Week 4 / Oct. 2: Michelle Shephard on cross-platform storytelling + Adrian Ma and Sonya Fatah on immersive storytelling

If you haven’t read the course outline which contains the complete schedule as well as readings and details about the course assignments, please do so before reading this post.

This week’s materials:
Story: Who Killed Sharmini? (2019)
Podcast: Who Killed Sharmini? episodes 1&2(2019)

Guantanamo’s Child (2015)

Hong Kong 360 (2019)
Do 360-degree video news stories generate empathy in viewers? (Archer and Finger, 2018)
Exploring the Rise of Live Journalism (Eveleth, 2015)

We’ll have two sets of guests this week, Michelle Shephard from 1:30-2:30 pm and Adrian Ma and Sonya Fatah from 2:30-3:15.


Interview with Michelle Shephard on CBC News (September 2019)

GUEST SPEAKER MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Our first guest this week is an award-winning journalist, filmmaker and podcaster Michelle Shephard, whose CBC investigative podcast series Who Killed Sharmini? launched last week. In the latest season of CBC’s Uncover, Shephard revisits the unsolved homicide of a Toronto teen two decades after she first covered the case as a cub crime reporter at the Toronto Star.

During her two decades at the Star, she reported from more than 25 countries, including Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Pakistan and went behind the wire at the U.S. Naval prison in Guantanamo Bay more than two dozen times. Shephard was the co-director and producer of the Emmy-nominated documentary about Omar Khadr, Guantanamo’s Child, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2015. She is also the author of Decade of Fear: Reporting From Terrorism’s Grey Zone.

Listen to the podcast and watch the documentary before our class on Wednesday. Please come to class with questions for Michelle about her career and her work.

PECHAKUCHA PRESENTATION: After Adrian and Sonya’s visit, we will be watching examples PechaKucha presentations and coming up with the order for presentations on the day of our last class, Wednesday, Oct. 23.

FRIDAY MEMO: A reminder that your third Friday Memo is due as a 350-400-word post on your individual blog on Friday, Sept. 27 before 5 p.m. You will be writing a weekly reflective blog post updating me, your supervisor and your peer partner on your progress with the production of your MRP. Topics you might want to address include interviews, research, visuals, pivots, challenges and triumphs. You will receive a Pass (10) for each published post and a Fail (0) for each week missed. Each week, I will raise issues that come up for class discussion.

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