JOU4341 | Reporting and Writing for the Web

About the Course

This course is taught at the University of Florida in the College of Journalism and Communications. It is open to any UF student who has completed JOU3101 or RTV3303 with a grade of C or better. You will find it listed under Journalism with the course number JOU4341.

Note that this is a reporting and basic production course, NOT a design or coding course. Original reporting and writing are required. Either of the prerequisites are all you need to be well prepared for this course. You are not expected to know anything about online production before the course begins.

If you are looking for an introductory Web design course, look for MMC3260. An advanced Web design and coding course is offered every spring with the course number MMC4341. The capstone online course is JOU4946. I'd be happy to discuss any of these courses with you.

Most online journalism content is created by teams including writers, editors, designers and programmers. This course is intended to make you familiar with all of these roles but also play on your particular strengths.

Graduate students in the College of Journalism and Communications may take this course as independent study with permission from the instructor.

Course and University Policies

Description

Students in this course learn how to report, write and produce multimedia content for Internet news sites and other digital media. The focus is on original, in-depth storytelling. We will not cover breaking news. Students are expected to be conscientious reporters and writers. All of the effort of creating multimedia is a waste if there are any inaccuracies or typos.

Objectives

Plan and execute reporting for comprehensive Web projects.
Write in styles appropriate for online media.
Evaluate story packages from other sources and explain the good, the bad and the ugly.
Work with other reporters to produce an engaging content.
Conduct research, assess reliability and properly use results.
Be able to produce packages comprising audio, photos, video and other data.

Attendance and Attitude

Students are expected to show respect for one another and for the instructor. Attendance and punctuality are essential. Any absence without prior clearance or medical proof will result in a 5-point reduction of a student's final grade. We only meet once a week, so this policy in non-negotiable. Quizzes will be administered at the beginning of the class periods. You cannot make quizzes up if you are late or absent. All attendance and grading questions will be answered during the instructor's office hours. Do not bring these topics up during class or via e-mail. The instructor will not respond.

Deadlines

Late assignments will not be accepted. Assignments will only be accepted at the beginning of the class periods unless otherwise requested by the instructor. As with attendance, advance notice and documentation of illness or personal emergency is the only exception to the deadline policy.

Academic Honesty

Dishonesty of any kind will not be tolerated. Cheating hurts you, hurts our college and hurts the industry. Any dishonesty will be reported to Student Judicial Affairs, and the student will receive a failing grade for the course. The university's Academic Honesty Guidelines provide additional details. You are expected to know and understand these guidelines completely. You are encouraged to ask the instructor for clarification if you are in doubt.

Students with Disabilities

Reasonable accommodations will be made for any students with disabilities. If you have a disability, the Dean of Students Office will give you official documentation. You must provide this to the instructor. More information is available at the Dean of Students Office's Disability Resources page.

Book Requirements

Weekly reading assignments are indicated in the Schedule

Required Books

Quinn, S. & Filak, V. F. (2005). Convergent Journalism: An Introduction. Burlington, MA: Focal Press (Elsevier). ISBN 13: 978-0-240-807249

Associated Press Stylebook. 2005 or later.

The lectures and quizzes will be based on Quinn & Filak. You must own this book to succeed in this course. These textbooks are available at the UF bookstore in the Reitz Union.

Grading Criteria

For descriptions of the assignments, see Required Work

Total: 100 points

Assignments

10 points — Weekly quizzes
10 points — Blog posts
10 points — Leadership evaluation
20 points — Participation and preparedness for class
50 points — Final project

Grading Scale

90 – 100 : A
88 – 89 : B+
80 – 87 : B
78 – 79 : C+
70 – 77 : C
68 – 69 : D+
60 – 67 : D
Less than 60 : F

Discussing Grades

All grades will be confidential and only handed to you personally. I will not deliver or respond to grades via e-mail. Please come to my office hours or schedule an appointment for any grade-related discussion. In-class questions will be ignored.

Course Schedule

Key Dates

Aug. 23 — Classes start
Aug. 29 — Drop/Add ends
Dec. 5 — Classes end

UF Holidays

Sept. 3 — Labor Day
Nov. 2 & 3 — UF Homecoming
Nov. 12 — Veterans Day
Nov. 29 — Thanksgiving

Weekly Schedule

  • Week 2 | Sept. 4
  • Quinn & Filak: Ch. 1 | "What is convergence and how will it affect my life?"
  • Reading: MediaStorm's "Gathering Audio" part 1 and part 2
  • Assignment: Set up a blog. E-mail me the Web address and your topic choice before class starts.
  • Lecture: Audio Gathering Principles
  • Lesson files: kosherSushi.mp3 by Elissa Rosen
  • Week 3 | Sept. 11
  • Quinn & Filak: Ch. 7 | "Digital still photography"
  • Assignment: Groups present finalized topics and possible sources
  • Lecture: Basic Photo Composition
  • Lesson files: kosherSushi.zip images
  • Week 5 | Sept. 25
  • Quinn & Filak: Ch. 8 | "Digital video photography"
  • Lecture: Video Journalism
  • Week 6 | Oct. 2
  • DUE: Final project | Past
  • Quinn & Filak: Ch. 3 | "Words: The foundation stone of journalism"
  • Lecture: Mapping for Journalists
  • Week 8 | Oct. 16
  • Quinn & Filak: Ch. 10 | "Multimedia journalism: Putting it all together"
  • Reading: Mindy McAdams' "Journalism stories: A multimedia approach" | Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
  • Lecture: Project Planning / Storyboarding / Management
  • Exercise: Package planning exercise
  • Week 13 | Nov. 20
  • Quinn & Filak: Ch. 12 | "Multimedia public relations"
  • Explore: Barnstorm videos from the 2007 Eddie Adams Workshop
  • Assignment: Write a page on something from class that has changed how you work
  • Week 14 | Nov. 27
  • Quinn & Filak: Ch. 13 | "Where do we go from here?"
  • Lecture: Your Career
  • Course Evaluations

Required Work

Weekly Quizzes

Quizzes will be based on assigned readings and administered at the beginning of class. No make-up quizzes will be given for late or absent students. However, there will be a few extra quizzes that you may drop if necessary. The highest 10 quizzes will be counted in your final grade.

Blog Posts

You will be required to blog twice per week. The topic can be related to this course or another specific topic of your choice and approved by me. You are expected to keep the same topic throughout the semester. I will randomly evaluate a total of 10 posts during the semester. Grades will be based on mechanics, content and the relevance of outgoing links. You will receive e-mail feedback to help you improve future posts.

Leadership Evaluation

Each student will serve as team leader for a portion of the course. Your team members will submit written evaluations attesting to the quality of your leadership and management ability. You also will submit a written evaluation of yourself detailing team progress and complications.

Participation and Preparedness for Class

Students are expected to complete assignments and readings to be adequately prepared for class. Much of the class time will be used learning the basic skills you need to function in a modern newsroom. Class work will not be graded on a weekly basis, but your grade will be heavily influenced by your ability to remain on task and learn the basics of working with audio, images, video and other online story elements.

Final Project

The major focus of this course is to create a comprehensive journalism package utilizing the Web as a delivery medium. The students will be divided into teams to report and gather content to be used for narrative text, photography, video and other appropriate multimedia to best convey information.

Though many students dislike team projects, your understanding of the nature of our business is essential for your future success. No man is an island, and very few journalists can create professional content for every platform and story form. Although team members will have individual strengths and weaknesses, each student is expected to gather content in as many forms as possible.

The content for the final project will be collected in three main stages. Each of these stages will count toward a portion of the final grade. Also, each student will submit a CD containing individual work toward the final project. This clip CD will count toward the remaining 10 percent of the final grade. In total, this project will count toward 50 percent of the final grade.

If one team member is a photojournalism student, there is a good chance that person will have more photos included in the final product. Same goes for talented writers or videographers. In my opinion, individual students should not be penalized by the success of other students. I hope that this course helps every student expand their toolkit to be able to best convey information. I do not expect everyone to take to each skill equally. I do expect each student to work hard and improve throughout the semester.

"Future" and "individual" project requirements

Oct 30, 2007

Requirements for the two remaining projects are now linked from the class schedule. As always, ask me for clarification if you are unsure how to proceed.

Present project requirements and points

Oct 09, 2007

The official requirements and point breakdown for the second project is linked in the schedule. You can go straight to the “Present” project requirements.

NewsU.org courses for participation credit

Oct 08, 2007

Any student may receive credit for up to five percentage points of your final grade with Poynter’s News University. Because this class cannot be all things to all people, I want to reward students that complete independent study in areas of interest to them.

Register for free, browse the course list and submit completion reports to me. Most of the courses are free. Your choice of courses does not matter. However, you must participate in the courses for a minimum of half the suggested time. For example, if a course estimates two hours for completion, the report submitted to me must indicate you participated for an hour at minimum.

These points count for one or zero. Participating for 15 minutes won’t get you a bonus fraction. These points will be directly added to your participation score. So, the maximum participation score can count for a maximum 25 percent of the final grade.

Extended "Future" phase deadline

Sep 06, 2007

Since I decided to strike the grade for an edits submission on the last day of class, I went ahead and pushed the “Future” deadline back one week to now be due on the final day, December 4, instead of November 27. Hopefully this extension also will ease anxiety during Thanksgiving.

Offical project requirements and points

Sep 05, 2007

I’m afraid I was being too vague for you all in describing what I expect for the team submissions for this first phase. On the schedule, the due date now has a link to a document with my official expectations. Go straight to it here.

Also, I have removed the portion of the final project allowing for edits. As one student brought up, this could cause a lot of confusion at the end of the semester if teams change. The 10 percent of the grade allotted for edits will be split and distributed to the “Present” and “Future” submissions. Now, the “Past” is worth 10 percent, the other two worth 15 percent each, and the individual submissions are still worth another 10 percent.

I’ll clarify this next Tuesday, but please ask if you have questions before then.

About

Welcome to the professional and academic portfolio of Dave Stanton. I am a doctoral student at the University of Florida studying mass communication and statistical modeling. I teach courses in the online sequence within the College of Journalism and Communications.