Related Course/s:

A unit of study in the Journalism Major. This unit was formerly kown as Journalism Practice IV - Sources and Audiences 

Aims & Objectives:

After successfully completing this unit, students should:

§         Understand the importance of contact relationships to good journalism, and have begun to develop your own contacts.

§         Understand the practical and ethical issues involved in contact relationships.

§         Know how to use internet-based social networking tools to find and develop relationships with audiences.

§         Understand the relationship of User Generated Content to that produced by media professionals.

§         Have developed your skills in telling stories with text, pictures, video and sound.

§         Have explored and gained an appreciation of the use of blogging and audience interaction in journalism.

Teaching Methods:

1 hours lecture and 2 hour tutorial per week.

Assessment:

Written assessment (25%)

Project work (50%)

Tutorial paper (15%)

Generic Skills Outcomes:

Students will be provided with feedback during the assessment for this unit of study on their progress in attaining the following generic skills:

§         analysis skills,

§         problem solving skills,

§         communications skills,

§         ability to tackle unfamiliar problems

§         ability to work independently

Content:

Students will learn about the importance of contacts to journalistic practice, and how to develop and manage contact relationships and relationships with audiences. Students will be given practical exercises and detailed feedback to sharpen their existing skills. Students will learn how to develop and manage contacts, and will be given practical exercises that will result in them building their own relationships with sources of information and audiences for journalism. Students will learn about the changing nature of relationships with audiences. They will be exposed to overseas experiments in social networking as a journalism tool, and will be assisted to conduct their own experiments. They will think through and develop principles to govern their own interactions with audiences, and will learn how to find and identify potential audiences for journalism using social networking and other internet tools. The relationship of User Generated Content to professionally produced content will be explored.

Reading Materials:

Rosen, Jay What Are Journalists For? YaleUniversity Press 1999

Simons, Margaret The Content Makers Penguin 2007

Simons, Margaret The Content Makers blog at http://blogs.crikey.com.au/contentmakers/

Rosen, Jay, PressThink Blog http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/