Resources for Incorporating Mobile Reporting into a Journalism Course

I’ve been hunting for resources that might help in adding mobile reporting assignments to my exiting courses. Here is a round-up of some guides, tips, articles and advice from instructors and journalists in the field.

Mobile Journalism Reporting Tools Guide – A guide to dozens of services, hardware and apps for on-the-go reporting with social media, photos audio, and video. Compiled for the Reynolds Journalism Institute by Will Sullivan, self-described “journalism nerd.”

7 Tips For Teaching Mobile Media To Journalism Students –  Staci Baird reflects on her experience teaching a course at San Francisco State University, including the suggestion to “forget about offering an entire class that focuses solely on mobile media unless you’re going to concentrate on the technical side of things and students are actually going to create mobile websites or apps.” Also here is a list of links from Baird’s talk at a mobile symposium. (Knight Digital Media Center)

Contemporary News Media – Staci Baird’s syllabus from San Francisco State University

“I teach mobile” Facebook group for journalism educators

A website of an experimental Mobile Reporting course taught by Jeremy Rue and Richard Koci Hernandez at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism

Reporting live from the scene of breaking news… on an iPhone – Equipped with just an iPhone, a NPR reporter pulls off a broadcast that “might have required days of planning just a few months ago.” (Nieman Journalism Lab)

A reporter’s tale of using Motorola Droid on the job – Nathan Gonzalez, a cops reporter for the Arizona Republic, describes how he used his phone to report each aspect of a law enforcement gun raid. (Technically Journalism)

Former Newspaper Photographer Becomes Mobile, Social Journalist – How Jim MacMillan, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist, made the shift to mobile. (Poynter)

How One Radio Reporter Ditched His Equipment for an iPhone 4 – Neal Augenstein offers his tips and shows off his homemade jury rigged iPhone mic clip. (Media Shift)

Multimedia Journalism Tutorials – Updated List

Here is the list of online classes, instructional videos, and handouts that I am using in my multimedia reporting workshop (officially titled Online Journalism 2) at Rowan University this fall.

Tutorial 1: Finding a Good Story and Telling It
Listen to This American Life’s “Rest Stop Episode”
Watch Ira Glass talk about the elements of storytelling on YouTube (Parts 1-4)
Part 1 – The Building Blocks of a Story
Part 2 – On Finding Great Stories
Part 3 – On Good Taste
Part 4 – Two Common Pitfalls

Tutorial 2: Reporting Across Platforms (NewsU course)

Tutorial 3: Audio Interviews
Read Interviewing 101: A quick and dirty guide to getting the scoop (CLP)
Read Audio 101: A quick and dirty guide to recording your story (CLP)
Read Gathering Audio by Brian Storm (MediaStorm)

Tutorial 4: Telling Stories with Sound (NewsU course)

Tutorial 5: Audio Editing
Watch “How to Convert Audio Files Using Switch”

Garage Band (Mac)
Watch video overview  Garage Band Basics for Journalists
Then read though GarageBand Podcast Setup and Overview for detailed instructions.

Audacity (PC and Mac)
Watch video overview Audacity Basics for Journalists
Superfast Guide to Audio Editing (pdf) – includes instructions for installing Audacity on your home computer. (Mindy McAdams)
Editing Audio with Audacity (Part 2) (pdf) – more detailed instructions (Mindy McAdams)
How to Use Audacity (Knight Digital Media Center)

Tutorial 6: Photo 101 and Photoshop 101
Read Photojournalism 101: A quick and dirty guide to photographing your story (CLP) and watch How to Resize and Save Photos for the Web

Tutorial 7: Language of the Image (NewsU course)

Tutorial 8: Soundslides How To
Watch A Quick Tour of Soundslides
If you have questions, review How to Use Soundslides (Knight Digital Media Center)

Tutorial 9: How to Improve Your Audio Slide Shows
Read How to Make Your Audio Slide Shows Better by Colin Mulvany
Read Mark Luckie’s Five Common Photo Slide Show Mistakes
Read Mindy McAdam’s Tell a Good Story with Images and Sound
Read Mindy McAdam’s Do’s and Don’ts for Slide Shows

Tutorial 10: How to Ebed a Soundslides Slide Show on WordPress

Tutorial 11: Video Storytelling for the Web (NewsU course)

Tutorial 12: iMovie
iMovie for Journalists (Knight Digital Media Center)
iMovie 09 Tutorials (Apple)