Instructor: Chris Harvey
Instructor phones: 301-405-6256 (work office); 301-314-2696 (new-media lab)
Instructor e-mail: charvey@jmail.umd.edu
Office hours: during bureau hours

Your Bureau hours: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, from 9 a.m. to 5:15 p.m. for Web editing, production, reporting and multimedia writing in the new-media lab, Room 3117 Journalism. On all days but Wednesdays, Harvey will be in the lab with you. On Wednesdays, you will be working on assigned stories and projects, while she teaches another class.

Throughout the semester, you'll be working as an online producer/news editor/ multimedia reporter and writer. You will be reporting and writing your own stories, working with text, photos, audio and video that you collect during interviews.

You'll also be watching the CNS wire and CNS-TV for key stories and writing concise briefs, headlines, photo captions and Web links to package or highlight the work of your colleagues in the print and TV bureaus. Good news judgment is critical in story choices.

And you'll be building Special Reports, to package Web, print and TV stories and interactives by topic.

So you'll find that we'll be in close contact with the students and bureau directors working in Annapolis and Washington and in our broadcast studio at Tawes theater on campus.

It's important that you remember throughout the semester that you're helping to define a new medium. Thus, while the highest standards and ethics of professional journalists should always be followed, at times we may be pushing the envelope on writing styles, forms and presentations. I'll be asking you to think beyond straight-text presentations and to consider nonlinear and multimedia writing forms.

You should treat your time here as you would time spent at an off-campus internship. This means calling in to alert me if you're too sick to work, or if you've been delayed due to car trouble. It also means dressing professionally, since you may sometimes have to go out on unexpected assignments. This means no blue jeans, T-shirts or tennis shoes.

All of your work will be closely supervised by me. For many reasons, including the need to avoid potential libel suits, nothing will go live on our Web site, Maryland Newsline, unless I (or one of the other bureau directors or deans in my absence) have had a chance to edit it.

Likewise, none of your stories will move on the Capital News Service print wire unless they've been edited by me and/or by one of the print bureau editors.

Although you'll be tackling serious jobs, and you'll be working hard, it's important to me that we have fun while we work and learn from each other. 

Our goal will be to provide lively updates, news packages and interactive and multimedia features for Maryland Newsline, an online newsmagazine focusing on politics and public policy in the state.

Our news bureau will also be covering local business and land development issues. Each of you will be assigned both geographic beats (covering the towns of University Park and College Park) and subject beats. We'll talk more about that in our staff meetings.

I'm hoping Newsline will be routinely read by legislators, lobbyists, political junkies and activists, and by some Marylanders (and college students) with more than a passing interest in government, school, business and development news. So let's try to make it compelling and fun, so they'll want to repeatedly return.

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