Tag: empathy

Week 5: Writing and producing your story, plus notes on privacy settings, tonight’s Google Hangout and your third assignment

If you haven’t read the course essentials post, which contains a link to the course outline as well as important course and time management information, please do so before reading this post. Also, a reminder that your second assignment, your research and pre-interview plan, is due by 5 pm EST on Monday, July 8, as a post on your individual blog.

This week’s materials:
My advice for aspiring explainer journalists (Roberts, 2018)
Designing data visualisations with empathy (Bui, 2019)
Excerpt: Sound reporting: The NPR guide to audio journalism and production (Kern, 2008)
Tips for recording professional audio remotely (Berkeley Advanced Media Institute)
Start-to-finish storyboarding (Berkeley Advanced Media Institute)

PODCAST: FINDING CLEO (2018)

If you haven’t listened to Connie Walker’s award-winning podcast series, Finding Cleo, you really should. She tells the story of the Semaganis siblings who were separated from each other and their mother during the Sixties Scoop and tries to find out what happened to the one sister everyone lost track of. It’s a masterclass in how to write and produce longer-form narrative for radio. To listen, go to the CBC website here or subscribe via iTunes.


This week we’re focusing on writing and production skills, from the secrets behind Vox’s trademark explainers to how to best capture audio from your iPhone. I’ve also added an extra reading that isn’t on the course outline. It just came out last month and it’s from journalist P. Kim Bui whose work on building relationships in marginalized communities you read a few weeks ago. In this piece, she talks about taking the principles of empathy and applying them to the design and production of data visualizations.

My advice for aspiring explainer journalists (Roberts, 2018)
In this 2018 piece for Vox, journalist David Roberts offers insights and suggestions for how to develop your skills as an explanatory journalist. His advice – e.g. “learn about something – may seem somewhat facile but is quite instructive when you’re trying to break down a larger concept or idea and giving readers insight into how the world works. Incidentally, I used the Shutterstock image he talks about for our course outline because it is a pretty funny depiction of how this illustrator and likely so many others think stories are written.

Designing data visualisations with empathy (Bui, 2019)
I highly recommend anything from P. Kim Bui. She is a deep thinker on the responsibilities and the impacts of journalism. In this most recent piece, she takes the empathetic approach she first outlined in her American Press Institute research and explains how the same principles can be applied to data reporting. She writes: “Reporting and storytelling methods like photos and videos, in a way, have an easier path to empathy. … What is harder is finding the people and shared experience within numbers and data. How do you get audience members, much less the journalists presenting the story to the audience, to walk a mile in the shoes of a dot? Or a bar chart?”

Excerpt: Sound Reporting: The NPR Guide to Audio Journalism and Production (Kern, 2008) + Tips for Recording Professional Audio Remotely (Berkeley Advanced Media Institute)
Many of you who are working on radio documentaries or podcasts for your MRPs will be taking the podcasting course in the Fall. That said, you may have already started interviewing subjects for your story. These two resources – one that focuses on writing and production and the other that offers tips for out-of-studio recording – are good quick references for you to consult.

Start-to-Finish Storyboarding (Berkeley Advanced Media Institute)
Storyboarding is often thought of as something you do once you have done some significant preliminary reporting on a feature. However, it can also be helpful to create an early-stage storyboard to visualize the outcome and to help you plan your reporting and production strategy.

setting your blog to private

A reminder that individual blogs are set to public by default. To set your blog to Private, please follow these instructions:

  • From the Dashboard for your site, go to the left sidebar menu and click on Settings
  • Choose Reading and look for the section titled “Site Visibility”
  • In the first section of options, click “Discourage Search engines” 
  • In the next set of options, choose “Visible only to registered users of this network”

Please email Lindsay Hanna (lindsay.hanna@ryerson.ca) if you have any questions.

next assignment:
FEEDBACK ON CLASSMATE’S PLAN

Your third assignment, due July 19 by 5 pm EST on your classmate’s blog post, asks you to read a classmate’s research and pre-interview plan and share your feedback directly on their blog post in a 400-word comment. You are expected to offer suggestions for additional sources, potential story directions, as well as links to videos, audio clips and articles that could help supplement their research. I will be pairing students with classmates who are working on similar subjects or platforms. The assignments will be made after the plans are submitted, no later than July 12.

GOOGLE HANGOUT TONIGHT AT 8 pm

Our next Google Hangout is scheduled for tonight (Monday, July 8) from 8-9 pm EST. You should have received a Google invite for the video chat and can click on the link during that time to ask questions or discuss any issues related to your MRP. Joining the Google Hangout is not mandatory and of course, if you have any questions, please drop me an email at asmaa.malik@ryerson.ca.

Have a great week,
Asmaa

Week 3: Building relationships, plus details on your second assignment and our first Google Hangout

If you haven’t read the course essentials post, which contains a link to the course outline as well as important course and time management information, please do so before reading this post. Also, a reminder that your first assignment, your digital feature critique, is due by 5 pm EST on Monday, June 24, as a post on your individual blog.

This week’s materials:
The Empathetic Newsroom: How Journalists Can Better Cover Neglected Communities (Bui, 2018)
Solutions Journalism: The Effects of Including Solution Information
in News Stories About Social Problems (McIntyre, 2019)
How Close is Too Close? Conflict of Interest in Journalists’
Relationships With Sources (Shapiro et al., 2014)

SOLUTIONS JOURNALISM: WHY IT MATTERS
from the solutions journalism network

This week, you’ll be exploring two complementary approaches to reporting complex stories: the role of empathy in building inroads in marginalized communities and the impact of solutions journalism on readers and their subjects. You’ll also be reading the CAJ’s 2014 report on conflicts of interest in sourcing. While you may not necessarily taking a solutions approach to your MRP, it’s important to think about the impact of your project and how you can maximize the potential for social change through your work. 

The Empathetic Newsroom: How Journalists Can Better Cover Neglected Communities (Bui, 2018)
In this piece for the journalism non-profit, the American Press Institute, journalist P. Kim Bui lays the groundwork for building long-term trust with marginalized communities, especially those often misrepresented in media coverage. With input from an inclusive group of media leaders, she offers strategies for using an empathetic approach to increase diversity in the newsroom, build diversity into reporting and change the culture at news organizations.

Solutions Journalism: The Effects of Including Solution Information in News Stories About Social Problems (McIntyre, 2019)
In this article from the journal Journalism Practice, Virginia Commonwealth University professor Karen McIntyre, who studies constructive journalism, tests the effects of solutions journalism and explores whether this increasingly popular approach solution might mitigate some harmful effects of negative, conflict-based news. (If you’re interested in more scholarly work from Journalism Practice or Digital Journalism, you can access both of these journals via the Ryerson library portal.)

Canadian Association of Journalists Report: How close is too close? Conflict of Interest in Journalists’ Relationships With Sources (Shapiro et al., 2014)
This insightful 2014 report from the CAJ Ethics Committee explores important issues around journalists’ relationships with their sources. “Since the journalist’s responsibility is to convey fair, truthful and trustworthy information, her judgment should be influenced by the public interest rather than her personal stake in the outcome. Put another way, conflict of interest exists if the obligation to serve the public interest is threatened by the human urge to protect personal interests.” This piece offers a test for helping to determine whether a journalist is in a conflict of interest and offers strategies for addressing these issues.

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Setting your blog to Private: The instructor and individual blogs are set to Public by default. Before you post your second assignment, which has details about your reporting plan, you may want to change your blog setting to Private, which means that it can only be viewed by registered users of our blogs, i.e. your instructor and your classmates. My blog will remain public.

To set your blog to Private, please follow these instructions:

  • From the Dashboard for your site, go to the left sidebar menu and click on Settings
  • Choose Reading and look for the section titled “Site Visibility”
  • In the first section of options, click “Discourage Search engines” 
  • In the next set of options, choose “Visible only to registered users of this network”

Please email Lindsay Hanna (lindsay.hanna@ryerson.ca) if you have any questions. She’s back in the office as of Tuesday, June 25.

________________________

Second assignment: Your Research and Pre-Interview Plan is due, as a post on your individual blog, by July 8 at 5 pm EST.  You will be submitting a 1,200-1,500-word early-stage proposal for how you will embark on research and preliminary interviews for your Major Research Project. Please organize your proposal into the following categories and include a working bibliography and source list (not part of word count):

  • Project overview
  • Story form and justification
  • Primary and secondary sources
  • Human sources
  • Access to principal sources
  • Reporting and production schedule

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Online office hours: Our first Google Hangout is scheduled for Monday, June 24 from 8-9 pm EST. You should have received a Google invite for the video chat and can click on the link during that time to ask questions or discuss any issues related to your MRP. If for some reason you don’t receive the invite, the link is meet.google.com/prw-ugar-fob. Joining the Google Hangout is not mandatory and of course, if you have any questions, please drop me an email at asmaa.malik@ryerson.ca.

Have a great week!
Asmaa