This is a list of courses that I have developed and taught. Drop me an email, if you would like a copy of a syllabus for any of these courses.
Mobile and Social Media Journalism
This course critically examines how journalists and news organizations are using emerging forms of social media and mobile platforms. Students gain hands-on experience by experimenting with social media and mobile devices for newsgathering, distribution, and audience engagement. Students produce a portfolio of multimedia stories and build their own professional journalistic brand. An emphasis is placed on critically assessing the credibility and authenticity of user-generated content. Students will also learn how to use analytics tools to monitor and analyze the effectiveness of their mobile and social media activity. Course website with syllabus
Investigative Journalism
This class provides students with both theoretical and practical skills to locate story ideas, identify reliable and diverse sources, conduct research online and through interviews, and analyze and visualize data. Students use investigative techniques to research, write, and produce stories in multiple beats, including but not limited to: government, education, sports, and social issues. Students work individually and in teams to produce multimedia content focused on a specific beat and/or issues of journalistic importance within the local and wider communities.
Visual Journalism
This course explores the fundamental visual techniques and concepts of multimedia journalism and how verbal and visual messages work together in news reporting. Students utilize a combination of skills and research to create projects that address traditional and nontraditional beat reporting for print, broadcast, and digital media. Examples are critiqued to lead students toward an ethical and analytical approach to issues of journalistic visual rhetoric.
Television News Reporting and Producing
This course helps students understand what it means to compete in local television news. They learn how to find news, report, produce and deliver it, all under conditions as close to real life in the broadcast news business as possible. Repetition is key to honing reporting skills. Therefore, students produce news content (packages, live shots, newscasts) on a weekly basis throughout the semester. The first half of the semester they produce video packages and participate in live-reporting labs. During the second half of the semester, they work in teams to produce weekly TV newscasts.
Advanced Television News Reporting
Jamie Kraft, Senior Managing Editor at NJTV News (PBS) and former Senior Executive Producer for MSNBC and NBC Nightly News, co-teaches this one-credit mini-course. Students pitch, report, produce, write, and edit a television news story in a 24-hour period. Students produce a quality news story featuring clear, conversational broadcast writing and professional-level videography and editing under deadline pressure.
Society 2.0: Social Media
This course, part of Ithaca College’s Integrative Core Curriculum, explores how social media has transformed the way people communicate and are connected as individuals, as members of communities, and as part of a larger networked society. Students use social media tools to engage with course content and gain an understanding of how social media is impacting fields such as education, journalism, and business. The course also examines the cultural, legal, economic, and privacy implications of our social media practices.
Media for Social Responsibility: Portrayals of Disability and Chronic Illness in Popular Culture
Often largely ignored in media representations, people living with a disability or chronic illness can feel like a forgotten population. While absent in main-stream media, there is a real cost to disability and chronic illness that goes beyond the individual: it can impact their caregiver, family, friends, and coworkers. This mini course provides a critical analysis of the role media plays in creating or breaking expectations, accurately portraying the lived experience, and offering hope of a better future. The class begins with a keynote by Laila Ali–elite athlete, fitness and wellness expert, TV host, author, speaker, and the daughter of late beloved global icon and humanitarian, Muhammad Ali.
Media for Social Responsibility: The Financial Markets to the Twitter Revolution
Carl Quintanilla, of CNBC and NBC News, kicked off this one-credit mini-course. The course explores media’s responsibility to society as well as how the media communicates issues of global social consequence, such as financial crises and economic inequalities. An emphasis is placed not only on mainstream media, but also the growing influence of social media in shaping traditional media outlets’ coverage and public perception of these issues.
Television and Digital News Reporting
Students act as backpack journalists in the local community. Working solo in the field, they produce professional TV packages and web news reports. In a bi-weekly live lab, students conduct simulated live reports in the field. The course also explores the use of social media for newsgathering and audience engagement.
News Reporting II
In this graduate course, students act as backpack journalists, working solo in the field. They shoot and edit video, report, and write for broadcast and web. Students produce taped TV packages, web stories, and live shots on a weekly basis. The course also explores the use of social media for newsgathering and audience engagement.
Broadcast Newswriting
Students learn to write news stories for radio and TV. In-class writing drills under deadline are designed to develop the ability to distill complex information into broadcast copy. A focus is placed on developing a clear, concise, and conversational writing style. This is coupled with an emphasis on accuracy and proper grammar.