Assignment #2 - What is online journalism?

[Mohamed Nanabhay]

Dear all, 

In our second assignment we're going to explore what online journalism is. This assignment will be broken into three parts. First, we'll look at some theory. Then we'll look at an actual news story and discuss how it could have been enhanced. Finally, you will have to relate these ideas to your own project ideas. 

1. Theory

Please read the guides at The Online Journalism Review (http://www.ojr.org/ojr/wiki/) and the this article on how journalism has changed in the last ten years : http://onlinejournalismblog.com/2008/03/06/ten-ways-journalism-has-changed-in-the-last-ten-years-bloggers-cut 

Then look at the News Diamond and "Digital News Lifecycle" at the Online Journalism blog (http://onlinejournalismblog.com/2010/06/02/the-news-diamond-reimagined-as-the-digital-news-lifecycle/). It is one attempt at trying to map out a process on how news is done online. 

The last reading for this week is a discussion on designing a news site from scratch : http://strange.corante.com/2008/08/22/news-site-from-scratch-what-are-the-most-important-things-to-include

2. Application 

This weeks assignment will look at how we present news online. Next week we'll look at online news gathering. 

Yesterday say an attack on a NATO convey in Pakistan : http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/06/20106915555658186.html

At our news meeting one our journalists pitched a story looking at the NATO supply lines in order to provide more context to this news event. This story was subsequently written by one of my journalists in Doha, Qatar (as opposed to being out in the field):  http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/06/20106917552890245.html

 

Based on the readings (and your own experience and ideas), I'd like you to discuss the how these stories took advantage of the online medium and more importantly, what additional elements would you have added to these stories. Are there more interesting ways in which this could have been covered using multimedia tools or interactive elements? 

3. Projects

After having done the readings and discussed how stories can be presented online, we need to tie these back to your own project ideas and proposals. While the scope of your projects are not constrained to hard news, the principles of online journalism from the readings should lay the basis of problems you're interested in tackling. Let's start working through the ideas. 

--

Blog - http://www.mohamedn.com

Twitter - http://twitter.com/mohamed
Photos - http://www.flickr.com/photos/mohamedn
LinkedIn - http://www.linkedin.com/in/mohamedn

[Philipp Schmidt]

> 2. Application
> This weeks assignment will look at how we present news online. Next week
> we'll look at online news gathering.
> Yesterday say an attack on a NATO convey in Pakistan :
> http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/06/20106915555658186.html
> At our news meeting one our journalists pitched a story looking at the NATO
> supply lines in order to provide more context to this news event. This story
> was subsequently written by one of my journalists in Doha, Qatar (as opposed
> to being out in the
> field):  http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/06/20106917552890245.html
>
> Based on the readings (and your own experience and ideas), I'd like you to
> discuss the how these stories took advantage of the online medium and more
> importantly, what additional elements would you have added to these stories.
> Are there more interesting ways in which this could have been covered using
> multimedia tools or interactive elements?

Please post your answers in the discussion forum:

http://p2pu.org/node/3838/forums/4151

For reference, I have also pasted Mohamed's entire post into the week
2 course materials:

http://p2pu.org/node/3838/document/3848

Looking forward to another round of incredible contributions from
everyone. Week 1 was great!

P