Thee are many tools that have been created for do-it-yourself creation of visual journalism (infographics, word clouds and maps), ranging from complex ones to simple ones.
We will get an overview of the area and learn how to use some tools. In our last full week of class before we finish up on final projects, we'll cover three areas of visual journalism.
Monday: Infographics – Piktochart is an web-based graphic creator that uses HTML5 to allow you to create an infographic on the fly.
Wednesday: Word Clouds – How to create a topical word cloud, using a free online tool known as Wordle.
Friday: Google Maps – How to create a basic locator map in Google Maps and Google Map Engine, web-based solutions.
We have a short week, so we are going to finish out our audio section and learn about creating slideshows.
Wednesday: We will spend the first part of class finishing the edits on our sample audio and outputting them. When done, we will cover how to edit audio in Premiere. In the second half of class, we will get in-depth with best practices for audio recording equipment and publishing.
Friday: We will cover the basics of slideshows and alternative ways of producing them (using SoundSlides versus Premiere and iMovie). Before class, read these links on using SoundSlides and Adobe Premiere Pro and be prepared to write about each workflow.
>>Guest speaker confirmed for Wednesday's class: Paul Suarez, Multimedia Journalist from Columbian.com, will come to our class and talk about his work as a breaking news Web reporter and multimedia storyteller.
Be prepared to ask Paul at least one question about the current state of Digital Journalism and where he sees it going in the future. Paul has a great skill set for today's digital world. He is a graduate of Western Washington University.
In other words, a "backpack journalist" is the concept of a reporter who is a multimedia journalist. There was great discussion/debate about what skill set was needed and what tools need to be placed into the hands of journalists. A bookend to Stevens' 2002 article is "Defining Backpack Journalism, Again," Bill Gentile (2012). There are many great resources outlining the tools of the trade for new media journalism, including mobile journalism. One of our recommended texts, "Journalism Next," by Mark Briggs has a whole chapter on the topic. A focus on mobile tools has evolved naturally as mobile options have become more accessible.
>>> In Friday's class, we will check in on your blogs and ensure they are properly configured for publishing content to them for the rest of the quarter. We will also talk about posting content through social media and look at the platform Storify. Finally, we will check in on the Online News Association's annual gathering (ONA 13) and watch a livestream of today's keynote from Nate Silver.
Here is the Storify article I created for coverage through the first day of the three-day gathering.
This week we will revisit a core skill of all journalism: writing. We will do a brief review of the fundamentals of writing for specific audiences; how writing for the Web is its own artform (with a lot of science behind it); and how journalism writing differs in format and structure.
The topic of writing for the Internet in general has been the subject of articles going back nearly a decade, such as "The 10 Commandments of Writing for the Web" (2004).
Here are some great WordPress resources, courtesy of Clark College Instructor Lorelle VanFossen, whom I mentioned in Monday's class. She has provided us with the following sites to explore and advance our WordPress knowledge.
We will cover some advanced topics, as well as the detailed weekly class calendar on Wednesday.
This week is a short one – just two classes with the day off on Friday, Oct. 11. So, we will be packing a lot into it.
There are a tremendous amount of resources on the Web to learn about WordPress, but there is no substitute for spending quality time with your blog (especially the dashboard and admin side of it). Spend some time exploring it.
As we covered on Monday, WordPress is the creation of Matt Mullenweg and a bunch of open-source creators who have given people like multimedia journalists a powerful platform to communicate. We can carve out our own space on the Web and build out a website, hosted on wordpress.com or self-hosted on a custom URL powered by WordPress.
On Wednesday, we will go more in-depth into key WordPress settings. We touched on search engine optimization (SEO) and web coding of WordPress pages on Monday, but we will dive deeper into tagging, SEO basics, and blog settings. By the end of the class we will create a sample multimedia post that will include text, links, photos, and embedded video.