TOPIC: Research a well-known person using only Internet resources.
Continue reading “The good, the bad, and the mad of Internet research”
The good, the bad, and the mad of Internet research
Month: February 2016
Where does news come from, anyway?
TOPIC: Where does news come from?
MoPho portfolio exercises
A list of our weekly exercises, which you’ll need to post as a portfolio of work in a gallery on your WordPress sites for assessment. Feel free to interpret each in any way you want to, though the theme of each photograph should be clear to a viewer.
You can also do more than one photo for each theme. The more we shoot, the better we get 🙂
#silhouette
#emotion
#reflection
#portrait by a window
#heat
#lines
#high key (not the musical kind!)
#low key (^ Ditto)
#autumn
#love
#rule of thirds
Let’s write!
Today you’ll put your new news writing skills into practice. You may write as many stories as you like, but at least two must be in inverted pyramid style (refer to last Friday’s News Conference post and the Style and Structure .ppts if you need a reminder).
Intro to features and longer stories
Classwork for this week:
Take a look at a few examples of non-fiction writing or extended audio or video features (please see the resources below, or of course you may choose your own). Draw up lists which will show how each story differs in respect to the following elements:
- story purpose
- audience types and requirements
- style
- any links between word length or duration, style, audience, publication, and purpose
- note especially how each story opens, and how it ends (very different from the inverted pyramid story)
- other elements, such as photographs, illustrations, captions, supers, subtitles, headlines, and standfirsts (a ‘standfirst’ is a short paragraph that outlines the story to come)
RESOURCES:
Chris Solomon, outsideonline.com – Feet Lost and Found in the Pacific Northwest
Ruth Pollard, The Sydney Morning Herald – Grief grips Gaza
N.R. Kleinfeld, The New York Times – The Lonely Death of George Bell
Jon Ronson, The Guardian – Justin Bieber: One day with the most Googled name on the planet
The Electric Typewriter – 10 great articles by Tom Junod (read especially ‘Falling Man’)
Another one by Tom Junod, Esquire Magazine – Have you met The Lips?
Sarah Dingle, ABC Radio National – The Salvos: A matter of trust (.mp3 download link is above the image)
ABC Radio National – Researchers fear our sense of silence is changing as our daily noise builds
BBC News Magazine – The girl who gets gifts from birds
upstart magazine – 100 articles that every journalist should read
COMPLETE FOR CLASS NEXT WEEK:
Start to develop ideas for your own extended feature story (written, audio or video) and write an outline of each idea. The story you decide upon will be the one you complete for your assessment in this subject. Part of the assessment asks you to pitch the story to a media organisation or website to be published.
Your completed feature will be at least 1,000-1,500 words (written feature), or five minutes’ duration (audio or video).
Your story outline should include:
- the publication you’re aiming for, and a description of its audience
- the purpose of your story
- the voice, tone, and style you plan to use
- the type of story, e.g. profile, background story (political, science, health, education)
- the names or occupations of people you will interview
- where you will conduct research for the story
- how you plan to organise your information (i.e. how you will organise files and research, and how you’ll back up work as you go)
Opinion pieces will not be accepted for this assessment. You will need to interview at least three people for your story, and show evidence of research in places other than the Internet.
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