Journalism is not content. It need not be a profession or an industry. It is not the province of a guild. It is not a scarcity to be controlled.

It no longer happens just in newsrooms. It is no longer confined to narrative form. So, then, what the hell is journalism? It is a service whose end is an informed public.
Jeff Jarvis

JOUR 230 Multimedia Storytelling

Prof. Jeremy J. Littau Course Information
Fall 2013 Monday-Wednesday 2:35-3:50 p.m. 302 Coppee Hall Twitter hashtag: #J230lu

Instructors Information
Phone: (610) 758-6520 Office: 204 Coppee Hall Email: jjl409@lehigh.edu Office Hours: Tuesday 2-4:30 p.m.

Course Description
The purpose of this course is to take skills you already have and apply them to new platform contexts. In this case, the skills are your ability to gather information and report and the new contexts will be the all of the multimedia tools available to you on the Web. But this course is more than that. Its an immersion into the life and culture of the Web. Weve been talking about how media is changing, but youre going to have a front-row seat to media change as someone who is producing in this new world. If you devote yourself to the material, you will come out a changed journalism major and one who is ready for this new media world.

Course Goals
1. 2. 3. 4. Become proficient at gathering and editing information using digital tools Use social media as a tool for information gathering and dissemination of the stories you tell Spot the elements of the story that are best told visually, in written word, in sound, and graphically Gain experience doing community journalism

Expectations
Basic rules for this course: 1. Treat others with respect. 2. As a courtesy to your fellow students and your professor, please silence your cell phones while class is in session. 3. Computers are vital to the learning process in this course, but I ask that you show respect to both your fellow students and me by using them only for class-related activity. 4. All work in this class is public, as it is with any journalistic enterprise. Videos, tweets, blog posts, and stories you produce for this class are considered open and must not contain locks or blocks on your accounts. You will receive a 30% penalty for any work that is done under blocked publication settings. If you arent comfortable with your work being out there for the public to see, you need to find a new career. This is what media makers do.

Requirements
There is no textbook for this course, but we will do web readings. There are two purchase requirements that take the place of the book: 1. A smartphone (either Apple or Android) that runs downloadable apps such as Instagram, Vine, th Flickr, and Twitter. If you dont have a smartphone, an iPod Touch that is 5 -generation or newer is acceptable but you should have this approved by me. You must bring your phone to every class session. I will not announce when well be using them, and failure to consistently come prepared will result in grade reduction.

2. Youll be required to purchase web hosting space and a URL for this class. Youre going to create a professional web site as the class goes along. This will cost about $100 and we will set it up on the first day of class, so youll need to bring a credit card to class. The professional site will host your blog as well as be configured to host your professional work. We will learn HTML along the way to help you learn how to do more with your site.

Important notes
In this class, youll be shooting video and publishing on YouTube. It is important that, as with any journalistic form of information gathering, you respect the rights of those whom you are interviewing. In this case, that means full disclosure of what youre doing video for and the fact that its going to be published on YouTube and/or your project site. For legal reasons, you should get this at the start of the video, on camera. When you start recording, tell them youre doing this for your J 230 course and that the video will be published online and YouTube and possibly other sites. Ask for them to acknowledge that they understand this. Be sure to save these clips, because they are your backup in the rare case someone gets angry at what you produce. Second, you are expected to observe copyright rules in the course of your blogging and videos. Well talk about this in class, but in a nutshell, you cant use music or imagery if you dont own the rights to publish it. Images on blogs are very good things to have and I will show you some workarounds, but dont lift images without regard to the rights holder. Finally, this class is experimental in nature because this part of the field evolves in new ways every week. Flexibility on the schedule is going to be key, so please pay attention to all announcements about schedule changes in class. You will be responsible for changes, but I will be completely clear about it beforehand.

Grading
At the end of the semester you will be scored in each of the categories below and each category accounts for a percentage of your overall grade. Each assignment or activity will have a category, and the points you earn help determine how much of that categorys percentage you earn (for example, if you get all of the points in the Blog/Social Media category you get all the points possible in that assignment category (roughly 260 points possible by the end of the semester), then youll get 30 percentage points toward your grade because that category is worth 30% of your grade. If you get 90% of the points possible in that category, youll get 27 percentage points. And so forth A WORD ABOUT DEADLINES: Deadlines are important. They make the media world go. If you dont file that story on time or get that marketing pitch out on deadline, someone else is there to take your place. Missed deadlines mean missed opportunities. Any missed deadline on a Glass, Lab, or Out Of Class assignment carries a 20% grading penalty on the final grade you receive for that assignment. I wont accept any work that is more than a week late its an automatic zero. Glass assignments (15% of your grade) You will get your hands on the Google Glass Explorer device for about 9 days this semester, broken up into three segments. For each segment, youll have a specific set of things to accomplish. You will have the assignment well ahead of time so plan accordingly. Lab assignments (20% of your grade): Lab assignments will be done almost every week in the early part of the semester. Most of these can be accomplished in class. Some will be more complicated and require out of class work. All lab assignments should be posted to the class work blog where applicable and should be tweeted out with a Social Media Optimized (SMO) tweet, a link, and the #J230LU hashtag. Out Of Class assignments (30% of your grade): In addition to lab assignments, at times you will be assigned a project to be worked on outside of class. The schedule has all of the assignment due dates. Some of these deadlines are intentionally tight. Its useful to learn how to produce things when time is not abundant. The out-of-class assignment grade includes your final project in this class as well as Codeacademy assignments. All assignments should be posted to the class work blog where applicable and should be tweeted out with a Social Media Optimized (SMO) tweet, a link, and the #J230LU hashtag.

Blog/Social media (30% of your grade): This part of your grade consists of your own personal blog and Twitter use. Some of this grade is about hitting your marks on assignments, but some of it in the social media area is my own subjective evaluation. I will let you know if youre coming up short. Blogging and social media will be much more entwined this semester than it has been in the past. In short, youre supposed to find an online community, contribute to it, and amplify othe rs contributions. This takes work and is considered an every-day activity in this class. The best way to describe this work: Lots of work with little structure. Make up format as you go. Welcome to journalism in 2013. Youll choose a beat for your blog, some interest or passion. This wont work well unless its a topic you in which you have some interest, and you need to know a little bit about it too. Youre going to write, produce, curate, and converse in this area all semester, so you better like the topic. All topics should be cleared with me before you begin. Your work on this will start in week 2 of the semester; you arent required to do this during Thanksgiving week. The social media requirements for this portion of your grade not all of these are doable depending on your topic, but I want to see some evidence that youre participating. Also, well be learning some of these tools (such as Twitter lists) as we go, so I dont expect you to do all of these right away. But pay st rong attention to the social media units in September! Finding hashtags for the communities in your interest group. Build social tools to help you follow news and information in this topic such as Twitter lists. Follow people who are important, interesting, or useful on your topic. Participate in social activity such as chats on your topics hashtag. If theres some local version of this, maybe consider a Tweetup. Curate news in your topic area via Twitter Curate blog posts in your topic area via Twitter Build a social profile in that reflects your being a part of the community. This means considering a Google+ and Facebook page presence that publicizes your work and hosts new posts. I dont want you to pick random social tools, but rather ones that make sense for your topic. Pinterest, Instagram, etc. might make sense for you but not your classmates. I want to see some thought put into this. Blogging requirements Phase 1: September 2 blog posts a week, minimum 200 words. Try to keep it below 500. Phase 2: October 2 blog posts of your own, plus a week in review roundup post that highlights the best content in your topic that you read in the past week (again, keep it short list, links, short description). When this is working well, the social tools bullet point above will feed you all kinds of great reading in your topic. Phase 3: November/December Everything in September/October, plus a multimedia post per week. Maybe play with a video post embedded in your blog, or try your hand at a podcast. Each post should be tweeted out with a Social Media Optimized (SMO) tweet, a link, and the hashtags in your topic area. Evaluation standard: By the end of the semester you should be a valuable member of the community attached to your topic of interest. You should be writing, producing, following, tweeting, sharing, and replying. Youll be graded on content production as well as my sense of how plugged in you are to the community around your topic. This is somewhat subjective on my part, but Ive been doing thi s long enough to be able to tell whether youre putting enough effort into building a following and being part of the community. Youre going to learn these tools on the go. I expect some struggle early on, so dont worry about that as much. There is some trial-and-error to this process. Your goal is to test a lot of ideas and double down on whats working. But I do expect you to get better at this as you go along. At the end of the semester, youll generate a report for the class blog on your experience. B e looking at data around your retweets, replies, and blog traffic as you go along because this will be useful in your self-evaluation. Ill be evaluating you based on what you produce, but also about your position in the community. Are you a valued member? Do people find you useful? Are you sharing as much as youre producing?

Participation (5% of your grade): Most weeks Ill assign readings for the following week. Ill give the reading assignment on Tuesday and your job is to read the material and then respond to it on our class blog by the following week. The post I put up will have the assignment and a writing prompt. You dont need to answer all the questions in the prompt if you dont want, but I do want to see that youre thinking about the material and integrating it with what youve learned in this class, your classes at Lehigh, and how it applies to your career. Grading scale: How do you determine your grade? Add up all the percentage points you earned in each category out of the 100% possible. Then match the number you get to the scale below; the numbers here are the bare minimum you need for the corresponding grade level. You must get at least 60 of the available final-grade points to avoid an F grade for this course. 94 = A 87 = B+ 77 = C+ 67 = D+ 90 = A84 = B 77 = C 64 = D 80 = B70 = C60 = D-

Policies
Be honest: One of the hallmarks of the Web, much as we do in academia, is that we give credit where credit is due. If we use quotes, footage, or images from another site, we do the appropriate hat tip and whenever possible provide a link. This class is about to take you deeper into the absurd and wonderful world of Web culture. Consider the expectations for your behavior in this new world like driving on streets and highways: obey the rules of the road. Youre learning, and even imperfect work can help you learn something and help you grow as a thinker. Thus it is important that your work, the foundation of your education, is your own. When youre using ideas, arguments and other materials from other authors, your classmates, and even your professors in order to build arguments and thoughts in your own work, you need to give them credit. Academic dishonesty, including plagiarism, will not be tolerated and at the bare minimum will re sult in an F grade for the course. I do turn plagiarism cases in to Office of Student Conduct. Nothing in my job makes me so angry as a student cheating in my classes because its a waste of my energy to make sure its dealt with. So dont cheat. Id rather get subpar work from you than dishonest work, because at least the first one can be built upon for future success. Attendance and deadlines: You need to be in class to succeed. If you miss a lab you cannot make it up without having an excused or emergency absence. After your second absence, each unexcused absence after that will result in a 3% reduction from your final grade total. I typically only excuse absences for school-sponsored functions (such as student government or athletic participation that are part of your educational activity here) or religious holidays. Sickness is only excused with a doctors note stating that time away from class was prescribed. Going home for illness outside your immediate family is generally unexcused. Accommodations for Students with Disabilities: If you have a disability for which you are or may be requesting accommodations, please contact both your instructor and the Office of Academic Support Services, University Center 212 (610-758-4152) as early as possible in the semester. You must have documentation from the Academic Support Services office before accommodations can be granted.

SCHEDULE (subject to change)

Note: lab days are subject to change based on our ability to get through the class material. Even if the lab is changed, makeups are subject to the same policy outlined in the syllabus. Missing class because you didnt think we had a lab is not an acceptable excuse.
Date Aug. 26 Aug. 28 Sept. 2 Sept. 4 Sept. 9 Sept. 11 Sept. 16 Sept. 18 Sept. 23 Topic Introduction to the course What is storytelling? Basic review of photography and videography Blogging basics (including Creative Commons) Blogging style, SEO, and tagging Social media basics mechanics, building community and livetweets Social media for the professional, branding and SMO. Finding material on the web, weighing credibility Social media capstone The five-shot method Blog cleanup lab Must have completed Web Fundamentals 2 (HTML Structure: Using Lists) on Codeacademy Twitter lab Pinterest lab, Storify assignment Shoot event as instructed at end of class, bring footage to Sept. 25 class. Practice 5-shot lab Storify assignment due Overlay lab Must have completed Web Fundamentals 3 (HTML Structure: Tables, Divs, and Spans) on Codeacademy 5-shot lab Stills and video, plus audio. Adding text, filters Out-and-about lab Must have completed Web Fundamentals 4 (Introduction to CSS) on Codeacademy Assign TV style news story Assign Documentary style news story. Come to class with ideas next time, and well talk about it Must have completed Web Fundamentals 5 (CSS Classes and IDs) on Codeacademy Map lab TV style story due Map data lab Documentary story due Must have completed Web Fundamentals 6 (CSS Element Positioning) on Codeacademy TV style story due Before next class, shoot 60 photos of an event and interview three people at an event. Must have profile and action shot of all interviewees. Bring all material to class. Slideshow lab Podcast assignment due Visual and text lab Packaging lab Animation lab Rough draft of professional web site due App lab Must have completed Web Fundamentals 1 (Introduction to HTML) on Codeacademy Assignment

Sept. 25

Final Cut Pro Introduction

Sept. 30 Oct. 2 Oct. 7 Oct. 9

Final Cut Pro Introduction Advanced Final Cut Pro Advanced Final Cut Pro Video stories : TV style

Oct. 16 Oct. 21 Oct. 23

Video stories: Web documentary Video stories: Web documentary Maps

Oct. 28 Oct. 30 Nov. 4 Nov. 6

Maps II Watch mini documentaries Audio Interviewing Audio II - Podcasting

Nov. 11 Nov. 13 Nov. 18 Nov. 20 Nov. 25 Dec. 2-4 TBD

Audio and visual slideshows Visual and text Packaging Packaging Animation Work on capstone project

FINAL EXAM We will meet to present final projects, which are due that day