Class Feature: JOUR 285

Introduction to Multimedia Journalism (JOUR 285) serves as the gateway to skills students need in digital journalism today.

Most students take JOUR 285 during their freshman year as it is a prerequisite for many upper-division journalism classes.

“Since most news consumption is digital these days, it's critical that journalism students learn to report and write for an online audience,” said Kim Bisheff, who teaches the course. “In JOUR 285, we use audio, video and social media to enhance our storytelling.”

Vetting online information is of vital importance for incoming journalists. The class structures itself so that students must link all work to primary sources, allowing the audience easy access to original material used in the story. Students select a topic they’re passionate about, report and write about it, take photographs and shoot video, then put it all together into a blog they create and maintain for 10 weeks. By the end of the quarter, students can expect to be proficient in blog reporting and using WordPress and Adobe Premiere to properly synthesize text, audio, still photography and video to tell a story.

“I won the contest in my class by gaining the most unique visitors on my site (over 4,000) and most [page] views (20,000+), so it’s been a great concrete statistic to list on my resume,” said alumna Katelyn Piziali (Journalism, 13). “I still use the skills I learned then for my job now with a non-profit using WordPress.”