The Hyperlocal Newsroom Fall 2012 safe

							THE HYPERLOCAL NEWSROOM, Fall 2012

Prof. Daniel Maurer, Editor of The Local
Assistant Prof. Stephen Rex Brown, Staff Reporter
Photo and Video Editor Lauren Carol Smith

Course Description
The Hyperlocal Newsroom is a skills-based immersion into the multi-platform world of
hyperlocal journalism. It can be taken as an internship for 1, 2, 3, or 4 credits (counting
toward your internship credits) or as an elective for 4 credits (counting as academic
credits that need not go toward your internship credits). Either way, you will spend two
full days per week producing for The Local East Village, a hyperlocal news blog that is
three-tiered experiment in collaborative journalism between The New York Times, the
Carter Institute and the members of the East Village community.

This opportunity seeks to break free from the limitations of a traditional classroom setting
and reproduce a genuine newsroom in order to better prepare you for a future in fast-
moving journalism. Unlike other internships, it allows you to work alongside a mentor
who is both an editor and an assistant professor whose primary purpose is to guide and
instruct you through the editing of your work.

The Local is one of scores of hyperlocal experiments globally that are exploring possible
paths for the future of daily journalism. And The Local, which is fueled by professional
resources of The Times and the intellectual and academic depth of NYU, is at the
forefront of those experiments.

The report by the Knight Commission on the future information needs of communities
(http://www.knightcomm.org/recommendation3/) called on universities to play a greater
role as “hubs of journalistic activity.” With The Local, the Carter Institute and NYU have
created one of those hubs – a newsroom that produces high-level daily journalism in a
professional environment.

By participating in the elective/internship, students will not only learn the editorial
nuances of producing hyperlocal journalism but they will also learn about innovative
approaches for bringing members of our community into the process of committing
journalism. The course offers students three distinct, over-arching learning opportunities:
the ability to gain professional experience and have posts that appear under the banner of
nytimes.com, the chance to become proficient with the technological tools of the trade
and the chance to engage with the members of one of New York’s singular
neighborhoods.

For those students who participate in the Hyperlocal Newsroom, and participate as fully
as they possibly can, the course represents a rare, exciting and meaningful opportunity for
professional growth.
At its core, the course aims to help students learn how to produce high-quality, quick-
turnaround, short-form journalism – in short, the kinds of skills that will be required to be
competitive for many entry-level jobs. These skills are becoming increasingly relevant: in
2010, the family of AOL-funded hyperlocal sites known as Patch.com accounted for
more journalism job hires than any other news organization in the country. And the
knowledge that is acquired in the course is not only applicable to hyperlocal journalism
but also to other aspects of our craft.

The learning goals, work environment and the expectations in the class are as close as
students can get to working in an actual professional newsroom while still completing
their academic coursework.

At the successful conclusion of the course, students will have learned how to integrate
professional standards into reporting for blogs and other forms of online media. Students
will also have demonstrated proficiency – at a professional news level – of the following:

      Fundamentals of Digital Journalism: Adhering to the central tenets of journalism
       – accuracy, newsworthiness, objectivity and fairness – while preparing articles
       under the intense deadlines of the 24-hour digital news cycle.
      The Use of Still Images, Videos and Multimedia: Techniques for using still
       images, video and audio as effective reporting tools.
      Digital Reporting Techniques: Using interviewing skills, open-source and
       commercial databases and the Internet to background stories and find news
       documents on deadline.
      Reporting and Writing of Stories for Online Media: Crafting basic news stories
       about such topics as obituaries, accidents, speeches/meetings and crimes for use
       on blogs and other platforms for digital journalism. In addition, students will gain
       an understanding of the key stylistic differences between writing for digital and
       print media.

Successfully produced stories from The Hyperlocal Newsroom are expected to meet the
Times’ high professional standards. For that reason, the course is designed to be
extremely rigorous and challenging. We will work hard but we will also have fun; your
instructors believe that those concepts are not mutually exclusive.

Assignments and Expectations
Students are expected to commit two full work days per week to the Hyperlocal
Newsroom. During that time, you will be working out of 20 Cooper Square, under the
active guidance of the site’s editor and its on-staff reporter. You’ll be expected to run on
breaking news, walk the beat, and find stories to pitch. You will ideally be producing
stories for the NYTimes.com site at a rate of one per day, covering a wide variety of
topics: culture (art, music, theater, etc.), crime, housing/real estate, education, local
politics, quality of life issues, East Village history, etc. These stories will range from
“quick hits” (photographs with a few lines of text) to more involved reportorial pieces in
the range of 500-1,000 words, and their tone will range from bloggy and jocose to
straight news. In addition to developing quick turnaround skills, you’ll be called upon to
manage some of the important aspects of a hyperlocal site: comment moderation, listings
production, aggregation, social media promotion, etc. Rest assured you won’t be saddled
with grunt work: your editor wants you to produce excellent journalism, and to leave
your stamp all over the site.

Payment
You will compensated at a competitive rate, TBD, for each piece that appears on the site.

The Times Connection
The Local is produced by students and staff members of the Arthur L. Carter Institute and
overseen by Mary Ann Giordano, a senior editor at The New York Times. The editor of
The Local actively promotes student work to Ms. Giordano as well as to other Times
editors, making every effort to get worthy stories picked up by City Room, ArtsBeat and
other Times blogs. On occasion, student work has even been picked up by the print
edition. The Hyperlocal Newsroom is a great way to get on the radar of The Times,
especially if you are motivated enough to dig up great stories with citywide or even
national appeal.

The Virtual Assignment Desk
Part of your duties as a reporter for The Local is to help the Carter Institute and The New
York Times ready the Virtual Assignment Desk for launch. The V.A.D. is an exciting
tool that aims to facilitate citizen journalism and make the editing process more
collaborative and transparent. Community members pitch or suggest stories using an
online form; once story ideas are approved by the editor and posted to an Open
Assignment Desk on The Local’s site, community members can volunteer to write,
photograph, or offer tips for stories that others have suggested.

Currently, the tool is in beta stages as developers at The Times iron out bugs. Jeremy
Zilar of The Times will train you on the VAD during your first day of class (you’ll also
receive a handout). After that, you’ll be responsible for testing the tool by submitting
pitches through it, and reporting any hiccups. All pitches must be submitted through the
VAD.