New Media Workshop

Many people have done some excellent work this semester.

Your final work, now published on the Hong Kong Stories website, has been receiving praise from people both within and beyond the JMSC. You should all be very proud. Many of you did not have any web experience before this class. Next time you are interviewing for a job – or seeking a promotion – you can proudly show prospective employers what you can do by pointing them to this website.

Have a wonderful summer and good luck in the future!

A big welcome to all of you from Rebecca, Steve, and Ben, this semester’s NMW instruction team. We look forward to seeing you on Monday.

You can click the links at left to get a better idea of the class description, requirements, and schedule.

Weekly class notes and detailed descriptions of the assignments will always be posted in this space. They will also be linked from the class schedule as they are generated.

If you are interested in learning more about how to license your work under Creative Commons, or how to find and use other people’s CC-licensed works, please join us this coming Saturday morning for a Practical Workshop on Use of Creative Commons Materials organized by our very own Ben Cheng.

Here is the text of the announcement:

Creative Commons licenses are copyright licenses that let you share your work easily with other people all over the world – by making it “Some Rights Reserved” instead of “All Rights Reserved”. You can also remix and reuse creative works under Creative Commons licenses legally, without the fear of infringing others copyright.

In this workshop, you will learn about:

1) What is Creative Commons, how it works, and what is the value of Creative Commons for Hong Kong, and its policy implications.

2) Tips, tools and practical skills of using Creative Commons licenses – how to use Creative Commons licensed work, and how to publish your work under Creative Commons license.

3) The variety of creative works available in the Creative Commons including music, photos, educational materials, and others.

Organizer: Centre for Development and Resources for Students of The University of Hong Kong

Date: 24 November 2007 (Sat)

Time: 9:30 – 12:30am

Venue: Rm 305, HKU SPACE Admiralty Learning Centre

Speakers: Chong Chan Yau – Director of Student Development, Centre of Development and Resources for Students, University of Hong Kong

Rebecca Mackinnon – Assistant Professor of Journalism and Media Studies Centre, University of Hong Kong

Edmon Chung – Vice-Chairman of Internet Society, Hong Kong

Jack Qiu – Assistant Professor, School of Journalism and Communication, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Ben Cheng – Convenor of Intellectual Property Issues Watch

Admission Fee: Free Admission

Registration: Please send your name and contact details to email: mklwong@hkucc.hku.hk, or phone: (852) 2857-8383 (Ms Melissa Wong) *Seats are Limited

Everybody should be proud of the fabulous job you’ve been doing covering the District Council Elections for our Hong Kong Stories website. Covering an election for the first time isn’t easy – and doing it for the web is even harder. We’ve all been learning a lot. For the historical record, here’s a screenshot of our site as it looked in the early hours of Monday (click to enlarge to full size):

Based on some things that have been popping up in the delicous feed and on a few blogs I just want to make sure everybody is clear.

The District Council Elections, to be held on November 18th, are the subject of our class reporting project.

Key facts:

The nomination period for the 2007 District Council election will run from October 2 to 15.

There will be a total of 405 seats up for grabs in the 18 districts in the November 18 poll.

The Legco By-Election, set for December 2nd after classes end, is something completely different.

That is the race getting most of the media attention, in which we may see a face-off between Anson Chan and Regina Ip.

As I mentioned in class, there are several reasons that we are focusing on the District Council elections and not the Legco by-election:

1. The District Council election fits with our class schedule and the Legco by-election does not.
2. The Legco by-election will be a total media circus, making it impossible for students to get interviews with the candidates and difficult to do truly original on-the-ground reporting.
3. Because the district councils are Hong Kong’s most basic level of government, the candidates and issues will be much more accessible to students who want to cover the election with original sound and pictures from the scene as well as text.
4. The DC election is likely to be very under-covered by the local media, making it possible for all of you to make a unique and valuable contribution to public knowledge and understanding about Hong Kong’s local politics.

Our former BJ student Fion Li did a project about students running in the Hong Kong district council elections. Click here for the first part, then the sidebar will take you to the rest. She posted a collection of useful links and resources here.

Hong Kong political scientist Michael Degolyer recently wrote a sharply worded essay about why the Hong Kong government is holding these two different levels of elections at different times. Here is a news article in The Standard about the decision to separate the elections. (I smell a possible story angle…)

Remember that DC election day, November 18th, counts as a class for everybody – as has been noted prominently on the class schedule, and has been announced in class.

Please hit the comments section of this post or send an e-mail to the class google group if you have any questions or thoughts about this.

Hello everybody. I look forward to meeting you in the first week of September. Thanks to all MJ students who have filled out the Tech Skills Survey. If you did not receive an e-mail about the survey for some reason, please inform Shirley Wu immediately and she will make sure that I have you on my student list.

I am out of town until August 26th. However I’ve received a couple e-mails from students requesting advice about what classes to choose. If you are one of my BJ students, you have already gone through course enrollment by now. New Media Workshop is only offered once per year for BJ students.

MJ students are making their course choices this week. Here is what I told an MJ student who just e-mailed me:

The JMSC has sent you information listing our course offerings and explaining the requirements. They are also listed here.

You are required to take “Advanced reporting and writing,” “Critical issues,” and “Television and radio writing” in the Fall semester. “New Media Workshop” and “TV and Video Production” are also required courses, but they are offered both in the Fall and Spring, so you can choose whether to take them in the Fall or whether to take electives instead.

However, if you intend to take the “Advanced Web Skills” class in the Spring, you must take both “New Media Workshop” and “TV and Video Production” in the Fall, because they are prerequisites for “Advanced Web Skills.” If you do not plan to take “Advanced Web Skills,” you are free to choose when you want to take the New Media and TV Production classes. However, the Fall New Media class will give priority to the more technically advanced students.

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.

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.

I sent this to everybody via e-mail but will repeat it here as well.

The presentations for week 7 will be a little different than in the past.

I would like each team to lead a discussion and critique of the photo essays done by your classmates. Just focus on that only. We will do our copyright discussion the following week.

I’d like you to pick out your favorites and also talk about which ones might have been improved and how. Which photos or series of photos do you think would grab the readers’ attention to get them to read the accompanying text story? Which ones might not? Why?

In evaluating the photographs you may want to check out the following resources on photojournalism:

Hints from picture.com

Photo Tips from the International Center of Photography

Try a Picture Essay by photographer Arthur Bleich

TheDigitalJournalist magazine – for examples of great digital photojournalism

ALSO PLEASE NOTE: I am expecting that the people who are signed up to give their presentation next week will actually give a presentation next week. If you need to switch with another classmate you must sort that out immediately and make sure that the correct team is signed up on the list.

Some students have been having trouble finding things that other people have tagged on the web and which are also relevant to their final topics. Don’t feel like you have to restrict yourself to del.icio.us, technorati, and Flickr only. Any system that uses tags and which you can subscribe to will be fine for the assignment. This includes Chinese-language tagging systems, as long as you explain in English on your blog what they are.

Note that Yahoo Hong Kong has a new tagging system. Also see Baidu’s tagging system. (A review in English of the Baidu system is here. According to a new report only 2.3% of China’s internet users currently use tags.)

Also note that Prof. Daniel Churchill from the Education Faculty’s Division of IT Studies has set up a tagging system just for the HKU community, HKU Scuttle. Please feel free to use that and let us know whether you think a more localized tagging community is more useful to you.

This week we will focus on digital photography and the use of photos on the web.

The JMSC only has five digital cameras for students to use. Three classes totalling 60 students are taking the New Media Workshop this semester. So this is very important: if you own a digital camera (or if a friend or family member will let you borrow one) please bring it to class this week! Don’t worry about the camera’s quality. The main thing is for you to demonstrate the ability in class to take photos, get them onto your computer, manipulate them in Photoshop, and upload them to the web.

ALSO IMPORTANT: Bring the USB cable that goes with your camera – the cable that connects the camera to a computer. It will look something like this (note what the ends look like – click images to enlarge):

ONE MORE NOTE: It will save time if you can set up a free account for yourself on Flickr if you don’t already have one.

David Weinberger, the author of one of your readings this week and the upcoming book about tagging, Everything is Miscellaneous, has agreed to answer any questions you may have about tagging and what it means for us as journalists – and as human beings more generally.

You can communicate your questions to him in one of two ways:
1. Post it as a comment to this blog post.
2. Post it on your blog and be sure to link to this post somewhere in your blog post so that we will see the “trackback” to your question in the comments thread of this post.

Sometime early next week David will post his response to your questions and comments on his blog.

everythingismiscellaneous

Whatever the technical problem was in class yesterday morning, the JMSCHKU del.icio.us tag is now filling up with the things that you guys are tagging.

As demonstrated in class, you can now use your Google readers to subscribe to the feed of the whole JMSCHKU tag, or to specific tags like (for example) pollution, or to combinations of tags like hongkong+pollution.

We focused on the del.icio.us tagging system in class and use del.icio.us in your assignments so that you can see how people are using tags all over the world, and also so that you can participate in sharing tags with people around the world who share common informational interests.

However I also want to make sure you are aware of a tagging system that has been set up by another HKU colleague Prof. Daniel Churchill. It’s called HKU Scuttle. It works just like del.icio.us but is set up specifically for people in the HKU community to share information and ideas. I encourage you to join that one too. It might also be useful and fun for you to use – and you can subscribe to feeds the same way as with del.icio.us.

As always your assignments for the week are posted on the Course Schedule page. As usual I am repeating them here:

READING:

David Weinberger, Tagging and Why it Matters” (PDF)

Pew Internet Report on Tagging(click on the link that says “view PDF of report”)

Foust, Chapter 4 pp.61-69 (you can skip or skim pp.70-82 as we will go back to those later); AND ALL OF Chapter 5

ASSIGNMENT 1: (BJ DUE FRIDAY NOON)Create your own del.icio.us account and link to your del.icio.us page on your blog. Also put the link for your del.icio.us feed next to your name on the HKstories wiki. Look at the feeds and websites you subscribed to for your project in the Week 2 assignment. Pick out at least three articles or blog posts from those feeds that you think will be useful to your work and “tag” them in your Del.icio.us account. Subscribe to the feeds of three del.icio.us tags related to your topic. Then, conduct a search of blog posts related to your topic on Technorati. Do the same search on Google using the same word or words and compare the result. The Foust text discusses a range of Internet sources for journalistic research. What do you think that tools like del.icio.us and Technorati add to your research experience beyond what those tools provide, and what are their drawbacks?

ASSIGNMENT 2: (DUE BEFORE THE START OF WEEK 5 CLASS) Look at the HKstories wiki to see which classmates are working on topics similar to yours. Subscribe to those classmates’ del.icio.us feeds. Also subscribe to the Technorati and Flickr feeds that are relevant to your topic. Pick out 3 or 4 story “leads” or ideas that you got from looking at those feeds and the material from Assignment 1. Criteria for choosing those “leads” must be: They contain information that you think is interesting enough to follow up through traditional reporting methods like phone or face-to-face interviews, or more investigative offline research to check the facts about what’s really happening, or a series of photos documenting what’s going on, or some combination thereof. Explain why you chose them and how you plan to follow up.

I had extended the first assignment deadline and cut out this week’s second assignment due to Chinese New Year travel for many students. However some of your classmates who must prepare presentations this week have protested, pointing out that the later deadline doesn’t give them enough time to read what you have written in and incorporate your writings into their presentations. Thus I am moving the deadlines back to their original slots, although the BJ’s have till the very end of Friday. If anybody is unable to make these revised deadlines (which will not change again) due to legitimate travel reasons, please let me know. However please be considerate to your fellow classmates and post your blog posts by the new deadline if at all possible.

The readings, etc. are on the class schedule as usual. Click here to remind yourself of what they are and make sure you read them so that you can discuss them in your blog post. Meanwhile I will repeat the assignment description here. Note that while there is no 2nd blogging assignment, I need you to sort out your Wikispaces account and get your name (blog name is ok if you don’t want real name) on the HKStories page. More instructions below:

NOTE THE DEADLINE HAS CHANGED A 2ND TIME, DUE TO POPULAR STUDENT DEMAND! APOLOGIES FOR CNY-INDUCED CONFUSION.
Blog & Wiki assignment (BJ due Friday 23rd by MIDNIGHT. MJ due Tuesday Feb 27 by NOON.) Find a wikipedia page that relates to the subject that you are considering for your final project. Contribute to that page in a substantive way by adding or correcting information. Write a blog post describing what you did and linking to the specific edits you made. Or if there is no Wikipedia entry on the subject you are most interested in, try creating one and see what happens. Then describe what happened on your blog and link to the history pages that show the process. Answer the question: in what way was this journalism? Or was it something else and if so what? Reflect on what you learned from the readings in light of your own experience in editing and using Wikipedia.

NOTE THAT DUE TO CNY THERE IS ONLY ONE BLOGGING ASSIGNMENT THIS WEEK. HOWEVER YOU MUST ALSO DO THE FOLLOWING BEFORE THE START OF OUR WEEK 4 CLASS:
- If you have not already created an account on Wikispaces, please go to wikispaces.com and set up a free account for yourself (it takes about 30 seconds).
- Then go to rmack.wikispaces.com, and click on the link that says “Join this Space” at the upper right-hand corner.
- Go to the HKStories page (linked on the far right-hand side). Look at the list of topics. If none of the listed topics describe the focus of your possible final project, please add a heading describing your final topic to the page, then put your name under it. If your final project topic is already listed, please add your name under that topic.

I will also repeat here the section in my last blog post about grading, deadlines, and the topic of your final project, with a slight addition at the end:

NOTE ON ASSIGNMENTS AND GETTING CREDIT FOR THEM: If you miss a class, you will not get credit for the in-class work for that class unless you have a serious family emergency or serious illness/injury, in which case make-ups are possible. However if you post your assignment or assignments for that week on time (as stipulated on the class schedule), you can still get full credit for that assignment even if you were not present in class. Please note that if you were absent for non-emergency reasons, if the skills required to complete the assignment were taught in class, and if you are unable to figure out how to do them on your own, you must find a classmate to help you. If you have questions about any of this please ask me.

ABOUT YOUR CLASS PROJECTS: If you are working on your MJ final project this semester, it is ok if the focus of your class project overlaps with your MJ final project.

However for this class you must focus on an angle that can be told as a multimedia story, including photos and sound.
That goes for everybody’s project.

This is an important announcement for all students. As large numbers of MJ’s are absent from class this week, the second assignment for Week 3 has been removed. Your assignment, due at noon the day before your Week 4 class is outlined on the revised class schedule. Click on that link for the readings, which have not changed. The assignment and deadlines HAVE CHANGED. I repeat it here to make sure everybody is perfectly clear:

Blog & Wiki assignment (BJ due Monday Feb.26th at noon. MJ due Thursday March 1st at noon.) Find a wikipedia page that relates to the subject that you are considering for your final project. Contribute to that page in a substantive way by adding or correcting information. Write a blog post describing what you did and linking to the specific edits you made. Or if there is no Wikipedia entry on the subject you are most interested in, try creating one and see what happens. Then describe what happened on your blog and link to the history pages that show the process. Answer the question: in what way was this journalism? Or was it something else and if so what? Reflect on what you learned from this week’s assigned readings in light of your own experience in editing and using Wikipedia.

The original second assignment will be done as in-class work during Week 4.

NOTE ON ASSIGNMENTS AND GETTING CREDIT FOR THEM: If you miss a class, you will not get credit for the in-class work for that class unless you have a serious family emergency or serious illness/injury, in which case make-ups are possible. However if you post your assignment or assignments for that week on time (as stipulated on the class schedule), you can still get full credit for that assignment even if you were not present in class. Please note that if you were absent for non-emergency reasons, if the skills required to complete the assignment were taught in class, and if you are unable to figure out how to do them on your own, you must find a classmate to help you. If you have questions about any of this please ask me.

ABOUT YOUR CLASS PROJECTS: If you are working on your MJ final project this semester, it is ok if the focus of your class project overlaps with your MJ final project. However for this class you must focus on an angle that can be told as a multimedia story, including photos and sound.

Have a great Chinese New Year!

Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, where I was a reasearch fellow until last December, is accepting applications for summer internships.

Their internship deadline is in a few days: February 15th. If you think you might be interested (after reading the rest of this post carefully and clicking on the links I’ve provided) please contact me ASAP. We can then discuss whether you might be a good fit and how to contact the internship coordinator.

More information about the Berkman Center’s internship program is here. They describe the internship program as follows:

INTERNSHIPS and SUMMER RESEARCH ASSOCIATES. These arrangements are quite informal. We have a number of ongoing projects and would welcome assistance for general and legal research, support for the summer ILAW program, open source programming, and webcasting, among other things. If you are interested in participating next summer, please send a resume that identifies your skills for such tasks and include two professional or academic references. The program runs for 10 weeks from June 1 to August 15. Be forewarned that stipends may not be sufficient to cover living expenses in the Boston area. No other benefits are provided, therefore associates must make their own housing, insurance and transportation arrangements.

The Berkman Center’s many projects involve Internet and media law, online media creation, Internet governance, digital identity, issues of privacy, research and advocacy on issues related to surveillance and online free speech, etc. To find out more details please click here and here. You can also poke around the whole website starting here.

They currently have a couple of different projects that relate to the Chinese Internet and they could use a person or two who can read and write Chinese well.

Also, depending on your citizenship, keep in mind that there could be some visa issues to sort out in the event that your application is accepted.

1. The textbook has arrived at the bookstore! I’ve assigned a chapter from the textbook this week so please try to buy it. (Thanks to Jonathan for bringing us the breaking news last night.)

2. Uniblogs: Some of you have reported problems accessing your blogs at Uniblogs.org. I asked the developers about this in their online support forum. It turns out they have been upgrading their system over the past week or so, which has caused access problems for a lot of users. They promise that the problems will stop very soon when the upgrade is finished. Meanwhile, if you have trouble logging into your blog you may need to give it a rest for 20 minutes then try again. Most likely it will be fine after that. But by Monday things should be smooth and you won’t need to worry about it.