TEACHING

Algorithmic News

We are in the era of news algorithms. Computer science has evolved to a stage where algorithms can contribute to news production. News organizations, such as Associated Press, Forbes, Reuters, have been using automation to facilitate the writing of market reports on a daily basis. Algorithms and automation will continue to be incorporated into news production to enhance the scale, speed, efficiency, and breadth of content. With technology advancing, journalists should know how algorithms can better serve journalism. Students will study two major ideas in this class: 1) the new journalism model, where each step of the process is automated and augmented by AI, 2) the application of AI tools in news gathering, producing and distribution. No programming or computer science knowledge is required for this course.

Data Journalism

Obtaining, interpreting, visualizing, and displaying data have become essential skills for journalists. Fundamentals of Data-Driven Journalism is designed for people who want to acquire knowledge and skills in data journalism and social media data concepts and practices. It provides essential techniques and skills on how to effectively work with data and produce accurate and interesting data stories. You will learn the strategies of advanced search, web scraping, data cleaning, data sorting and preparing, data visualization tools, and the practices and principles of transforming data into stories. No programming or statistics knowledge is required for this course.

Interactive News

The relationship between journalists and their audiences has become a more interactive nature of relationship. Journalists no longer arbitrarily decide the reporting content to inform the audiences. Instead, journalists should develop a thorough grasp of the audiences’ desires, expectations and interests, and try to meet the audiences’ demands in a variety of forms and times. This course focuses on increasing the social media literacies while improving the understanding in what ways professional communicators can reach out to and engage the public in the process of news reporting. This course combines professional skills with theoretical thinking. You will both develop a critical thinking of the role of journalists and audiences in the ever-changing media landscape, and learn the strategies and skills of how to engage and interact with audiences.

Digital Journalism

Communication advancements have revolutionized the field of journalism. The new world of journalism is dominated by new software and devices. Although how to write a good story is still at the heart of good journalism, how to use technology skills to conduct interviews and produce stories has become the foundation of a good story. This is a survey course that will introduce you to a suite of techniques, applications and ideas that are employed in contemporary digital media reporting, editing, design and delivery. A major focus of this course will be on the concept of skill development in a digital news environment. You will develop a skill set of information searching and verification, A/V editing, data analysis, and information visualization.

Multimedia Capstone

Create an in-depth, enterprise multimedia story, worthy of your professional portfolio. The story must contain at least three different pieces of media, as well as statistics. You'll produce pieces of the multimedia story throughout the semester and submit them for comments and review from the teacher and your fellow students. Revisions for each part of the multimedia story will be expected so that you'll end up with a polished, professional piece of journalism. Students will maintain a website to curate their work, learning how to use what they build in one of the most common content management systems. Students will rely on open-source tools, but will also learn basic coding to customize those tools for more effective digital presentation. Students will also learn about and critique other digital storytelling formats, user experience concepts and web analytics.