Multiplatform Journalism

More advice on the story pitch:

1. You are welcome to use material from a prior class, but make sure your pitch provides a plan to do a semester’s worth of work to augment that material; ie, having a video clip does not mean that you have already completed part of your project.

2. Feel free to draw on each other’s expertise: you can help each other with video and audio projects if you’d like, as long as you are clear in your projects about what you did and did not do, and as long as the help provided does not take the place of your own substantial work on a project.

3. I will look at the pitches and make suggestions about what seems feasible given time and resources, but you may want to briefly acquaint yourself with Soundslides (visit their site) and with some of the tools in the “Tools” section as you plan what you will be doing.

As far as Tuesday is concerned, we will spend the second half of class working on Audacity and trying out the Edirol: those who have familiarity with both should come to class with digital cameras, if they have them.

Let me know if you have any questions: remember, I’m expecting you to revise the pitches for next week, so don’t worry if you feel like you’re still feeling tentative about what you are doing.

For this assignment, I want you to write an autobiography of sorts, focusing on two things; first, your experiences with computers, cell phones, digital cameras and digital audio recorders; and second, on your journalistic interests and experiences.

Here are some questions to get you started with the first section

• Did you play computer games in grade school?
• What was your first computing platform like and what could you do with it?
• What were the capabilities of your first digital camera?  Or have you always used your cell phone as a camera?
• What was your earliest experience with the Internet?
• Did anything peculiar ever happen to you via a social media network?
• What are your daily usages practices now? Do you consider yourself more offline than online?
• Do you live on the island of Facebook, or do you frequently explore new places on the web?
• Do you send cell text messages instead of email?
• Are your friends more or less networked than you are?
• What about your parents?  Are they emailing you funny articles, stalking you on Facebook, hosting their own websites, or completely indifferent or oblivious to the web?

For the second section — describing your journalistic interests and experiences — tell me what you’ve written about, what your “ideal story assignment” might be, what medium you are most comfortable with, and what you would hope would be your eventual field of specialization, if any.  Please also let me know if you’ve had any experience specifically with multiplatform journalism.