For the students of JMSC6019
I will make myself available in the DM Lab during three blocks of time next week:
MONDAY April 30: 2-4pm
TUESDAY May 1: 4-6pm
WEDNESDAY May 2: 6-8pm
Priority attention will be given to BJ students because they have no class on Tuesday due to Labor Day. However everybody is welcome.
To get an idea of how many people I can expect, please post your name on the class wiki here if you plan to come.
This announcement is for both MJ and BJ students, to make sure everybody is 100% clear about what they need to do.
The schedule for your story deadlines is here.
The list of edit team assignments is here.
And the calendar showing everybody’s responsibilities and due dates is here. (Sorry that link was broken before. It is now fixed.)
MAKE SURE YOU HAVE LOCATED YOUR NAME IN ALL OF THESE DOCUMENTS AND THAT YOU ARE CLEAR ABOUT WHAT YOU NEED TO DO AND WHEN!
The first teams will start looking at the first author drafts over this weekend. Make sure you know whether you are one of those people. Meanwhile, I have posted several tutorials on the class wiki. They include:
Posting on HKStories
Uploading photos
Adding and formatting photos in your story
Creating a slideshow
Embedding audio
Embedding video
Be sure to look at them so that you know how to post your content properly. Additional resources are here and here.
WORK PROCESS:
1. Be sure all of your draft content is posted in HK Stories by the due date listed on the calendar so your assigned edit team can go over it.
2. Your edit team needs to get you their feedback by their deadline also posted on the calendar, so that you can make changes and do all other final work that you need to do.
3. By your due date listed here you need to do the following:
a. Make sure that your story is in the final form that you want it.
b. Send me an e-mail letting me know it is ready to go. Also include one paragraph of text that will serve as the “blurb” or “teaser” for your story on the Section page listing all student stories belonging to that section. The result will look something like this.
The same text will also appear at the top of your own Category introducing your story, like this.
NOTE ON POLLS AND SIDEBARS: If you want to add a poll or a sidebar, this is possible but you don’t have administrative privileges to do so directly on your own. So you need to do some advanced planning. Prepare what you want the poll or sidebar to say in advance of the class before your due date. We will try to get it set up in class.
ONE MORE IMPORTANT NOTE: Some students have reported problems when trying to save more than one paragraph of material at a time. This is probably due to some kind of bug in our Joomla installation. I will try to get it sorted out with Ken and the guy who did the installation. Meanwhile, you may need to plan on saving no more than one paragraph of text at a time when you are putting your text into your Hong Kong Stories pages. This is a bit frustrating but we will have to make do until the problem gets fixed.
FINAL REMINDER: be sure you have copied and pasted everything you’ve entered into your box IN A TEXT FILE, OFFLINE, before you click on the save button. This is a good habit to get into anyway. That way you will make sure nothing will get lost or accidentally deleted.
As discussed in class, the schedule for your story deadlines is here, the list of edit team assignments is here, and the calendar showing everybody’s responsibilities and due dates is here.
MAKE SURE YOU HAVE LOCATED YOUR NAME IN ALL OF THESE DOCUMENTS AND THAT YOU ARE CLEAR ABOUT WHAT YOU NEED TO DO AND WHEN!
The first teams will start looking at the first author drafts over this weekend. Make sure you know whether you are one of those people. I will update this post in the next 24 hours with more information about the process. Meanwhile, I have posted several tutorials on the class wiki. They include:
Posting on HKStories
Uploading photos
Adding and formatting photos in your story
Creating a slideshow
Embedding audio
Embedding video
Be sure to look at them so that you know how to post your content properly.
Our class does not meet next Tuesday because of Labor Day. However I will make myself available in the DM Lab at designated times (TBA) on Monday and Wednesday in case people have questions or problems. I will announce those times here and via e-mail to the class.
ASSIGNMENT:
DON’T FORGET: Register for an account on HKStories if you haven’t yet done so. This is important.
A progress report about your project is due to be posted on your blog before class begins on Friday April 27th, as indicated on the class schedule .
FINAL PROJECT DEADLINE AND EDITORIAL SCHEDULE:
IMPORTANT: I have now posted the newsroom editorial teams.
In order to avoid any confusion be sure to look at the comprehensive calendar outlining the work schedule for the edit teams and the dates when you need to get your drafts to them.
IN CASE YOU WEREN’T IN CLASS ON FRIDAY: Review the story schedule wiki page and the evaluation criteria. Feel free to post any questions you have in the comments section of this post.
Here is a detailed description of what is expected from your final projects and the evalulation criteria. (REVISED 11:30am HKT April 20th)
1. JOURNALISTIC MERIT: You are expected to do a work of original journalism, not a research paper. The core of your story must be based on content and information that you have obtained yourself through interviews, researching, photographing, recording, and/or videotaping. Your story must contribute some original information and insights into your subject that is not presently available online or elsewhere in other people’s work.
2. WORDS:
Text-centric stories: If you are doing a story that needs to be told primarily with written words: Around 1000 words original text is the ballpark size for one-person projects. But you are being evaluated on quality of content, not number of words. Also, note that something this long needs to be broken into sections or pages in order to be digestible online. Ideally no more than 3-400 words per page or section. (2-person projects would be around 2000 words but divided into more sections.)
Visual and multi-media centric stories: If your story relies heavily on visuals you may only have an introductory text of 300-400 words plus captions or quotes that go along with photo essays, audio, and/or video. (It’s pretty obvious when somebody has little text but has obviously put quality efforts into their audio or visual elements to tell a journalistic story – and when they are just throwing up audio clips and pictures to fill space in order to avoid having to write.)
Your written words will be evaluated according to your ability to be concise and clear, so that the reader can clearly understand what your point is. You should demonstrate that you understand the guidelines for good writing on the web as outlined by Foust and McAdams. Show that you know how to make use of bullet points, headings, and lists where appropriate.
3. VISUALS:
For text-centric stories: Even if text is the main medium for telling your story, you need at least 3 pictures or visual elements of some kind: visuals that clearly enhance your reader’s understanding of your story, and will help attract people to actually read your story.
For visual and multimedia-centric stories: The number of pictures or audio or video elements, or size of photo gallery will depend somewhat on the subject and how you are combining text with the other elements. However, your use of all pictures, audio or graphics will be evaluated in terms of how the choice and use of these particular elements enhance the audience’s understanding and experience of the story. Not just elements for the sake of elements.
4. LINKING: You should include relevant hyperlinks: to relevant resources, other articles on the subject, or blogs. Link the names of places and people, or key phrases in your text when you think those links will provide a service to your readers in helping them to learn more about the subject. Depending on the subject, you may have a special page devoted to resource links, or you may have a page quoting from blogs or forums concerned with your story subject, and linking to them, with pictures of the bloggers or screen grabs from their sites.
5. INTERACTIVITY: When relevant and when it enhances the story, your work should make use of interactivity such as comments and polls or other invitations for user feedback. Stories that deal with subjects that are discussed extensively online should link to and try to engage with those online conversations.
6. QUALITY, NOT QUANTITY: Your goal is to produce a piece of journalism that people who don’t know you would actually take the time to read, look at, and listen to. Your classmate-editors will give you feedback on whether the elements of your draft seem like they fit that criteria or not. That’s why it’s important to be concise and not be too long or throw in too many elements that nobody is going to listen to or watch. More is not necessarily better. Less is often more.
IMPORTANT UPDATE (posted April 23):
Register for an account on HKStories if you haven’t yet done so. This is important.
NEW: I have now posted the newsroom editorial teams.
In order to avoid any confusion be sure to look at the comprehensive calendar outlining the work schedule for the edit teams and the dates when you need to get your drafts to them.
I will explain why the teams and schedule were formulated that way in class on Tuesday. The structure of the editorial positions has been changed in order to even out the workload as much as possible.
Also check out the evaluation criteria posted on Friday.
—–
FINAL PROJECT DEADLINES: The deadline schedule for the HKStories website is now posted on the wiki. Please post any questions or concerns in the discussion section of that wiki page (log in before you do so, so that we know who you are).
You should plan to have a draft of your full story and start working with your designated editors (general editors, text editors, photo editors, and graphics editors) at LEAST one week before your deadline date.
VIRTUAL NEWSROOM: More details on your “virtual newsroom” appointments (i.e., who the “designated editors” will be) are coming soon and will also be posted on the wiki.
THIS WEEK’S ASSIGNMENT: Please post an updated progress report on your project before the beginning of the next class, Tuesday April 24th. Also include the photos, audio clips, and other elements you plan to use that you have gathered by the end of Monday.
With photos: you can either upload the ones you plan to use onto your blog, or you can put them into your flickr account and link to them from your “progress report” post. Audio:Similarly, you can either upload your audio clips onto your Uniblog or you can upload them onto podomatic and put the links in your “progress report” post. Text: If you want to start writing drafts of your text, post them as pages on your blog and link to them from your “progress report” post. Graphics: If you have started to create charts and graphs in Adobe Illustrator or some other program, you can either upload them onto your blog directly or put them in your Flickr account and link to them.
PRESENTATION: On Tuesday we will have the final presentation team, Tom and Alex, leading a discussion about what we learned from Oiwan Lam and also from this week’s readings:
Reading:
Jimmy Lai, Blogs Are Critical Pals of Newspapers, Roland Soong’s response, and Jimmy Lai Netchats with Netizens (also of interest: Jimmy Lai’s essay Facts and Predjudices. Look at: InMedia HK and Interlocals.net (see the FAQ especially).
For any other classmates who know Cantonese and are particularly interested, it would be great if you could take a look at Jimmy Lai’s video chats and let us know in class what you think. Also there is an article in Chinese about Jimmy Lai’s net chats here.
Thanks to Brandy for videotaping Tuesday’s talk by Oiwan Lam of InmediaHK, Interlocals, and Global Voices. Thanks also to Spider for uploading the video to Podomatic! (We also posted it to Google Video, but for some reason they have been holding it for review for a really long time.)
You can watch it here:
Thanks to Vincent and Sun Jie for videotaping Isaac Mao’s talk.
Here is Part 1:
And here is Part 2:
The event was also blogged by Wilson, Jane, Miu, and Angie.
Austin Ramzy of TIME also blogged it. And AFP has an article about Isaac here.
Thanks to Elaine Chan for videotaping the April 1st event on digital copyright.
For those of you who know Mandarin and Cantonese, you can watch Part 1 here:
…and Part II here:
The event was also blogged in photos and text by Britney Tian and “Aiyahenator.”
(If I’ve missed the links for any other people who blogged the event please post your link in the comments section of this post.)
If you haven’t e-mailed me yet to tell me what position you want to apply for in the Virtual Newsroom, please e-mail me ASAP. I am hoping to make final assignments by the end of Monday or Tuesday at the latest.
Reading this week:
Foust: Chapter 7 (“Writing and Editing Online”) Mindy McAdams, “Writing for the Web“
ASSIGNMENT: Your assignment this week is to start gathering the elements for your final project. Post a progress report on your blog by noon on Thursday April 19th. (That way I can get a sense of how you are doing and advise you if you need help.) In discussing the kinds of elements you plan to use in your story, point to some real life examples of other news sites that are using the same elements in the way that you would like to use them. (For instance: if you are planning to use audio, find an example of how audio is used in the same way you would like to use it. If you are planning to use video clips, show how they have been used effectively in the same way in some other place. Be realistic and keep in mind the technical limitations of what you have in terms of: skills, equipment, software, and time.)
You should plan to have gathered most of the raw information, photos and video for your final project by Friday April 27th so that you and your classmates can start putting everything together and editing it on the website. Remember, the production time always takes longer than you expect!
In addition to the tools we have used so far in the class, you can also use Adobe Illustrator (installed on all DM Lab computers) to create charts and graphs. The Hong Kong Stories site that we will be using to upload your stories includes plug-ins for MP3 audio. Any video can be included by first uploading it to Google Video, then embedding it into a story post. (The multimedia editors and I will work with you so that it gets embedded correctly and appears on the site as intended.) You can create slideshows either using slideshow plugin that I have installed, or if you want to do something fancier with audio, we will install a program called Soundslides on a couple of the computers in the DM Lab.
NOTE ON PRESENTATIONS: I will be sending an e-mail by the end of Monday evening to the JMSC6019 class list with special instructions for this week’s presentation teams. Please keep an eye out for it.
If you haven’t e-mailed me yet to tell me what position you want to apply for in the Virtual Newsroom, please e-mail me ASAP. I will make final assignments by the end of Monday.
Reading this week:
Foust: Chapter 7 (“Writing and Editing Online”) Mindy McAdams, “Writing for the Web“
ASSIGNMENT: Your assignment this week is to start gathering the elements for your final project. Post a progress report on your blog by noon on Monday April 16th. (That way I can get a sense of how you are doing and advise you if you need help.) In discussing the kinds of elements you want to use in your story, point to some real life examples of other news sites that are using the same elements in the way that you would like to use them. (For instance: if you are planning to use audio, find an example of how audio is used in the same way you would like to use it. If you are planning to use video clips, show how they have been used effectively in the same way in some other place. Be realistic and keep in mind the technical limitations of what you have in terms of: skills, equipment, software, and time.)
You should plan to have gathered most of the raw information, photos and video for your final project by Tuesday April 24th so that you and your classmates can start putting everything together and editing it on the website. Remember, the production time always takes longer than you expect!
In addition to the tools we have used so far in the class, you can also use Adobe Illustrator (installed on all DM Lab computers) to create charts and graphs. The Hong Kong Stories site that we will be using to upload your stories includes plug-ins for MP3 audio. Any video can be included by first uploading it to Google Video, then embedding it into a story post. (The multimedia editors and I will work with you so that it gets embedded correctly and appears on the site as intended.) You can create slideshows either using slideshow plugin that I have installed, or if you want to do something fancier with audio, I will install a program called Soundslides on a couple of the computers in the DM Lab.
In class this week we discussed everybody’s project topics and sorted them out under the categories that we are considering for our class website.
Don’t forget to apply for one of the jobs in our Virtual Newsroom! Send me your e-mails by the end of Friday.
Reading:
Foust, Chapter 6 (“Web Page Design”) – to p. 128 only. (And Ch. 9 if you didn’t already read it last week.) Mindy McAdams, Online media types and Using Media Types.
Blog assignment: (Due by the end of Friday so the people doing presentations have enough time to prepare) Based on what you learned from Foust chapters 6 and 9, the “media types” chart by Mindy McAdams, and based on the kinds of online media we have learned to produce in this class (text with hyperlinks, photo, audio, and video), what combinations of online media do you think would be best to tell the story of your final project? Is your project best suited to one long text story or a series of several shorter ones? Will the story be enhanced by a stand-alone photo essay or will it be better to place the photos inside a text story? What kind of ideas do you have for using audio? How about video? Do you think that you would enhance the viewer’s understanding of the story by including video? If so, what kind of video? Would it be better to include relatively raw clips of a person talking or an event happening? Or would it be better to include a mini- “package?” Why? ALSO: What kinds of opportunities for viewer interactivity would you like to provide? Will you invite your readers to leave comments and discuss your story? Will you link to bloggers to generate a discussion with them about the issues in your story? Would you consider putting other features like reader opinion polls? Would a resource page containing links to other resources related to your topic also help to enhance your story? How about charts and graphs?
