Multimedia Journalism, Fall 2008
Overview
Students in Alison Bass’ Digital and Multimedia Journalism course explore how the practice of journalism is shaped by new media and the ever-changing landscape of information technologies. They learn how to use different media platforms to tell stories through writing assignments as well as creating blogs, podcasts and slide shows. Students in this course also examine the political, sociological, legal and ethical issues raised by the Internet and explore how new media technologies are reshaping our culture.
As part of their coursework, each student creates a blog, addressing the question of whether or not blogs constitute original journalism. Other assignments include learning how to fact-check via the Internet, tap into the vast government databases available online, interview a person who has been in the news and write a profile of that person, recording the interviews on digital audio recorders. The students are also assigned to cover a news event, take pictures and then write a news story about the event. Their final assignment is to either edit and post podcasts of their interviews or put together an online slide show of the news events they covered, using digital audio and podcasting tools. The students are also given a taste of basic HTML and introduced to Dreamweaver software.
LTS Staff Sarah Walkowiak, Mark Dellelo and the staff of the Getz multimedia lab supported student use of digital audio software and hardware tools. Additional information resources, office hours and help were provided as needed.
From Alison’s Perspective
Many of the students in this course said they enjoyed the multi-media exercises as well as the training in how to write news stories and profiles. Several students in the course are continuing to post blogs on a regular basis. A number are also experimenting with Twitter and other new media technologies to cover stories and communicate with other journalists.
With the help of the LTS lab, most of the students had no trouble picking up the technology tools they needed to write a blog, or make a podcast and/or slideshow for Web. They are naturals when it comes to new media technologies. Where the students needed the most guidance was in learning how to write a news story and a feature profile. For future courses, I will be requiring first drafts and rewrites of all written assignments in an effort to help them master the craft of news and feature writing.
Contributors: Alison Bass, Sarah Walkowiak
Last Updated: 01/15/2009
