INTERACTIVE JOURNALISM
2016 workshop | Journalism School Science Po Paris
A 12 session course about interactivity and journalism.
What this course is about : you & teamwork.
This 2016 workshop named “Interactive Journalism” is a place where you’ll make things and where you’ll think differently about journalism & interactivity. The idea of IJ is to think, organise and create new type of contents that you’re going to be proud of. Content that is cool, interesting, deep or funny, but also innovative, experiential and interactive, where the audience has a word and participate. IJ is also about “sharing”. Sharing your point of view about these emerging ways of telling news stories, sharing your experience and sharing your productions. Much of it can be only text, but since IJ requires some creativity from your side, it would be better to experiment with the incredible tools that are outside such chatbots, messenger apps, multimedia productions & so on. The articles meeting our quality standards will be published here, because frankly, Medium is a great place to share your content with the world.
Reporting news is often a lonely business. You sit in front of your computer, stand behind your camera or hold your microphone, edit, cut, correct, file your report and head to the next story. Discussions take place in the newsroom but they rarely take the audience opinion into account. During this workshop, we’re going to work differently. Collaboration is key, group work, team building, listening to what people have to say, that’s also what IJ is about. There might be assignments during the workshop where you’ll have to push the envelope and dig a little bit deeper than the live sessions. The goal here is to make you end this semester with an interactive project that makes you proud and reflects your skills as a media maker, a news producer and/or a news product maker.
We’re using Medium for IJ because it has a unique feature that helps collaborative work a lot: comments. On the left side of the posts you’ll be able to add value to the work of your teammates. Don’t hesitate to contribute, help, add comments and share your thoughts on the work done by your colleagues. You’ll find more about how to use Medium here, here,here and here.
What will be done during the class?
Another idea behind IJ is that you’re going to contribute to this medium publication and that together we will create a collection of stories using different kind of tools. Following the given instructions, you will participate to an experiment that aims at creating a record of the new practices that could emerge in newsrooms around the world in a not-so-distant future.
During IJ’s classes, you’ll have to co-create a project that will be presented at the end of the 12 sessions to your colleagues and published here or somewhere else.
Remember the three steps to creativity : copy, transform, and combine. In order to do that, you’ll have to read a lot. Here, you’ll find a collection of link and book references that will allow you to go further on the path of interactive journalism.
During these next 12 sessions, what I expect from you is curiosity, a sense of defiance, I want you to question the standards, the way things are done everyday whether on an ethical level or a more technical one. I want you to think about your own consumption of news, how you access it, how you like it, what makes you pay or not an info, is the tone. What would you improve? I want you to feel free in this classroom to experiment and try new things. I want you to be open-minded, not afraid by what is said about the state of the news industry. In a way I’d love to see you reinventing what’s to be a journalist today and in a near future.
One more thing…
IMPORTANT : Grading
The final score will take into account the following criteria:
- Quality of the production (here & for the project) and strict compliance with deadlines
- Oral participation during the sessions
- Engagement with the workshop and general culture about interactivity
(you’ll to answer an online Q&A at the end of the sessions)
- Management capabilities (for Team Coordinators)
- Force of proposal (for the Team Members)
Don’t work for the score, work for you, for the idea of creating great content that could be published by a serious news outlet. In another word, try to impress yourself.
IMPORTANT : Channel of communication & tools
Different tools will be used to communicate and manage the work done during the workshop sessions. We’ll be using Slack as main communication tool to discuss stories and share infos & resources. Trello will be used to manage the on going production.
Academic standards
Transparency is key. Sources will be published, if you fail to cite the work of others, it’ll be a serious issue. Work done here for IJ can’t be submitted for other classes or as a freelance work for any publication. Journalism & Sciences Po ethical standards will be observed.
Syllabus
This course aims to prepare students to a rapidly-changing environment of online journalism, with a focus on storytelling and interactive tools that allow a better audience engagement. Following a specific workflow — mixing design thinking methodology, news narrative techniques and a rigorous editorial approach — students will discover the different steps to create interactive News products as well as the new trends that are emerging in the field. This workshop is set up in 12 sprint sessions where the students will act as a digital newsroom in charge of designing news product aimed at a certain audience. For each Sprint a document will be made available with examples, tools & methodology excerpts. Students need to be proactive in their search for resources about digital storytelling (websites, tools & methodologies).
Session 1 : Sprint 1 — Introduction to Design Thinking Methodology (theory & practice), Creation of the digital Newsroom, Choice of the main story to work on.
Session 2 : Sprint 2 — Empathize : Study of the targeted audience (creation of a « Focus Group »), Learning about the audience students will design news products for.
Session 3 : Sprint 3 — Define : Redefinition and refocusing of the selected story based on the insight gathered from the previous Sprint session.
Session 4 : Sprint 4 — Ideate : Brainstorming and first creative & editorial solutions for the story.
Session 5 : Sprint 5 — Content production for the prototypes
Session 6 : Sprint 6 — Prototype : Creation of prototypes based on the insight gathered from the previous Sprint session.
Session 7 : Sprint 7 — Test : Test of the prototypes with the « Focus Group »
Session 8 : Sprint 8 — Ideate : Analysis of the first test with the Focus Group, iteration, corrections
Session 9 : Sprint 9 — Prototype : Creation of 2nd generation prototypes based on the insight gathered in the previous Sprint session.
Session 10 : Sprint 10 — Content production for final product
Session 11 : Sprint 11 — Content production for final product
Session 12 : Sprint 12 — Review of the whole process and debriefing.
Thanks for reading this, stay tuned and good luck. :)
