Multi-Platform Storytelling, Fall 2010

61-454, Selected Topics: Multi-Platform Storytelling in the Digital Age, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Friday, Clow 128

Students will use the skills they have learned in previous classes, like Writing for the Media, Reporting, Editing or related courses. The class, taught by Grace Lim, will be run like a full-service digital communications agency, with students helping to maintain the College of Letters and Science Special Reports Web site and producing print pieces to complement it. Students will participate in story production from beginning to end. They will conduct in-studio and field interviews. They will work in teams. They will learn to tell the stories in print (magazine, newsletter, brochures) and online (blogs, wikis, audio and video podcasts).

The Special Reports Web site is an online multimedia publication used as a marketing tool to showcase College of Letters and Science faculty and their projects inside and outside the classroom. In addition to mastering the technology component of this course, students will learn the difference between traditional media and custom media. This course falls under the custom media category in that the students will work for a client, the College of Letters and Science. It will have some elements of Magazine Editing and Production, a class that has produces a custom magazine for the College of Business.

At the end of the semester, each student will have a body of work to add to his or her portfolio (audio and video podcasts, online articles, and long-form print magazine articles).
*Permission of the instructor or the chair of the Department of Journalism is required to register for this class. It will be cross-listed with Radio/TV/Film.