Cyberjournalism: Tentative schedule

"Tentative" is the operative word. This page will be modified throughout the term, as we find other links. Think of the readings as take-off points. Most have hyperlinks to related pages that explore the issues in greater depth. Also, I will place some readings on reserve in the reading room, and you can find more information on most of the following subjects in the web bibliography.

 

Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5

Week 6 Week 7 Week 8 Week 9 Week 10

  • Hidden Eugene Winter '11
  • Cyberjournalism '09 Class Web site, Winter '09
  • "The Art of..."Class Web site, Winter '07
  • "At Work" Class Web site, Winter '05
  • Webmonkey HTML cheat sheet
  • Yale Web Style Guide 3rd edition
  • A good site for tutorials


    • Jan. 3, 5 (Week 1)
    Introduction: CyberJOURNALISM?
    Web issues and background
    HTML primer and practice

    Resources

  • An HTML tutorial From the Knight Digital Media Center
  • A color picker
  • Color names
  • Webmonkey--a basic HTML cheat sheet
  • HTML tags
  • Journalism 2.0 A good, free resource about doing journalism online. Note: This is a large PDF file
  • Mindy McAdams' syllabus Great information and links from a professor at Florida
    Reading
  • Skim Thornburgh, Chapters 1, 3
  • Skim "A New Horizon for News" By Michael Massing in The New York Review of Books, Sept. 24, 2009



    Jan. 10, 12 (Week 2)
    Criticizing web sites
    Usability issues
    The economic context
    HTML exercise due Jan. 12
  • The Local: East Village
    Readings
  • Skim "The Reconstruction of American Journalism" By Michael Schudson and Leonard Downie. Columbia Journalism Review, Oct. 19 2009
  • Remarks by Tom Curley, AP's CEO Nov. 1, 2007
  • John Paton on Newspapers' Future Jeff Jarvis, Buzzmachine, Jan. 11, 2010. This is an interview with the new CEO of Journal Register Company, which has had tremendous economic problems.

    Resources
    Most of the following are background resources; many will be useful in doing the Web site critiques in Week 3.
    Some references on writing online

  • Writing News Online By Jonathan Dube
  • Inverted Pyramids in Cyberspace By Jakob Nielsen
  • How users read on the web Also by Nielsen
  • Online style of writing From The Yale Web Style Guide

    Some references on usability and design
  • An index of Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox columns on Web usability
  • Some columns from the list
  • Some site design issues Also from Nielsen's Alertbox site
  • False OraclesWhat consumers don't know about search engines
  • Web pages that suck Learn good design by studying bad design
    To the top


    Jan. 19 (Week 3)
    MLK Holiday Monday, Jan. 17
    Web site critique
    Web site presentations Jan. 19; paper due Jan. 24



    Jan. 24, 26 (Week 4)
    Writing and the web.
       What's similar; what's different?
       Hypertext and linking issues
       Linear vs. non-linear forms
    The old shovelware debate
    Integration of writing and design

    Readings:
         To the top

    Jan. 31, Feb. 2 (Week 5)
    More writing and editing issues
    Blogging Search Engine Optimization
    CMS concepts

    Images and page design
    GIF/JPEG formats
    Screen size/limitations and opportunities
    Consistency and control in HTML--early problems, ongoing issues
    (Traditional design considerations - typography, backgrounds, colors)
    Bandwidth issues and design
    CMS databases, templates and control

    Readings and resources:
  • Thornburgh, Chapter 4 "Managing Content on a News Site"
  • Thornburgh, Chapter 5 "Editing for Searchers and Scanners"
  • "This Headline not written for Google" by Eric Ulken. Also shows how information can be fed to different devices--mobile and RSS feeds.
  • "With Its Tablet, Apple Blurs Line Between Devices" NY Times coverage--also the following:
  • Technology columnist Pogue's commentary
  • With Apple Tablet, Print Media Hope for a Payday
  • Bits blog coverage
  • IPad can't play Flash Video, but it may not matter
  • David Carr's column

    Headlines and Search Engines

  • Several references

    Twitter ideas

  • Twitter home page
  • Wikipedia's Twitter entry
  • Twitter: Why You Should Care From Randy Cassingham's blog
  • Was Twitter Use During Michigan Governor's Speech a Form of Reporting? From Poynter Online
  • The president uses Twitter


    Feb. 7, 9 (Week 6)
    Story and video assignment--discussed in class--due Feb. 9
  • Tips for shooting web video A very good tutorial on the Knight Digital Media site at Berkeley.
  • Video: Journalists' Tooolkit Another good site.

    Site design
    Usability and Navigation issues
    Cascading Style Sheets
    Interactivity

    Readings:
  • Some site design issues By Jakob Nielsen
  • "Are Users Stupid?" By Jakob Nielsen
  • Differences between print and web design By, You guessed it.
  • CSS Intro and tutorial From the KDMC
  • Visual design

    Some page design issues

  • See Week 2 Readings on Web design from Nielsen
  • Page Frameworks From the Yale Web Style Guide; fixed and flexible page widths
  • Page width and line length
  • Characteristics of Type on the Web
  • A color picker
  • More Information on color Includes some HTML information
  • Image use on the web Some basics by Web Design Group. Old, but still good basic info
  • Image File Formats: Which to Use
  • JPEG info From Wikipedia--includes examples at bottom
  • GIF file format From Wikipedia
  • Back to the Drawing Board How quickly we redesign. By Mindy McAdams. The examples are somewhat dated. They've been redesigned since she wrote.
  • Web pages that suck Learn good design by studying bad design

    To the top

    Feb. 14, 16 (Week 7)
    New approaches to reporting Multimedia storytelling Interactivity--Animations, simulations, bells and whistles

    Multimedia storytelling

    Readings
  • Thornburgh, Chapter 8, "Multimedia Reporting"
  • What Is a Multimedia Story? By Jane Stevens. Includes Dancing Rocks story
  • Multimedia Storytelling: When Is It Worth It? By Nora Paul and Laura Ruel
  • Journalism Styories: A Multimedia Approach By Mindy McAdams
  • Training projects-Berkeley Multimedia writing workshops
  • Touching hearts By Joe Weiss (who developed Soundslides)
  • Digital Storytelling Effects lab Research and links to use of slideshows, multimedia, etc.

    Other multimedia issues

  • Multimedia issues Yale style guide
  • Streaming audio and video By Jakob Nielsen
  • Animation, audio and video By Jakob Nielsen
  • Talking Head Video Is Boring Online By Jakob Nielsen

    To the top

    Feb. 21, 23 (Week 8)
    Interactivity--Animations, simulations, bells and whistles

    Readings and Resources
  • Thornburgh, Chapter 11 "Journalism as Conversation: Engaging the Audience"

    Simulations

  • Interactive simulation design
  • Airport screening simulation (Unfortunately, no longer available. This was interesting.)
  • Shuttle package--CNN Click on Interactive link at bottom--plug-in problem --More broken links
  • Elements of Digital Storytelling By Nora Paul and Christina Fiebich of the the Institute for New Media Studies at U. Minn.

    More interactives

  • GPA Calculator
  • Jazz Lounge From the PBS web site

    Animation

  • Meaning in motion: The Ken Burns Effect
  • Multimedia Strategies, including animation from Yale Style Guide
  • Animation in headline

    Audio files

  • What is MP3 CompressionA simple explanation
  • Understanding MP3 CompressionA more technical explanation--ARS Technica site

    The Web and Copyright

  • A Fair(y) Use Tale (NOT a Disney movie
  • Fair useUniversity of Texas information
  • Fair Use Guidelines for Educational Multimedia
  • The Copyright Web Site
  • Multimedia law for web builders--bibliography
  • Public domain music site


    (Weeks 9-10)
    Work on the class Web site

  • To the top
  • Cyberjournalism home page
  • Links to other web readings and resources