SYLLABUSES

J295 Introduction to Online Journalism

SCHEDULE

This course tackles the pressing question of how to apply fundamental journalism skills to the online medium, AND how to apply Web authoring skills to journalism. We begin with an overview of the technologies involved in building a Web application. You will learn and apply Dreamweaver and Photoshop. You will build your personal Web site in the first weeks of class and improve on it all semester – well, hopefully throughout your journalism career. Your Web site will serve both as a portfolio of your work and an online resume.

You are likely to spend the first few weeks engrossed only in Web design. DO NOT LOSE FOCUS, however, that the ultimate goal is how to apply these skills to the service of journalism. You will study history, context and principles of online publishing. You will learn about journalistic issues relating to credibility, ethics and standards on the Web. Hypertext and writing for new media, site architecture and design, are all introduced. The blogging phenomenon is taken head-on, used and critiqued. And you will thrust into the WWW maze to find and evaluate information online... more >>

provisional outline in word

J295 Advanced Online Journalism

Go to U dot Conn, a publication of this class

The advanced online journalism course integrates traditional journalism with new media storytelling skills/techniques and hands-on professional experience. Students add Web publishing to their print or broadcast skills. In lab sessions modeled on an online newsroom, the team will report and produce stories moving gradually from “online version of the newspaper” to an online magazine, in multimedia  -- a combination of text, still photographs, video clips, audio, graphics and interactivity. The stories will be planned, researched, and produced entirely by students. The instructor, aided by selected industry guests, will help brush up technical skills and provide feedback on projects. Classroom-setting lecture is extremely thin in this course. The bulk is lab techniques and production... more>>