Editors' Guide: Course Outline
JOUR 4857/5857 Online Workshop #2
(Jan. 2 to Feb. 10, 2012)
This is the course outline for the Online Workshop, a senior course in the School of Journalism at the University of King's College in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Course instructors:
Tim Currie
<.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)>Kevin Cox
<.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)>Mitchell Brown
<.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)>
Overview:
The Online Workshop prepares students to work in an online newsroom. It gives them a toolbox of skills to create web content -- the ability to research, gather and produce online news, and, most important, an ability to present content in multimedia formats.
The workshop will produce a daily news site called UNews. It is a mixture of original news and feature stories. It also includes a daily news summary and a section called In Context that supplies online resources for stories in the news.
Reporters will pitch, research and produce stories that appeal to an online audience. They are expected to come prepared with original story ideas at a daily story meeting, and to read and comment on email critiques of the site's content.
Editing is a key skill for online journalists. Students in the workshop will gain experience in editing for the web and will sharpen their skills with regular practice. They will apply Canadian Press style to produce clear and engaging content augmented with snappy headlines and captions.
Students will also work in teams to collaborate on reporting and produce multimedia content for a majority of stories posted.
Reporters will write and post their completed stories during the course of the day. Some will work in the morning; others will work in the afternoon. The goal is to produce a dynamic website that presents original content throughout the day.
Preparatory classes will be held in the first week of the workshop. This is an important segment. It includes sessions on photography, using a content management system and authoring multimedia content.
Texts:
- Canadian Press Style Guide, CP Caps and Spelling
Grading:
An assignment not handed in gets a failing grade. If an assignment is more than one weekday late, it will lose one letter grade per day.
Marks will be assigned on these tasks:
- Stories (80 %): Eight individual stories or 12 collaborative story elements, or a combination. Grading is based on strength and difficulty of the story idea; depth of reporting; quality of writing, photography and multimedia; supporting documentation (links); presentation in online style; adherence to CP style
- Editing (20 %): News digest, In Context assignments, copyediting. Grading is based on clarity and brevity of the summaries; evaluation of sources; speed; spelling and grammar; adherence to CP style
STORIES
| Excellent | Passable to Good | Below standards | |
| Research (25%) | Statistics, background information, and discovered facts help root the story in context. (20-25%) | Some statistics, background info, and discovered facts are here, but more are needed to fully flesh out the story. (13-19%) | The piece reveals a lack of statistics, background info and discovered facts. (0-12%) |
| Context (15%) | Choice of background facts and detail gives the reader a clear sense of how this story fits into past events and related developments. (12-15%) | The story would benefit from additional information that would add meaning by relating the story to other events. (8-11%) | The writer offers little or no evidence to show what this story means in relation to other developments. (0-7%) |
| Writing (15%) | The language choices are usually excellent. And there are no typos or CP Style errors. (12-15%) | Some word choices are great, but some of the copy needs work. Also there are typos and CP errors. (8-11%) | Word choices need serious work. Also, typos and/or clichés are hurting this story. (0-7%) |
| Effort (15%) | This article is the product of serious effort, including diligent research and incisive editing. (12-15%) | Some effort is obvious, but the story lacks the extra work needed to push a story from good to great. (8-11%) | The story needs at least another, serious draft – and greater care. More time and effort were needed. (0-7%) |
| Headline, lede, summary, captions, sidebars & SEO (15%) | The headline, summary, lede, captions and sidebar are clever, imaginative, make sense and invite readers — and search engines — in. (12-15%) | Some of the headline, summary, lede, captions and sidebar are clever and work. Others are weak or lack SEO value. (8-11%) | The headline, summary, lede, captions and sidebars do not make a reader — or a search engine — want to spend time with this story. (0-7%) |
| Interactive & multimedia elements (15%) | The story contains links to all relevant source documents online. The reader's understanding is increased by skillful and relevant use of a video, map, photogallery, timeline or chart. (12-15%) | The story is missing an important link and woud benefit from a multimedia element. Or an existing multimedia element lacks important content or lacks relevance to the topic. (8-11%) | The story contains few links. Multimedia elements are non-existent or lack meaningful content. (0-7%) |
EDITING ASSIGNMENTS (Digest, poll etc.)
| Excellent | Passable to Good | Below standards | |
|
Editing choices and presenting |
Editing choices show a solid understanding of our audience and/or highlight relevant information from other sources on the web. Content is free from spelling or grammatical error. (80-100%) | The relevance of some content to our site's audience is not immediately evident. Some aggregated information may be missing or incompletely explained. A minor spelling or grammatical error may be present. (65-79%) | A poll question, aggregated summary or background piece lacks thought or rigour. It has little relevance to our audience and/or contains numerous spelling or grammatical errors (0-64%) |
Intellectual Honesty
Plagiarism is a form of academic fraud. Plagiarism is the presentation of the work of another author in such a way as to give one's reader reason to think it to be one's own.
Self-plagiarism is the submission of work that is the same or substantially the same as work for which he or she has already received academic or professional credit.
Plagiarism is considered a serious academic offence, which may lead to loss of credit, suspension or expulsion from the university, or even the revocation of a degree.
For more information, go to King's homepage http://www.ukings.ca/ and under Quick Links, select Academic Calendar. The Intellectual Honesty section can be found on page 35-36 of the pdf.
Students with Disabilities
Students with disabilities are encouraged to register as quickly as possible at the Student Accessibility Services if they want to receive academic accommodations. To do so please phone 494-2836, email.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), drop in to the office at 6227 University Avenue, or visit www.studentaccessibility.dal.ca.
Workshop Schedule