digital journalism @ NYU

This is fabulous: Christopher Allbritton, journalist and independent warblogger, is teaching a class in Digital Journalism at NYU this semester. Requirements for the course include numerous blog-related reading assignments, and setting up and writing a blog.

As we discussed tonight, your assignment for the next two weeks is to get your blog in a semblance of order (don't worry right now about the look and feel; we'll get to that), and then complete a 1,000-word feature on the New York Democratic Primary on March 2.

Students' blogs are publicly linked in the sidebar -- it's a full immersion experience for these folks. I hope that as they get a few good posts out there, they will start to experience the spontaneity, cross-linking, comment threading and trackbacking that make blogs a very different medium from traditional journalistic outlets. There is a new kind of literacy required for writing and reading and participating in blogs, and this is an essential component of making them an effective tool for jounalism.

I originally came across this site while looking for ideas about ethics in blogging; there were some interesting leads here (as one might fervently hope ;-).

Well, best of luck to Christopher and his students, this sounds like a great class. Almost makes me wish I was back at university ;-)

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Posted by Gene at February 24, 2004 11:37 PM | TrackBack