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Activity 1: Your Media Habits

(Suggested time to complete: 3-4 hours)

Assignment Objectives:

  1. Begin to draw a map of the journalism/media landscape by examining your own media consumption habits. Then both identify patterns in your behavior and note successful news writing in your daily life. Armed with this information, consider your future career in Journalism.
  2. Present the results of these investigations in an easy-to-digest and graphic format.

Assignment instructions:

1. Do Your Research

What are some of your favorite websites or other platforms for news writing? How often do you read or watch content from which sources? Keep a media journal for 3-5 days, logging the (news)media you consume and the technology used to access it. This can be done in a simple, two-column format:

Part 1) 

Now answer the following: 

  1. How many sources do you rely on for your news? 
  2. How many and which different types or formats of coverage do they represent?
  3. When do you consume news media? Mostly in the morning? Before bed? 24/7? 
  4. How do these sources rank in terms of how frequently you use them?
  5. How do these technologies and formats rank in terms of how frequently you use them?

Part 2)

Choose 3-4 of these media sources (based on any criteria you wish) and consider the content on each: What are the headlines or titles? What is conveyed in the opening paragraph of an article or section of a video or podcast?

To add further detail to the map of your media landscape:

1. Identify what type of content each of these pieces is:

  • Hard news
  • Column
  • Opinion Piece
  • New Analysis
  • Magazine writing
  • Feature/Longform writing
  • Etc.

2. What’s it covering?

  • Local news
  • Politics
  • Local government
  • Arts & Entertainment
  • Lifestyle
  • Etc.

Now choose the one you feel is the “best” or most effective piece of journalism and the one you think is the least successful. You will include your commentary on the piece in your final document. Take time to note the reasons you believe each is more or less successful. 

Part 3)

When reflecting on the more successful piece, consider the following:

  • Is this a type of writing you would want to pursue? – Why or why not?
  • If yes, what is a story idea for this kind of writing that you would like to pursue?
  • If no, what kind of writing and story ideas do you think call to you as a writer? – Why?
  • What did you walk away from the piece with? Information, a feeling, better understanding, a question, etc?

Part 4)

Now that you have an overview of the essentials of journalism that you will be learning about in this course, think about your possible career paths. 

  • Are you interested in working for: a large news organization, freelancing, an internet news website? 
  • Are you interested in: news reporting? multimedia journalism? Writing longer magazine features?
  • Do you have a special interest in a topic: Political reporting? Music journalism? Investigative reporting? Local coverage?

II) Tell Us About it

Finally, put this information together into an easy-to-understand presentation (infographic or slides). This is a skill modern journalists often also cultivate. You may create your own graphic from scratch or use templates – you can find advice and templates on this site or here (open in google sheets and make a copy to be able to fill it out – they require a little tinkering but can work!), or find other templates. There are many options, but popular options include: Canva, Google Drawings, Google Slides, or Prezi.

The resulting presentation should include the following:

  • Your “rankings” (part 1)
  • A summary of the times you consume your journalism (part 1)
  • The commentary on the successful and less successful pieces you chose (part 2)
  • As a part of that commentary, include the format and type of journalism it represents (part 2)
  • A summary (of your interest in the doing the same kind of work you chose as the more successful, including your reasons why and why not (part 3)
  • An outline of what, at the beginning of this course, you think you might be interested in as a career in journalism – we will revisit this at the end of the course. (part4)

Here is a VERY basic example of the project. Your submission may be multiple pages and your graphics skills are likely better than mine:

To UPLOAD this assignment: Use the “Choose File” button below to select the picture (.jpg, .png, .gif) of your mood board from your hard drive. Enter a name for the project in the “title” field. Add any info describing the project and what you have learned into the “description” field. DO NOT close the “Choose File” window. Simply click on the red “Upload” button beneath the “Choose File” window and wait for the page to refresh (this could take a few moments). In place of the upload buttons, you should see a list of the “Files you have uploaded” and a message saying “Thank you, your file has been uploaded.”

You must complete this and all other assignments in the course to earn the program certificate.