Exercises
These exercises can be used with any level of journalism student. Educators should feel free to tweak the specifics of the assignment while making use of the playful structure upon which they are built.
What’s at Stake and How to Address It
Theme: Systems Thinking
Type: Exercises
Using the map created in Capture, Cluster, Connect, students will use the SAT Model to analyze the forces in their system.
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Develop a North Star
Theme: Systems Thinking
Type: Exercises
Students are given the opportunity to think about what constitutes success for their work, and the role and impact reporting has in communities.
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Community Engagement
Theme: Community News, Systems Thinking
Type: Exercises
Students use their stakeholder maps to consider how reporting can better meet their information needs.
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Surfacing Underlying Patterns In a System
Theme: Systems Thinking
Type: Exercises
Students will discover the feedback loops that drive the systems they will be reporting on.
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Longreads Analysis
Theme: Systems Thinking
Type: Exercises
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.
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Stakeholder Mapping
Theme: Systems Thinking
Type: Exercises
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.
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Capture, Cluster, Connect
Theme: Systems Thinking
Type: Exercises
Students learn how to dig deeper into complex issues, to better understand the different forces at play and how those forces are interconnected.
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Developing Community Agreements
Theme: General, Community News
Type: Exercises
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.
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Style Guide, Style Hunt
Theme: General
Type: Exercises
Students will understand why journalism makes use of style guides and how to sort through various online style guides for different topics.
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Journalism Ethics
Theme: General, Journalism Basics
Type: Exercises
Students explore a professional code of ethics and think through scenarios for how and when these principles apply.
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Newspapers and Community
Theme: Community News
Type: Exercises
Students will explore how community newspapers have historically served their audiences.
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Layouts and Wireframes
Theme: Design
Type: Exercises
Students use wireframes to scrutinize the underlying structures of their news sources and how those structures determine what types of stories can be told.
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Jacob’s Ladder Ledes
Theme: Journalism Basics
Type: Exercises
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.
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Mind-Mapping and Storyboarding
Theme: General
Type: Exercises
Students create “mind maps” of their stories, look for new ideas and connections, and create a storyboard based on their findings.
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Mapping and Observing
Theme: General, Design
Type: Exercises
Students explore how deep observation can be a powerful tool for journalists and practice different methods of observation.
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Empower the Audience
Theme: Community News
Type: Exercises
Students consider what the audience will do after consuming their stories, and explore how journalism can engage and empower communities.
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Meet the Audience
Theme: Journalism Basics
Type: Exercises
Students learn about the importance of knowing their audience and incorporating an audience perspective into the reporting process.
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The Elevator Pitch
Theme: General, Journalism Basics
Type: Exercises
Students hone their ability to pitch a compelling story and learn how to give focused and effective feedback.
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Story Development: Look, Listen, Map
Theme: Journalism Basics
Type: Exercises
Students develop story ideas by closely observing an environment or subject and applying different information-collecting techniques.
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Interviewing 102: The Transcript
Theme: Journalism Basics
Type: Exercises
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.
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Interviewing 101: The Vox Pop
Theme: Journalism Basics
Type: Exercises
Students experience street reporting and develop a collaborative approach to conducting on-the-spot interviews with strangers.
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Interviewing 101: The Sit-Down
Theme: Journalism Basics
Type: Exercises
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.
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What is News?
Theme: Journalism Basics
Type: Exercises
Students explore how to filter hard news from feature news, straight news from commentary, and fact-based journalism from opinion.
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Questions to ask + habits to build
Theme: Systems Thinking
Type: Exercises
It can be challenging and overwhelming to try and unpack the complexity of issues in your reporting, particularly on deadline. Illuminating the larger systems at play in the events and issues you're c...
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Uncover Assumptions + Beliefs Driving the System
Theme: Systems Thinking
Type: Exercises
Conscious or not, we all hold assumptions, beliefs, and ideas about how systems work, or should work. While often unspoken, these individual and shared ideas, which we call "mental models," shape the ...
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Uncover patterns in your story
Theme: Systems Thinking
Type: Exercises
During the reporting process, we see how the issues we cover are often perpetuated by cyclical patterns. We call these patterns feedback loops, which are a series of forces that connect to one another...
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Map Your Story as a System
Theme: Systems Thinking
Type: Exercises
Journalists cover incredibly complex issues, and it can be challenging to offer deep context for newsworthy events and trends—especially on a deadline. This exercise offers a simple tool for mapping...
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Identify Key Stakeholders + Information Needs
Theme: Systems Thinking
Type: Exercises
Who is your reporting for? Whose voices are you centering? Taking the time to consider the stakeholders who are connected to and affected by a specific issue can help you understand how you can more d...
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Visualize the systems in your reporting
Theme: Systems Thinking
Type: Exercises
News coverage is often dominated by reporting on current events—a demonstration, a murder, the government's response to a pandemic. It's vital for journalists to take a step back, provide context...
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Create a guiding vision for your reporting
Theme: Systems Thinking
Type: Exercises
Even while many journalists don't feel comfortable prescribing change, we routinely talk about having impact. Regardless of where you fall in this debate, no reporting happens in a vacuum. As journali...
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Fairy Tale Ledes
Theme: Journalism Basics
Type: Exercises
Students use classic fairy tales to learn what makes a good headline, what makes a good lede, how to judge which information is the most important in a story, and the role of perspective in news reporting.
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Syllabi
Below is a sampling of syllabi used in actual undergraduate Journalism + Design courses at The New School since the program began in Fall 2014. Some of these courses have been taught many times by multiple instructors, who continue to iterate as they teach them again. Others were one-time experiments. Whatever the case, each syllabus reflects events that were current at the time as well as the perspective and passions of the instructor. The syllabi also reflect access to New York’s rich professional communities of journalists and designers.
Web Fundamentals
Theme: Code
Type: Syllabi
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.
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Feature Writing for the 21st Century
Theme: Experimental
Type: Syllabi
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.”
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Designing Digital Communities
Theme: Experimental, Community News
Type: Syllabi
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.
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Expanding your audience: Designing for Accessibility
Theme: General, Community News
Type: Syllabi
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.
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Engagement Journalism
Theme: Community News
Type: Syllabi
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.
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Reporting for Visuals
Theme: Multimedia
Type: Syllabi
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.
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Interaction Design for News Apps
Theme: Design
Type: Syllabi
Course Description This course will introduce students to key concepts and foundational principles of UX (user experience) and interaction design in the context of journalism. The 2016 Presidential el...
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Journalism Design Toolkit
Theme: Code, General
Type: Syllabi
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.
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Design for Journalists
Theme: Design
Type: Syllabi
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?
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Data Journalism Bootcamp
Theme: Data
Type: Syllabi
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.
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News, Narrative & Design III
Theme: Journalism Basics
Type: Syllabi
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.
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Facts/Alternative Facts
Theme: Experimental, General
Type: Syllabi
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.
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Product Design Strategy for News Organizations
Theme: Design
Type: Syllabi
In this process-focused course, students will work collaboratively in teams to understand and address a core challenge faced by today's news industry: how to evolve a modern news organization when the...
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News, Narrative & Design II
Theme: Journalism Basics
Type: Syllabi
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.
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Designing News Games
Theme: Systems Thinking, Design
Type: Syllabi
Course Description Students will learn how journalists can use games to tell complex stories. The class will focus on the fundamentals of game design theory, analyzing existing games that tackle serio...
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Podcasting & Audio Narratives
Theme: Multimedia
Type: Syllabi
This is a class where we will listen hard to the best audio journalism in the business in order to strengthen skills that apply to every medium. We will do an overview of really great listening projec...
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Visualizing Data
Theme: Design, Data
Type: Syllabi
Journalism is about gathering observations, finding patterns, and communicating those patterns. Data journalism is about gathering way more observations, and finding far more accurate and nuanced patt...
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News, Narrative & Design I
Theme: Journalism Basics
Type: Syllabi
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.
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