This is my third semester teaching Digital Journalism II in the Diederich College of Communication at Marquette University and so I hope to build on the success of my previous class in the fall. The course objectives remain the same: producing and promoting digital news stories using text, images and audio; understanding key industry trends, technologies and multimedia reporting techniques; working solo and or in teams to produce stories and packages for the Web, and using social media to build a following and "brand" as a digital journalist.

Once again, the course textbook is the second edition of "Aim For The Heart: Write, Shoot, Report and Produce for TV and Multimedia." Published in 2011 by CQ Press, the book by Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute is great for students because it stresses, among other things, finding memorable characters, writing inviting leads, using active verbs and objective adjectives, learning to listen during interviews and why pictures are so powerful.

Each of the 10 students this semester will pursue a Digital Journalism Basics certificate from Poynter's News University, write a weekly blog post related to their assigned news media website; produce a Storify from each of four events on campus they will live tweet; produce two multimedia packages called "One at Marquette" and based on The New York Times' extraordinary "One in 8 Million" collection; and, with a partner, produce a multimedia package about a local nonprofit organization and assigned by the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service.

The students will share and promote their coursework on their respective digital portfolios created via Weebly.com. Those portfolios can be accessed collectively from the same webpage here. Check their progress often.
 


Comments




Leave a Reply

    Author

    Journalism faculty member and graduate student at Marquette University. Native of Camden, N.J.; former president of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ); former communications director for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation (CBCF).

    Archives

    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010

    Categories

    All
    Branding
    Digital Divide
    Digital Storytelling
    Emerging Media
    Journalism
    Journalism Education
    Marquette
    Nabj
    Newsu
    Poynter
    Storify

    RSS Feed