Journalism at Westminster

Advanced Web Journalism - Module Blog - The Critical Evaluations

I've written before about what you need to do for your module blogs. If you need a reminder, click the link.

You also need to add some short posts to your module blog that reflect and evaluate the work you’ve done over the last twelve weeks. The posts you need to do are:  

• An explanation of the ideas behind your individual project and an evaluation of whether you think it works, what might make it better etc. Talk about how you came up with the idea, whether you learned from similar projects online, what might make the project work better.
• An explanation of the idea behind the group site you worked on, the stories you did and the role you played on your site. Again, try to reflect critically on whether the site works and what might make it better. Talk about the sites you looked at when you were developing your site idea. Talk about the target audience for your site. Talk about how you used social media. Talk about what might make the site better.
• An account of the work you did on the news day – you should talk about what you worked on - WNOL, the Inside WNOL blog, the Twitter feed or Facebook page for the site etc, the stories/posts you did. Talk about whether you were able to link what you were doing with what the broadcast teams were up to. Try to come to some conclusions about what you learned from the experience of trying to work in a cross media way with the other students on the course 

You don’t need to write a lot for each of these posts – say around 400 - 500 words for each post. That would make 1,200 - 1,500 in total. Try to be critical and reflective, to show what you’ve learned about working as a journalist online. Don't just document what you did. Try to take a more high level professional perspective.

If your group project didn't go that well and you want to talk about why and don't want to publish that part of the log in a public place (i.e. on your blog), you can email that part of the evaluation to me. 

Remember - the deadline for completing the module blog is midnight Wednesday May 4th.

 

AWJ - Schedule and assessments

Now we're a few weeks in, I thought it was probably about time to set a few deadlines and finalise the timetable for the module.

Here's the current plan - we'll spend the next three weeks both looking at new ways to tell journalistic stories online and building your skills in these areas. We've already done audio slideshows and using maps. This week we're looking at more creative ways to use video. Next week, we'll do live blogging and the week after data journalism. 

The plan is to devote the first five weeks to this. Then the next four sessions will be more open, workshop affairs. I will cover different things each time, but the sessions will be mainly devoted to you working on your individual projects and your group websites. 

Deadlines for delivering these: 

• Group websites should be finished - Monday March 21st
• Individual projects should be finished - Monday March 28th.

The session on Friday March 25th will be devoted to preparation for the multimedia news days. So we'll set up a site and work out what we're going to do and how we're going to work with the TV and radio journalists. 

The last two Fridays (April 1st and April 8th) will be multimedia news days. I'll give you some more detail on what you have to do then in a couple of weeks. 

The module blog should be completed after the Easter holidays. Deadline will be Tuesday May 3rd. The module blog should include critical evaluations of your individual project, your group website and your work on the news day. 

Advanced Web Journalism - The module blog assessment

You have to do a module blog as one of the assessments for AWJ. I'd like you to put two different things on your blogs. First, I'd like you to track new stories about the way the net is changing journalism, stories about the potential of online journalism and multimedia reporting and storytelling. 

The idea is for you to identify some key sources for that kind of news, read them regularly and each week write something about what'd you'd found out that week. 

You could write about all sorts of things: 

• Key trends and big ongoing stories (e.g. Google and its influence/plans)
• New products and ideas (e.g. the iPad and the various magazines being planned for it)
• Useful bits of research or analysis on the net and journalism
• Interesting sites you find that show the possibilities of online journalism

This is not really about writing a lot - unless you want to. The posts you write can be short - perhaps just a link, a quote and a sentence or two from you. The real aim of the assessment is to get you to develop the habits that will help you when you start working in the real world. Journalism is changing and the journalists who are successful in the future will be those who are on top of the way things are changing, who can spot new ideas and opportunities. 

Here are some of the sources I use for tracking this kind of news. So here are some links you might find useful: 

• The New York Times, its Technology section and its Bits blog
• The Guardian, its Technology section, its Media section
• The Nieman Journalism Lab
• The Media Shift Idea Lab
• Wired
• Online Journalism Blog
• Journalism.co.uk
• Mashable
• Adam Westbrook
• Jay Rosen
• 10,000 Words
• Nicholas Carr 
• GigaOm
• Techdirt
• Techmeme
• Mediagazer

There are lots of other ways to track this kind of news - we'll look at some of them in class. We'll probably look at how to use Twitter to keep tabs on tech trends and new links. We may also look at tools like Netvibes and Delicious. 

So, to recap, one thing you have to do on the module blog is short updates on new developments in online journalism and new media...

Along with that, it would be good if you could do something similar with a field of your own choosing - music, fashion, politics - whatever. Pick an area you want to write about or work in in future and start tracking new stories, trends and ideas and log what you find on your blog... Again, this isn't about writing a lot - it's about using your blog to track and quickly comment on new ideas... 

Towards the end of the module I will also get you to write some evaluations of your individual and group assessment work... We can talk about that closer to the time. The deadline for finishing all this will be Wednesday May 4th. 

AWJ - Group websites

For one of the assessments on this module we have to do some sort of group website. Last week I showed you a couple of the sites last year's students did: 

• Missfits
• Weco

To do these, the students did a lot of Dreaweaver work and web design in general and perhaps had less time to focus on the stories, which were quite static in the end. 

We could do something similar this year. Or we could try using a site like Wix, a publishing service that lets you create a simple Flash-based site. This would let you concentrate on creating stories and taking more of a multimedia approach... A couple of Year 3 students used Wix for some work they did this year: 

• I Am Proud
• Your Home Remedies

They show what you can do with the site... Let's decide today what to do... We also need to choose some areas to focus on for the group sites...