Lecture 3: What is a journalist?

People and Roles

Reporter

• Different beats http://www.theglobeandmail.com/?ord=1
• News
• Weather
• Sports
• Local Government
• Business/Markets
• Science
• Medicine/Health
• Fashion/leisure/arts

Public relations

• flac, 
• propagandist,
• proselytizer, 
• salesman -- sponsored content, advertorial, native advertising
• pays well

Aggregator

• emerging as a more important in digital environments
• bring resources together as opposed to original reporting
• digital tools allow us to get a drink from the fire hose. 
• maybe AI

Journalist

• objective/vs subjective 
• Neutral point of view
• Stated bias up front. 
• critical thinker
• systematic analysis based on theoretical framework
• Speak to and for the public 

Investigative Journalist

• Exposing problems
• Witness
• proposing solutions
• heads roll

Applications and Practices for this week.

• Storify
• Hypothes.is
• Google Docs
• Zotero
• Google Scholar
• Google Alerts 
• Google Trends

Lecture 2: Working collaboratively online

We'll use quite a few applications which are designed for collaborative work. Skype, Zotero and Zotero groups as well as Hypothes.is Groups.

I started a group here https://hypothes.is/groups/yeKA17We/bu30240digital-journalism

The first document shared with this group relates to basic news writing.

Lecture 1 for 2016

In our first class we mostly went over the syllabus and got some accounts set up. The lecture was broadcast using Google HangOuts on Air and posted on a YouTube playlist on my Channel. I'll be using this blog as a central organizing space for the course. Expect to see a weekly entry from me that will introduce an agenda and direct you toward course resources. I'll also use this space to model the various applications and practices that we will explore throughout the course.

I'll also be using a variety of online environments that exemplify the new spaces where digital journalism is emerging.  I will provide a recording of my lecture for each week but I will make sure that students will not be recorded without their knowledge or permission. For the moment I will make these recordings available in a Google Plus Circle that I have created for this class. If it proves too complicated I will embed the video on this blog.

I will also do a weekly scan of news topics gleaned from a variety of social media sources. I will use an application called Storify to curate stories from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google Plus and others as they present themselves.