Course Description
Students learn methods to gather news and information via observation, interviewing, capturing visuals, accessing documents, and analyzing and visualizing data. Covers comprehensive storytelling across platforms, requesting and working with public documents, fact-checking and verification, and the use of digital tools to analyze audiences and optimize content for digital distribution.
Athena Title
Reporting II
Prerequisite
JOUR 3090 and permission of department
Semester Course Offered
Offered fall and spring
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
Students expand and deepen their knowledge about journalistic research methods across platforms. They develop expertise in covering beats and in finding and vetting diverse sources ranging from secondary to human to documents and data. Fundamentals of audience engagement and analytics, search engine optimization (SEO), fact-checking and verification, open records, and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests are covered. Students in this advanced reporting class continue to enhance their skills in requesting and conducting interviews, using strategies and tools appropriate for audio, visual, and digital platforms.
Topical Outline
State and federal open records and open meetings laws Access to crime scenes and other live stories Mechanics of beat reporting Requesting documents and data Online and database research techniques Social media search techniques Finding sources Interviewing techniques Observation and the telling detail Capturing audio and visuals Numeracy Requesting and cleaning data Introduction to data journalism Audience analytics Search engine optimization Content management systems From reporting the story to creating the story
Syllabus