Digital Newsroom

Knowing the rules, including how a meeting is run, who (really) runs the meetings, and what rights you have in reporting a meeting. These three sources are worth review:

• Roberts Rules of Order
• Colorado’s sunshine law
• Ottowa: Public servant vs. city staff definitions
• Colorado Revised Statutes

Obviously, the Ottowa example is specific to that community. Smaller communities in Colorado are governed by Colorado Statutes. Incorporated (home rule) cities have their own statutes, which must conform with state law.

Compare these three sources of information:

• A newsletter produced by a local couple.
• The city’s web site.
• The local community newspaper.

Explaining polls, PollingReport.com, DenverPost.com sports poll

A typical budget (PDF), ways to report it, and following the money.

Questions to ask politicians and politicians who won’t answer.

For Metro State students

Groups will research a topic related to the Auraria campus, or Metro State, and post the resulting article as a topic at wikipedia.org. The article needs to be 400-600 words, and must have two subtopic links of at least 300 words each.

Your topic and subtopics should have 8-10 links each to other Wiki topics or to outside web sites.

You must take extra care in researching and writing this assignment. Secondary sources need to be included at the bottom of the Wiki post. Grammar and style must be perfect. Include information from primary sources (interviews), but do not quote primary sources in the post. Submit a list of the sources to me at the time of the group presentation in class on March 8.

Post a link to your group’s topic in the Links section of your individual blog prior to class on March 8.

Your group presentation needs to be 20-25 minutes and should include a visual element, such as a PowerPoint presentation.

Please e-mail me if you have questions.

Group 1 – Jonathon, Marta, Kelsey, Matt

Group 2 – Erin, Barbara, Josh, Cory

The debate over accuracy on/of the Internet can be summarized in one word: Wikipedia.

Robert McHenry, a former editor of Encyclopedia Brittanica, describes the philosophy behind Wikipedia:

“1. Anyone, irrespective of expertise in or even familiarity with the topic, can submit an article and it will be published.

2. Anyone, irrespective of expertise in or even familiarity with the topic, can edit that article, and the modifications will stand until further modified.

Then comes the crucial and entirely faith-based step:

3. Some unspecified quasi-Darwinian process will assure that those writings and editings by contributors of greatest expertise will survive; articles will eventually reach a steady state that corresponds to the highest degree of accuracy. ”

Local criticism includes CU professors who panned the source’s citing of the “Flying Spaghetti Monster.”

Wikipedia aside, some very reputable newspapers make huge booboos. By far, the best site for debunking Internet myths and urban legends is snopes.com.

For next class (Wed.), find and edit a Wikipedia post. In your blog, link to the edited item and describe your changes. Visit this link for complete Wiki instructions.

For your group project, due March 8, your group must collaborate to write a thorough, 600-word or more post about a topic related to the Auraria campus with at least two sub-topics of 300 words each. A logical path would be an entry about St. Cajetan’s or the Tivoli Brewery. Your post must have at least three photos, and complete links to other Wikipedia items and external resources. For your presentation, prepare to discuss your methods of research, resources you used – both primary and secondary - and a list of the people your group talked to. You may want to produce a Powerpoint presentation for class so that you can include more photographs (Wikipedia may limit the number).  Link to your entries from your individual blogs. This project is 20 percent of your grade.

If you’re having trouble building your web page, don’t fret. The primary use for your directory on the digitalnewsroom.net server is space for your pictures, audio files and videos files. There’s no requirement or expectation in class for a fancy web site, even for the group project. It’s important to know basic html, but, beyond that we’ll rely on user-friendly interfaces for presentation.

An important note about your directory: always keep an index.html file in it, even if you don’t use or link to it. I’ll explain in class.

Thanks to Felicia for the link to DynamicDrive.com. The calendar at upper right is one of the site’s free scripts. Logan provided the link to Django Project, the open source platform used by lawrence.com.

For: CU Digital Newsroom

Overall an outstanding job on blog posts. Post at least two each week on the topic of your choice. Okay to post other comments & observations, but keep focus on your journalism topic. Go nuts when the semester ends.
Keep a couple things in mind:

• keep paragraphs short; extra return makes blog easier to read.

• if commenting on your workplace, be very, very careful. Nuff said.

• do not use hotlinks to photographs (unless a fair use circumstance).

• use AP style (nine vs. 9).