Faculty: Nisheeth Upadhyay (Editor, Operations), Janki Dave (News Editor), Moushumi Das Gupta (Deputy Editor)
Course Objective
This is a general introduction to journalism practises. In this course, we ask What is journalism?, Why is it important?, What is news? and answer these with hands-on learning and examples. We outline the qualities media practitioners of today must possess and explain the various roles in a typical multimedia set up.
The course is aimed at aspiring journalists, researchers, scholars, those with a keen interest in media practises or who aspire to be individual all-in-one media personalities.
The course will explain how stories are covered and produced. It will introduce the basic skills of reporting, writing, editing, fact-checking, editorial writing, on-camera delivery and other aspects of digital/mobile news production.
Course Outline
The course will be divided into 4 parts
Part One
This part will cover the fundamental principles of journalism. It will include:
• A definition of journalism, what it is and why it matters
• Different types of journalism: News reports, long form, opinion, analysis and explanatory journalism, investigative journalism, data journalism, reporting from conflict zones, disaster sites, etc.
• The conventions and rules of journalism and media ethics
• Various roles and functions in a newsroom: Reporter, editor, video journalist, podcaster, illustrator, etc.
• Definition of news and what makes news
• The qualities of a journalist
• Topics to cover: Politics, policy, crime, defence, foreign affairs, education, business, etc.
Part Two
Reporting and News Gathering
This part will instruct students on how to gather news and report it, how to write and produce news for different platforms: online and print. Students will learn:
• Basic principles of reporting
• News gathering and sources of news
• The structure of a news story: The 6Ws
• Interviewing, sourcing and networking
• What is breaking news and how to cover it
• News research
• Qualities of a reporter
Part Three
How to write for the news media
Once the information has been gathered and organized following the principles of news reporting, we have to write the stories. In this section we will provide tips to good writing in journalism. This includes:
• How to write simply and with clarity
• How to be informative and interesting
• How to capture the readers’ attention
• What not to do
Part Four
New Media
This section will deal with the world of digital journalism and contemporary media practises. It will look at:
• Digital-first journalism and integrated newsrooms — how it works
• How to shoot a video and edit it
• Podcasts
• Journalism on social media
• YouTube