Online News Bureau Syllabus
Overview Standards Routine Grading Readings

The Daily Routine

You are pioneers in this medium. As such, you'll have to learn to be flexible as we experiment with various ways of running the shop. It'll give you great practice for working in a digital newsroom.

Here are some givens: Every week we'll be posting original work from our staff and packaging stories from the other three news bureaus run by the college (print bureaus in Annapolis and Washington, and the TV bureau on campus). You'll be given responsibility on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays for updating the home page and for helping to update other areas or sections of the site. Right now, the main sections include:

You'll be juggling updates on these sections with additional reporting, packaging, multimedia, research and photo assignments.

On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, we'll talk early in the day about story, link, photo and graphic choices for the home page and other sections.

I'll be helping you with basic Dreamweaver and Photoshop and with other multimedia editing tools that include Soundslides Plus, Adobe Audition, Windows Movie Maker and Apple's Final Cut Express.

I'll also occasionally bring in professional or academic guests to give us additional tips and advice. In the past, we've had guests provide additional guidance on audio, video, photos, graphics and interactive elements. The sked so far includes: USAToday database reporter Brad Heath, on database/map mashups, Friday, Jan. 23, from 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.; broadcast instructor Sue Kopen-Katcef on collecting and editing audio interviews and working in Adobe Audition, Friday, Jan. 30, 10:30 a.m. to noon; broadcast instructor Dave Burns on editing video in Final Cut Express, Friday, Feb. 6, 10 a.m. to noon. College Web designer Matt Sheehan will also drop in on Thursday morning, Feb. 5, for some quick tips on banner creation in Photoshop.

I'll be helping you to make sense of your stories -- the reporting, writing, editing and presentation of them. Your primary jobs here are as storytellers.

We'll want to present each story in the best format for it.

ONE KEY POINT: No one but me should be saving stories, section fronts or the home page onto the L drive--which publishes our pages live onto the Internet. You will normally work on stories in the H drive, and copy them to X when you're ready for editing. 

You may, however, move photos and graphics and audio clips onto the L drive, after you've cropped and sized or otherwise edited them.

And you may also move video clips to the V drive, the live streaming video server.

I'll elaborate on this and explain our publishing system during the early days of the bureau.

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Copyright © 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009 Chris Harvey

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Overview Standards Routine Grading Readings