Multimedia Journalism

Jour-48000
Fall 2016
M/W 2:00-3:40pm

Prof. Pei Zheng

Office: PK 255
Phone: 607-274-3403
Office hours: Mon 4-5pm; Wed 4-5pm, or by appointment
E-mail: pzheng@ithaca.edu
Teaching assistant: Sara Kim
Skim8@ithaca.edu
Course catalog:
This course integrates the student's previous work into professional-quality, online news
production. This class designs and produces a final multimedia project covering a variety of
issues of interest to the community. Working in teams, students research, produce, and edit longform stories and present them every week as a part of their weekly assignments and final
multimedia package. The storytelling and presentation formats include text, graphics, audio,
video, and interactive elements for audience participation.
Prerequisites: JOUR 21200; junior standing. 4 credits. (F-S)

Course objectives
Todays multimedia storytelling requires mastering multiple technologies. You will enhance the
skills journalists need in the digital age. The main goals of this course are:

Give you access to both the technical and the conceptual skills of multimedia journalism.
Integrate what you learned in previous semesters to produce and publish great quality
multimedia portfolio.
Familiarize you with the routines of a periodical publication; finally, this course will help
you understand the multiple possibilities open to online journalism and social media.
Cultivate critical thinking about important issues and media profession from journalism
lens.

By the end of the semester, you are expected to know:

-How to use the web as a publishing platform and use it to build your online portfolio.
-How to pitch ideas for news articles on the web.
-How to create a blog and publish posts incorporating audio and video content.
-How to pre-produce, produce and publish audio and video stories for the web.
-How to manage audio and video recorders in order to produce journalistic content.

-How to edit audio and video for the web.

-How to follow deadlines in order to produce web content as a team.
-How to share ideas, follow editorial direction and deliver precise editorial instructions in the
context of a digital newsroom.
-How to develop a digital portfolio with your best work online.
-How to apply the different journalistic narrative formats: inverted pyramid, interview, profile,
narrative feature, web journalism.
-A strong journalistic work ethic.
-A clear sense of working under strict deadlines.
-A strong sense of teamwork.
-In addition, you will gain personal insight about your role in the field of journalism.
You will be able to demonstrate the acquisition of these competences on a weekly basis,
through the publication of news stories that will include images, audio, video and infographics,
and will run on Wordpress platform.

Required readings
The Associated Press Stylebook (2016). Associated Press. (It is also available as an interactive ebook on Amazon Kindle, Apple iBooks, etc.)
The data journalism handbook. Edited by Jonathan Gray. Liliana Bounegru and Lucy Chambers.
(free ebook available at http://datajournalismhandbook.org/1.0/en/)
You should have a hard drive or a large flash drive or CDs to transport your files to and from
labs.
Recommended Text
Aim for the heart: Write, shoot, report and produce for TV and multimedia, 2nd edition, by
Tompkins, AL. (2012). CQ Press.
Journalism next: A practical guide to digital reporting and publishing, 2nd edition, by Mark
Brigg. (2012). CQ Press.
Social media for journalists: Principles and practice. Megan Knight and Clare Cook (2013).
Sage.
Course requirements
Participation (10%)
Mid-term AP quiz (10%)
Media product and multimedia portfolio (50%)
Final group project (20%)
Teamwork skills (10%)

1- Participation in class (10%): The participation grade is a combination of attendance and

participation.
2- AP quiz (10%): These quizzes will cover the materials on your AP Stylebook and selected
readings on grammar, punctuation and spelling.
3- Media product and multimedia portfolio (50%): Three weekly and three bi-weekly
stories for www.ithacaweek-ic.com. The stories will run on different media platforms.
Only select stories will be published on www.ithacaweek-ic.com and selections will be
made depending on their quality and appropriateness but this will not factor into your
evaluation. Your stories will be evaluated in terms of their news-ability, accuracy, style,
and sourcing, and your compliance with deadlines.
4- Final project (20%) on a topic of your choice. Details to be decided later in the semester.
5- Teamwork skills (10%) Each student will be assign a role of an editor-in-chief, a fact
checker or a social media editor for our weekly editorial meeting. Your contribution to
the general project will always have an impact on your teams performance. Consequently,
a part of your grade will reflect your performance as a team player.
Extra credits: There are three ways to earn extra credits
1. Short presentation with a written summary (5-10 min) introducing useful
tools/apps/websites/resources relating to multimedia journalism. Sign up for the presentation
at least one week in advance.
2. A case study with short presentation (5-10 min) on good/bad/comparison of good & bad
example of multimedia products. Sign up for the presentation at least one week in advance.
3. Integrate infographics in the final project (with good quality in both info and graphics)

Rules of the road for all stories

As a workshop course, multimedia journalism provides a way for you to really immerse
in the media industry as a journalist and get out in the community. Therefore, the stories
you produce each week should go beyond IC to what is happening in the community or
Cornell University.
Text stories must quote at least three people (NOT your friends) in a meaningful way.
Video stories must be visually interesting.
Class assignment should differ from stories for The Ithacan/ICTV/Radio. If you know
that your story is being broadcast/published in student media before they complete
the assignment for class, then you need to change the story. Sometimes, however, you
can submit class assignments to student media only after it has been turned in.
Although all assignments are doing in group, you must switch the role in the group from
time to time in order to gain multimedia experience. This is part of your assignments
and teamwork grades.

Grading criteria: You will receive two grades for each assignment (excluding quizzes), and these
grades will be used to calculate your final grade on the assignment, based on this rubric.
Content: worth 60% of total assignment grade (Do you tell the story well? Are sources
used accurately? Are there holesm in the story? Grammar, style, spelling, editing, etc)
Technical: worth 40% (Includes photo, sound, video quality)
Journalisms work with deadlines. Late assignments are not tolerated in the news business. All
assignments must be completed by or before deadline, regardless of your attendance in class. By
default, due date is Sundays at noon, EST (with one exception of October 4 on Tuesday). Since
the assignments will become part of our publication, when an article is not available for editing
and publication before or on deadline, the assignment will receive a zero. If an emergency
prevents a student from taking a scheduled exam or meeting the deadlines of an assignment, the
student must notify the instructor prior to the exam or deadline. Make-up exams/assignments will
be granted only for a limited time and only for valid, documented reasons, such as serious illness,
family emergency, jury duty or military reserve obligation (see Attendance policy for details).
All assignments must be accompanied with a list of the sources consulted, their contact
numbers and e-mails. Otherwise the stories will be considered incomplete.

Summary of due dates

Beat

Style

Personal website
Story 1: Sports

Inverted Pyramid

2: Science and
Technology

Inverted
Pyramid/podcast
Podcast, inverted
pyramid or
feature

3: Culture
4: Society & Civic

5: Education
6:
Politics/controversial
issue
7:Final project: Your
choice

Feature
Inverted
pyramid or
Investigative

Investigative

Due Date

Multimedia

Sep 4

Wordpress

Sep 18

Oct 2

Article, photo
Article, audio
(text/narration/music/natural
sound)
Article, photo, audio
(text/narration/music/natural
sound)

Oct 16

Article, photo, video

Oct 30

Article and another two

elements

Sep 25

Nov 13
Nov 29 ready for
presentation;
Dec 12 final version

Article, photo, video AND

another multimedia element

Online portfolio

Calendar
(subject to change)
(no class)
1. Week of Aug 24

Overview of the course, class survey, introduce media research

opportunity
ASSIGNMENT: Upload a video of yourself introducing your
understanding (definition) of multimedia journalism. (30s-1min).
What is multimedia journalism and why we need it?
Online publishing
Practice

2. Week of Aug 29

Wordpress tutorial
Work on your personal website
ASSIGNMENT 1: PERSONAL WEBSITE IS DUE BY SUNDAY
SEPTEMBER 4th AT NOON.
Happy Labor Day!
The multimedia newsroom and the art of news meeting

3. Week of Sep 5

The role of editor in chief

Fact checker and fact checking
Social media strategies
Sign up for roles for each weak and pair-up
News on sports: Sports and beyond (Guest speaker)
Pitch story ideas for story 1 on sports (text + photo).

4. Week of Sep 12

Each group should have three ideas/news articles, three potential

contacts and sources, ideal photos for your story, back-up plans to
start discussing and working on your first piece: a news story on
sports.

News photography
Photo shooting
Digital photography
Photoshop tutorial
News photo ethics and bias
Updates on story 1
ASSIGNMENT 2: STORY ON SPORTS IS DUE BY SUNDAY
SEPTEMBER 18th AT NOON.

Editorial meeting 1- Stories on Sports

Evaluate and comment on stories
Fact checking
Social media content
Continue to edit and post stories online
Pitch story ideas for story 2 on science and technology (text + audio).
5. Week of Sep 19

Science and technology news: What are the aspects (Guest speaker)
Audio
Audio news
Audio recording
Audio editing-Audacity tutorial
Updates on story 2
ASSIGNMENT 3: STORY ON SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY IS DUE
BY SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 25th AT NOON.
Editorial meeting 2 - Story on Science & Tech

6. Week of Sep 26

Sep 28: Pitch story ideas for story 3 on culture (text + audio + photo)
ASSIGNMENT 4: STORY ON CULTURE IS DUE BY SUNDAY
OCTOBER 2nd AT NOON.
Oct 3: Editorial meeting 3 - Story on Culture
Oct 5: Video

7. Week of Oct 3

Video journalism
Video shooting
Writing for broadcast
Integrate text, image and sound
Pitch story ideas for story 4 on society and civic (FEATURE: text +
video + photo)
Oct 10: Work on the feature story (no meeting)

8. Week of Oct 10

9. Week of Oct 17

Oct 12: Social media strategies

Video editing & editing software tutorial
Mid-term self & instructor evaluation
FALL BREAK ON THURSDAY AND FRIDAY
ASSIGNMENT 5: STORY ON SOCIETY & CIVIC IS DUE BY
SUNDAY OCTBER 16 AT NOON.
Oct 17: Editorial meeting 4: Story on society and civic
Summary of mid-term evaluation

Mid-term AP quiz
Critical issues in multimedia journalism 1
Pitch story ideas for story 5 on education (text + any two of your choice)
10. Week of Oct 24

11. Week of Oct 31

Critical issues in multimedia journalism 2

Work on your story; Troubleshooting
ASSIGNMENT 6: STORY ON EDUCATION IS DUE BY SUNDAY
OCTOBER 30TH AT NOON.
Editorial meeting 6: Story on education
Start to think about story 6 on government/politics or controversial issues
(text + photo + video + one more)
Pitch story ideas for story 6 on government/politics/controversial issues
(text + photo + video + one more )
Introduction to data journalism
IN-CLASS ASSIGNEMNT: Data visualization

12. Week of Nov 7

13. Week of Nov 14

Work on story 6; Troubleshooting

ASSIGNMENT 7: STORY ON POLITICS/CONTROVERSIAL ISSUE
IS DUE BY SUNDAY NOVEMBER 13th AT NOON.
Editorial meeting 7: Story on politics/controversial issue
Pitch story ideas on final project- Story of your choice (online portfolio)
Work on your final project; Troubleshooting
Happy Thanksgiving!

14. Week of Nov 21

Happy Thanksgiving!
Work on your final project; Troubleshooting
15. Week of Nov 28
Final project presentation
Final project presentation
16. Week of Dec 5

17. Week of Dec 12

Recap of the class

The future of journalism: Critical issues and reflections
FINAL PROJECT DUE MONDAY December 12th AT 2PM.
Hand in a hardcopy of your written article in class.
Happy winter break!