Reinventing
the News: The Journalism of the Web
Syllabus and Online Reading List
JRN G340 and U640
Fall 2008
Mondays and Wednesdays, 2:50 to 4:30 p.m.
Dan Kennedy
139 Holmes Hall
Office phone: (617) 373-5187
Cell phone: (978) 314-4721 (call any time)
E-mail: da {dot} kennedy {at} neu {dot} edu
Class Web site: reinventingthenews.wordpress.com
Office hours: Wednesdays, 9 to 10 a.m.; Thursdays, 2 to 3 p.m.; and
Fridays, 10 to 11 a.m.
A course subtitled “The Journalism of the Web” is, in a sense, a course about all of journalism. Newspapers increasingly are mere adjuncts to their Web sites. Television and radio stations have repurposed much of their content for the Web. Moreover, media that appear to be quite different in the analogue world — that is, newspapers, magazines, television and radio — are very much alike in the digital world, as news organizations of all kinds increasingly combine text, photographs, video and audio. It’s all zeroes and ones.
But there is far more to Web-based journalism than digital convergence. The Web makes possible new forms of reporting and new ways to connect with the public through such technologies as online chats and staff-written blogs. It has also given rise to new competition, both from established media that are now available well beyond their home bases to new types of media that would have been inconceivable before the rise of the Web. With young people, in particular, gravitating toward social media such as Facebook, news organizations are attempting to combine what they have to offer with social networks such as Digg and NewsTrust. Moreover, the Web, and especially easy-to-use blogging software, enables anyone to be a journalist, which has sparked what is often called the “citizen journalism” movement.
In this course we will explore how Web-based technologies are changing journalism and redefining how journalists do their jobs. We will learn how to use tools such as blogging, digital photography, mapping, wikis, low-end video and social networking not only to communicate more effectively with our audience, but to communicate with and learn from our audience as well. Citizen-media pioneer Dan Gillmor has called our readers (and viewers and listeners) the “former audience,” meaning that technology has empowered them not to be passive consumers of news and information, but to take part in the conversation. Journalists must be prepared to take part in that conversation as well.
This course will consist of some lecturing, a lot of Web and multimedia demonstrations, extensive classroom discussions, readings, in-class workshops and guest speakers. By the end of the semester, you will be familiar with the concepts and trends that are revolutionizing the way we think about journalism.
This is a time of great pessimism about traditional forms of journalism such as newspapers, magazines and television. I hope you will all become forward-looking optimists over the next few months.
There is one required textbook for this course, and it’s free and available online. Called “Journalism 2.0: How to Survive and Thrive,” it was written by Mark Briggs and published in 2007 by J-Lab: The institute for Interactive Journalism and the Knight Citizen News Network. This is a free book published as a PDF file under a Creative Commons license. It is an excellent introduction to how to be a digital journalist in the 21st century. You may download it and read it on your computer, or you may print it out.
Every journalist needs to read a major metropolitan daily newspaper. Two of the best — the New York Times and the Washington Post — also are doing some pretty innovative things with their Web sites. You need to become familiar with both of these sites. You’re probably already reading the Boston Globe. The Globe’s Web site, Boston.com, is something you need to be familiar with as well.
Our class blog will be our principal forum for in-class communications about additional readings, assignments, guest speakers and the like. You’ll need to check it every day. Once you have started your own blog, it will be listed here. If you’re not already doing so, you should subscribe to all your favorite blogs with an RSS aggregator such as Google Reader. Don’t worry if you’re not technically adept. We’ll talk a lot about that in class and show you how to do it.
Our online reading list is laid out week by week at the end of this syllabus. I will supplement these readings from time to time as the news warrants, which is one of the reasons you need to be attuned to the class blog.
You’ll find a few of the more important online-news sites listed in the right-hand column.
There is only one piece of equipment that I require you to have available for this course: a digital still camera that you can use to upload photos to your blog. If your cell phone has a camera, and if you can transfer those photos to your computer, then you’re all set. You can even buy disposable digital cameras if you don’t want to make a major purchase.
Although I am not requiring it, I strongly recommend that you also have available a camera that can shoot video with sound. Again, maybe your cell phone already does that. If not, the Flip camera provides good results at a low cost. Increasingly, community journalists are being asked to shoot and edit video for their news organization’s Web site in addition to writing for print.
Finally, you should consider spending a little more — say, in the $300-to-$400 range — for a better-quality digital camera that can shoot still photos, video and audio. It’s an opportunity to acquire skills to make yourself more marketable to co-op and post-graduation employers right now.
The School of Journalism requires that you attend at least 80 percent of all scheduled class meetings. If you miss 20 percent or more of scheduled classes for any reason, you will automatically fail. Every absence will have some effect on my assessment of your class participation, which will be factored into your final grade. Chronic tardiness may result in my marking you down for additional absences. Reinventing the News is an intensive, seminar-style course heavily dependent on everyone’s active engagement. If you’re not there, you can’t engage.
Northeastern University is committed to the principles of intellectual honesty and integrity. All members of the Northeastern community are expected to maintain complete honesty in all academic work, presenting only that which is their own work in tests and all other assignments. If you have any questions regarding proper attribution of the work of others, please contact me prior to submitting the work for evaluation.
A personal note: The two capital offenses of journalism are fabrication and plagiarism. Commit either of these and you can expect to receive an “F” for the course, with possible referral to OSCCR. My presumption is that you are honest. But as Ronald Reagan said, “Trust, but verify.”
If you have physical, psychiatric or learning disabilities that may require accommodations for this course, please meet with me after class or during conference hours to discuss what adaptations might be helpful to you. The Disability Resource Center, 20 Dodge Hall (x2675), can provide you with information and assistance. The university requires that you provide documentation of your disability to the DRC.
1. During the first two weeks of class we will start blogs. I expect you to post items of 350 words or more at least twice a week. Many of your posts will be on assigned topics. Those that are not may be about anything you like, although, given the focus of this course, I expect you to be especially attuned to new-media topics. For instance, if you want to focus on sports or the environment, you should be looking for examples of how new media are being used to enhance sports or environmental journalism. Your blog will count for 25 percent of your grade.
2. Class participation is vitally important in this course. Starting Week 3, I will begin each class with a 10- or 15-minute presentation/demonstration from a student on a topic of your choice related to new media or Web-based journalism. Since you’ll be blogging, there should be no shortage of material. I envision this class as a seminar, which means that I also expect regular in-class contributions from all of you. Your class participation will count for 20 percent of your grade.
3. During the semester we will be participating in a number of online projects — contributing to a Google news map, putting together a class wiki, editing a news video, submitting and rating stories for NewsTrust and the like. Your work on these various projects will count for a cumulative total of 25 percent of your grade.
4. Your final project will consist of a report of some kind on journalism and new media. For example, you may wish to profile a prominent blogger, or explain how your hometown newspaper is using the Web. This will be a work of journalism, and you will be interviewing people as part of this project. I haven’t yet decided on the format, but I want to be flexible enough that you could do this as an extended blog post, a video or some combination. I will be checking on your progress from time to time, and will require a draft just before the Thanksgiving break. Your project will be due during finals week at a time to be announced, and will count for 30 percent of your grade.
We will try to stick to this schedule as closely as possible. However, we need to maintain some flexibility to accommodate guest speakers and other special events. Readings do not always match up strictly to the subject of the week, because there are some broad topics you should be aware of beyond the skills that you are learning.
Introduction and setting up your blogs: What will the future of news look like?
Reading/viewing
Web-based computer-assisted reporting, and how it enables not just traditional investigative reporting but an entirely new kind of journalism
Reading/viewing
Photography and the social networking of visual journalism
Reading/viewing
Learning how to do journalism with low-end video
Reading/viewing
Maps, wikis and new ways of thinking about what journalism is and what it can do
Reading/viewing
Your readers know more than you do — adding social networking to your journalistic arsenal
Reading/viewing
News communities: Comments, blogs and beyond
Reading/viewing