Lab session: Feb 8th

Online Journalism: Lab Session Friday 8th Feb

We have a lab session this Friday and Room A160 is booked.

There are three elements to the class

• Looking at multimedia elements
• Building a multimedia page
• Work on assignments

It is up to you how much time you spend on each of these elements. If you prefer not to work in the lab using City computers then I am happy with that – please drop me an email to let me know where you plan to be.

Introduction to Multimedia

There is an excellent introduction to multimedia journalism from the University of California, Berkeley campus, online at http://journalism.berkeley.edu/multimedia/

The report at
http://multimedia.journalism.berkeley.edu/tutorials/reporting/starttofinish/
will give you a good overview.

And the section on adding multimedia elements is also interesting
http://multimedia.journalism.berkeley.edu/tutorials/webdesign/elements/


Build a page

For the exercise I want you to research and write a story and post it online.

It should include a number of multimedia elements.

You can choose your own topic, but two to consider would be:

The death sentence imposed on Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh, a 23-year-old reporter for the Jahan-e-Now

A look at the current state of journalism education and how today’s students will cope in the changing marketplace.

You can use your Blogger blog from last term, or any other site/service where you can create content.

Create a blog entry that includes:

• Text
• Links to other sites
• One or more images
• At least one audio clip
• An embedded video clip (search YouTube)
• A map: look at how to embed Google Maps/

Sources

If you can record some audio yourself then please do.

For the video, choose any suitable clip from YouTube or one of the other video sharing sites and follow the instructions for embedding it.

Assignments

Use the time to work on your outstanding assignments!

Guardian uber-blogger speaks out

This post from Kevin Anderson deserves careful attention:

As we said in our previous comment, newspaper journalists in developed countries (it needs to be said that newspaper readership is increasing in developing countries) should not blame the internet alone for what has been an ongoing trend in circulation declines.

The changing face of journalism

Neil McIntosh from The Guardian has a post about the need for the UK's National Union of Journalists to change as the world changes. The full article is worth reading - but does he get it right?

OK. As threatened yesterday, here are some suggestions on how the NUJ could get more clued-up about what’s happening in its industry. Do leave your ideas in the comments.

1. Fix your print and online publications

Irony of ironies, but your publications suck. Sorry, but nuj.org.uk is a shambles - why can’t I see who runs the union without logging in? Why is the rulebook only a PDF? What is an ADM, why does it matter, and why don’t you explain anything? Why can’t I apply for a press card online? In print, let’s not discuss your newsletters. And Adrian Monck is right - The Journalist is the worst periodical ever published.

Friday, friday

Nearly time for our next class - and I'm planning which assignments to hand out this term. There will be four, and my usual policy is to give them all in the second class, with a deadline at the end of term. This means that students can fit the specialism work around the rest of the course more easily, and also gives them an idea of what it's like to have a long lead time for a piece - the danger is always that you simply leave it until near the deadline and then have to rush.

Also wondering if everyone will have picked up on the news about Microsoft and Facebook, and whether anyone saw me talking about it on the BBC News at One :-)

Welcome

This is the class blog for the Online Journalism specialism class I teach at City University in London.