Posts by Irwin Chen

The View from Nowhere describes a kind of false objectivity or feigned neutrality in reporting. Journalists have sometimes used the View from Nowhere, a term popularized by NYU journalism professor...

Bite-sized prompts to bring out the best in your students. Use the J+D cards to design a syllabus, prepare for class, reimagine an assignment or get inspiration.

Students explore how to filter hard news from feature news, straight news from commentary, and fact-based journalism from opinion.

Students observe interviews and understand what makes a good, empathetic interviewer, what makes a good interview question, and how to encourage an interview subject to open up.

Students experience street reporting and develop a collaborative approach to conducting on-the-spot interviews with strangers.

Students practice turning an interview into an original story by separating important ideas from trivial ones, identifying key quotes, picking up on nuance, and recognizing when to paraphrase.

Students develop story ideas by closely observing an environment or subject and applying different information-collecting techniques.

Students hone their ability to pitch a compelling story and learn how to give focused and effective feedback.

Students learn about the importance of knowing their audience and incorporating an audience perspective into the reporting process.

Students consider what the audience will do after consuming their stories, and explore how journalism can engage and empower communities.

Students explore how deep observation can be a powerful tool for journalists and practice different methods of observation.

Students create “mind maps” of their stories, look for new ideas and connections, and create a storyboard based on their findings.

Students use a different aspect of their stories to rewrite their ledes, learning how to be flexible and gaining a better understanding of narrative structure.

Students use wireframes to scrutinize the underlying structures of their news sources and how those structures determine what types of stories can be told.

Students will explore how community newspapers have historically served their audiences.

Students explore a professional code of ethics and think through scenarios for how and when these principles apply.

Students will understand why journalism makes use of style guides and how to sort through various online style guides for different topics.

Students and faculty create a set of classroom guidelines for effective communication in person and virtually, with the goal of building inclusive, equitable and trusting learning environments.

This writing-intensive course will lead students more deeply into the tools and practices of today’s digital journalists. It builds upon core Journalism + Design concepts: deep listening, generating and synthesizing ideas, iteration and critique.

How does “fake news” differ from real news; what determines which “facts” are recognized as true; and how can you ensure the accuracy of your own writing? This hybrid course blends lessons in political philosophy, history and communications with practical journalistic instruction to prepare the next generation of journalists to defend facts—and their own careers—at a time when press freedom and democratic institutions are under unprecedented attack.

The first in a three-course sequence that introduces students to journalism and its crucial role in democratic society. Through real, project-based work, students will research, report, and present news stories while considering how to best engage an audience and have impact. An introduction to human-centered design practices and to the complexity and competitiveness of the 21st-century media ecosystem.

In this hands­-on lab course, students investigate data­-driven stories that catalyze change without knowing how to code. Students will learn the basic math and spreadsheet skills needed to verify data and spot outliers that make a great story. Extracting and cleaning data and how to format findings for publication will also be covered. Students will leave knowing how to make spreadsheets do the dirty work of great journalism.

This course will explore the role and value of graphic design from a journalistic lens, and the role and value of journalism from a graphic design lens. How can we strengthening our understanding of how how both disciplines rely on one another in our creative and professional practices?

This course introduces a core set of technical skills for practicing journalism design. Topics include the basics of computer file systems and the internet, creating websites with HTML and CSS, and using the Adobe Suite (InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop) for digital and print design. Students will not only be exposed to software, theory, and techniques, they will also establish a foundation to teach themselves how to extend their skill sets throughout their careers.

This course introduces a core set of technical skills for practicing journalism design. Topics include the basics of computer file systems and the internet, creating websites with HTML and CSS, and using the Adobe Suite (InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop) for digital and print design. Students will not only be exposed to software, theory, and techniques, they will also establish a foundation to teach themselves how to extend their skill sets throughout their careers.

Reporting is the foundation of visual journalism like interactives, maps, charts, and multimedia stories. Being a successful visual journalist requires specific reporting skills that many journalists lack, including how to mine photos and videos for information, how to collect structured data, and how to imagine and pitch a visual story.

Journalists need to understand audiences in order to best serve them. Journalists must learn how to use social media not only for distribution -- which is now essential for all newsrooms -- but also to communicate with and interact with audiences. This course will teach students how to create an engagement strategy, to use social media for newsgathering and distribution, to design crowd-powered projects, and to measure success through metrics and outcomes.

This course will look at how to utilize new (and old) technologies to make news content accessible to as many people as possible. Topics covered include web accessibility, accessible graphics, closed captioning, and methods for engaging with different communities.

The Internet is a place for discussion and collaboration, but the experience can be difficult, confusing, intimidating, or downright hostile. This course will explore how we can design systems for better discussion, collaboration, voting and governance online.

Students learn how to dig deeper into complex issues, to better understand the different forces at play and how those forces are interconnected.

Students continue to apply systems thinking to their reporting by identifying key stakeholders in a story and recognizing how that can deepen their understanding of an issue.

Students learn a new framework for understanding and analyzing stories through a systems thinking lens by reading and analyzing a long-form piece of journalism.

Students will discover the feedback loops that drive the systems they will be reporting on.

Students use their stakeholder maps to consider how reporting can better meet their information needs.

A tool to evaluate student understanding and use of the integrated design and reporting process.

Students are given the opportunity to think about what constitutes success for their work, and the role and impact reporting has in communities.

Using the map created in Capture, Cluster, Connect, students will use the SAT Model to analyze the forces in their system.

This course is a bold dive into feature writing — a form of journalism that combines research and reporting with narrative nonfiction storytelling techniques. Students will read and analyze a broad selection of magazine features from throughout the last hundred years including but not limited to celebrity profiles, idea-driven stories, reported personal essays, and works of “new journalism.”

This class is designed for people who think code, math, and computers in general are intimidating. Through a series of playful challenges, you will learn how computers, code, and the Web actually work. Along the way, you will pick up valuable skills and knowledge that will allow you to do more complex interactive projects in the future.