This document provides an overview of an introductory journalism course. It includes details about the instructor, Jillian Hocking, outlines the course objectives of introducing students to news journalism and teaching key journalism skills. It also provides an overview of the course topics that will be covered, including news gathering, research, interviewing, writing and presenting news stories. Assessment details and assignment requirements are also outlined.

1. Jillian Hocking
jillianhocking@hotmail.com
@kabuladventure
Swinburne University
Victoria University
Deakin University
European Humanities University

2. UNAMA, United Nations Assistance Mission
in Afghanistan

3. Cairo, Kuwait, China, Kazakhstan
Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Belarus,
Armenia, Georgia
BBC Trainer in Middle East and Eastern Europe

4. SBS, Training Manager
Government state broadcaster
ABC Radio, Producer/Presenter

5. INTRODUCTION TO COURSE
• No journalism experience necessary
• This course aims to introduce you to news
journalism and the changing global news
media industry
• Learn by experience – find your own news
stories, research, interview, write….
• Learn about online, multimedia journalistic
practice.

6. JOURNALISM SKILLS
• CURIOSITY
• Discovery/Initiative
• Research/Inquiry/Investigation
• Interview skills
• Sifting and evaluating information
• Accuracy and verification
• Summarising information
• Clear, concise, engaging communication
• Logistical skills

7. TODAY’S LESSON
•Introductions exercise– find a news
story
•Information about the course – what
you’ll be doing, study materials,
assessments
•What’s in the news?
•What is news?
•News gathering exercise….

8. The Role of the Media
 Have a fundamental role to play in ensuring an active and
vibrant involvement of citizens in the development of their
societies.
 Give people the information they need in order to identify
issues that affect them, and make informed decisions to
improve their lives.
 Encourage community participation by providing a platform
for dialogue, discussion and debate, where voices are heard,
ideas exchanged and opinions formed.

9. Journalists Duty to Inform
 Journalists have a duty in a functioning civil society to ensure
that, in all corners of that society, the views of people on
issues that concern or affect them are heard.
 To do this effectively they must reflect the diversity of people,
cultures, beliefs, interests and opinions within their societies.

10. Impartiality
 In practice, however, much journalism focuses on providing
news and information from external and official/governmental
sources. Furthermore, the thoughts and opinions that are
regularly reflected in journalistic coverage and programming
tend to be those of people and groups who already have
power and influence in society – people whose interests are
already in general well represented through the existing
political, economic and social power structures.

11. WHOSE VOICE HAVEN’T WE
HEARD?
 As a result marginalized and disadvantaged groups
frequently see themselves being either misrepresented or
excluded from the prevailing narratives of their societies.
 Their thoughts and opinions tend to be neglected or sought
only in relation to stories that see them in conflict with the
interests, wishes, or opinions of the majority or of dominant
groups – be they gender-based, cultural, ethnic, religious,
commercial.

12. INHERENT BIAS AND PREJUDICE
 Journalists are often guilty themselves of compounding the
problem by repeating assumptions and pedalling bias and
stereotypes.
 The challenge journalists face today is to be more critical of
existing patterns of coverage and to discover and report on
diversity in all its rich complexity.

13. EQUAL PARTICIPATION
An effective functioning civil society is about more
than just the right to vote and equality before the
law. It is also about full and equal participation of
all groups in society and about understanding and
respect for each other’s qualities and differences,
particularly when represented in the media.

14. ABOUT YOU……
• Pair off – Interview each other
• Five minutes Q&A each
• Find out the most newsworthy thing you can about your
interviewee -What’s the most interesting thing you can
discover in five minutes of questioning?
• Report back to the group for 30 seconds only about the most
newsworthy thing you’ve found out about them…(Please – no
biographies!!)

15. LEARNING FROM THIS EXERCISE
• Welcome to journalism!!
• Face-to-face interviewing with a stranger…
• Framing questions to search for a ‘news’ angle about your
interviewee…
• Identifying a single, key “news” point (rather than just
researching a life story!)…
• Reporting back under time pressures…
• Reporting concisely and clearly…

16. DETAILS ABOUT THIS UNIT
FINDING AND RESEARCHING NEWS
 LESSON 1 - INTRODUCTION – WHAT IS JOURNALISM?
 LESSON 2 – WHAT IS NEWS?
 LESSON 3 - HOW TO FIND A STORY
 LESSON 4 – RESEARCH – PRIMARY/SECONDARY SOURCES
 LESSON 5 – WRITING YOUR STORY
 LESSON 6 - INTERVIEWING
 LESSON 7 - REPORTING YOUR STORY
 LESSON 8 – PRESENTING YOUR STORY

17. DETAILS ABOUT THIS COURSE
 Class Attendance –
 Those who come to class do best in this course.
 A lot of this course is practical journalistic work.
Classes are more like workshops.
 You are adults, it is up to you to come to class to work
on your assignments.
 If you work independently from home or the library then
you must accept your work may not be to the standard I
expect.
 Consultation – arrange a time to contact or meet meif
you need help or want to discuss anything relating to
the course and the work required.

18. DETAILS ABOUT THIS UNIT
•Course Facebook page
Log in now – and check in regularly

19. ASSIGNMENTS 
OVERVIEW OF ASSIGNMENTS:
Research file - 20% - Due Wed 4th June
News story for print media - 40% -
Due Fri 6th June
Multimedia news story - 40% -
Due Wed 10th June

20. SUBMITTING YOUR WORK
All assignments are to be emailed to me at:
jillianhocking@hotmail.com
NO OTHER EMAIL IS TO BE USED.
THANK YOU 

21. When you start the day with the
newspaper, you start with the recognition
that you are a person in the world, with a
need and responsibility to engage.
This habit is good for our democracy.
Andrea Batista Schlesinger
The Death of Why?

22. What is a journalist?
 Andie Tucher, Director of Columbia University, Journalism
School's program, discusses what it means to be a journalist
in a world where anyone can write and publish work online.
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsiDlHO9AWA

23. THE FOURTH ESTATE
 The media are often, in the west, referred to as the fourth
estate.
 What does that mean?
 There are four pillars of a democracy.
 What are the four pillars?

24. What are the four estates in a democracy?
 Legislative – (Law making)
 Executive – (Policy making)
 Judiciary – (Reviewing the law)
 Media – (Reporting the system honestly)
 The police – must remain independent, cannot be an arm of the
state otherwise peaceful protests can never happen.
 The term "Fourth Estate" emerged in reference to forces outside
the established power structure, and is now most commonly
used in reference to the press or media.

25. The Fifth Estate
 The Fifth Estate is most strongly associated
with bloggers, journalists, and media outlets that operate
outside the mainstream media (and often in opposition to the
mainstream media).
 It may also include political groups and other groups outside
the mainstream in their views and functions in society.
 Social media is part of the fifth estate – facebook, twitter,
bambuser, instagram. Citizen journalists are rapidly
becoming a key component of democracy.

26. The role of journalism and journalists
 The Fifth Estate is not simply the blogging community, nor an
extension of the media, but 'networked individuals enabled by
the Internet in ways that can hold the other estates accountable.
 Good journalism keeps governments accountable.
 This is what Edward Snowden, Julian Assange and Bradly
(Chelsea) Manning were trying to do – hold governments
accountable. This is why they are hated by people in high
places in the west.
 People in positions of power, and some journalists in the
mainstream western, corporate media are trying to criminalise
journalism.

27. Julian Assange
 Australian! 
 Came to international attention as the founder of the whistle-
blowing Web site, Wikileaks.
 Sexual assault scandal
 Effectively under house arrest in Ecuadorian Embassy, London
 http://www.theguardian.com/film/interactive/2013/sep/27/fifth-
estate-wikileaks-timeline

28. Privacy under attack: The
NSA files revealed new
threats to democracy.
Edward Snowden
http://bit.ly/1opgqjr
http://www.theguardian.com/world/the-nsa-files

29. Edward Snowden
 Greatest fear was that people wouldn’t care about the
revelations.
 Mainstream media in America have done everything possible
to discredit him.
 The Young Turks -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INPkz9yQfTU

30. Who was Michael Hastings?
Was a very vocal critic of the surveillance state and American
government’s dishonesty to its people, particularly in relation to
was in Iraq and Afghanistan.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hastings_(journalist)
 http://www.rollingstone.com/contributor/michael-hastings
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcPcD2AWTMQ
 http://www.globalresearch.ca/journalist-michael-hastings-
was-investigating-cia-director-at-time-of-deadly-
crash/5346028

31. Who is Rupert Murdoch?
 Owns 70% of the world’s media.
 Own 75% of Australia’s media.
 He uses his media networks to further his own political and
business interests.
 When the previous Australian government tried to introduce
reforms to journalism standards he started an immediate smear
campaign in his newspapers, against the government.
 Any inquiry into media ownership laws was met with howls that
echoed around the world. “Stalin”, “censorship”, “freedom of
speech”, “attack on democracy”. Rupert Murdoch had an
absolute tantrum at the very idea that the media should be held
in any way accountable in presenting the truth.

33. The Newsroom
 What is journalism?
 From – 41’45”

34. GERMAN CAR PLANT EXAMPLE
The German car manufacturer, Volkswagen, today
announced plans to open a new plant in the
Middlesborough area creating 2000 new jobs.
Local community leaders welcomed the news,
saying it would provide much needed investment
and employment in the region hard hit by the
recession.

35. The German car manufacturer, Volkswagen, today
announced plans to open a new plant in the
Middlesborough area. They hope to exploit 2000
workers. It appears they were attracted by the
plentiful supply of cheap labour in the area and the
opportunity it presents for high profits. Trade union
leaders urged all new employees at the plant to
join a union, saying the company was known for its
ruthless labour relations.

36. WHAT’S IN THE NEWS?
•Tell me about news stories you’ve
come across in the past week.
•News in Belarus?
•News in Lithuania?
•News stories in Australia?
•News stories around the world?

37. CLASS EXERCISE
 In groups of three:
 Research stories from each of these places and present
to class:
 Belarus
 Lithuania
 Australia
 Europe

38. ETHICAL JOURNALISM
 Ethical journalism concerns the way in which reporters,
editors and others provide commentary on the events that
shape people’s lives.
 It is rooted in moral values and has evolved hand in hand
with human rights protection in Europe over 150 years.
 Today journalism and human rights intersect at a moment of
remarkable and historical change as a result of globalisation
and the explosion of digital media.

39. The internet and journalism
 Media is greatest influencer and provider of information in our
society.
 Therefore digital literacy and its function in our society is
crucial, particularly in a media context.
 Journalists have different attitude to news and information
now that the internet exists.
 To understand contemporary journalistic practice you must
understand digital literacy.

40. WHAT’S IN THE NEWS?
• Consume a range of news media daily - newspapers, radio,
TV, online
• Important in journalism studies to consume as much media
as you can
• Reflect on the choice of stories, the prioritising of stories, the
treatment of stories – how they are reported and how they are
developed
• Be critical analysts not passive consumers

41. WHAT MAKES NEWS?
• Many definitions….
• “Events” or “information”
• Must be ”previously unknown”, or “new”, “fresh” or
“recent”
• It needs to be “noteworthy”, “interesting”, “important”
• It needs to be “reported”, “communicated” or
“transmitted”
• It depends on your market/readers/audience

42. NEWS IS DIFFERENT FROM
OTHER TYPES OF JOURNALISM
• News – something immediate, needs to be reported at once - the 5
‘W’s and H…
• Can be “hard” (disaster, war, crime) or “soft” (a celebrity’s new baby,
a flower show)
• Features – background, in-depth information – less timely – could
run any day of the week
• Commentary– informed discussion on causes, connections,
consequences of stories
• Opinion – a personal one-sided view of a story
• Criticism and review – arts or sports reports

43. Issues affecting ‘what is news’
• CONVERGENCE AND MULTIMEDIA WORKING – THE
INFLUENCE OF ONLINE ‘HITS’ DATA ON THE NEWS AGENDA
• PROFITABILITY AND FINDING A MARKET
• NEW TECHNOLOGY
• PUBLIC RELATIONS AND ‘SPIN’
• CHANGING CONSUMER TASTES AND DEMANDS
• CITIZEN JOURNALISM AND SOCIAL NETWORKING
• INFORMATION PROTECTION BY GOVERNMENTS
• ETHICS AND PRIVACY

44. Characteristics of News
• Reference: Understanding Journalism – Lynette
Sheridan Burns 2013 Chapter 4
• Impact – the relevance of a story to the audience.
• Timeliness – events that are immediate, recent and help
people in their daily lives – “news you can use”
• Proximity – events that are geographically close to people
• Conflict – antagonism, opposing sides, violence, warfare - “if it
bleeds, it leads!”

45. Characteristics of News
• Currency - how “hot” is the story or issue? Stories can attract
attention if they are similar to other recent events
• Novelty– events that deviate sharply from the expected – ‘Man
bites dog’ rather than ‘Dog bites man’.
• Relativity - stories that are particularly appropriate to the
medium or audience…

46. ATTEMPTS TO BE UNBIASED
 It’s important to understand that the centre, the so-called middle
ground between the two primary sides is a position itself, a bias.
 Therefore, this stance of being in the middle is a justification for
the bias rather than a denial of it.
 The idea that the truth lies somewhere in between two primary
sides is ill founded.
 For example, Copernicus and Galileo said the earth went
around the sun, while the Catholic Church said the sun circled
the earth. The truth did not lie somewhere between the two.


47. TRUTH ON BOTH SIDES?
 Thousands of survivors testify to the extermination of millions
of Jews and others in the Nazi concentration camps.
Holocaust deniers, like David Irving, claim this is all a hoax.
 There is not some truth on both sides.
 We know it happened, the evidence is incontrovertible.
We’ve seen photographs, we have heard from witnesses.

48. TRUTH ON BOTH SIDES?
 Medical evidence suggested that cigarette smoking was a
serious cause of cancer. The tobacco companies denied it for
as long as they possibly could.
 They were not half right, they were LYING. Moreover the
tobacco companies cynically exploited the media notion that
“balance” consists of sitting on the fence to hide the truth
about smoking just as the oil companies and other vested
interests are doing by financing climate scepticism at the
moment.

49. WHAT IS BIAS?
 So, given the media cannot help but be biased what question
do we need to ask ourselves?
 What is the nature of that bias and how does it work?
 Who is this bias supporting and how?
 From whose perspective is mainstream, corporate, western
media reporting?

50. News versus Propaganda
Edward Bernays
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tru6uiWs8Yo

51. NEWS VALUES EXERCISE
•Eight fictional news stories
•Put them in order
•Put a ranking number beside each
story from 1 to 8
•We’ll collate the findings
•Reflect on the factors driving your
choices

52. NEWS VALUES EXERCISE
• Melbourne scientists discover a gene that is responsible
for 60% of bowel cancer.
• Prince Harry and Pippa Middleton announce they are going
to marry.
• An earthquake in Romania kills 200 people.
• Michael Clarke announces he is standing down as
Australian cricket captain
• Four children are killed in a house fire in Melbourne
• Barack Obama is to have major heart surgery next week
• The USA records quarterly GDP growth of 2%
• Miley Cyrus is to have a baby

53. KEY LEARNING POINTS FROM
NEWS VALUES EXERCISE
What sorts of editorial judgements did you just make?
• You used the different characteristics of news to evaluate and
prioritise the stories
• You had to work out which element or elements were the most
important factors
• You had to have some sense of who your reader/audience was
– what would they want to know? What would appeal most to
them?
• If we change some of these stories slightly – how do your
news judgements change?

54. NEWS VALUES EXERCISE
• Melbourne scientists discover a gene that is responsible
for 60% of a rare kidney cancer.
• Prince Harry announces he is going to visit Argentina
next month.
• An earthquake in Auckland, New Zealand kills 2000
people.
• Shane Watson announces he retiring from Test cricket
captain
• Four children are injured in a house fire in Melbourne
• Kevin Rudd is to have major heart surgery next week
• China records quarterly GDP growth of -2%
• Miley Cyrus reveals that Barack Obama is the father of her
new baby

55. NEWS WRITING EXERCISE
• “Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very
few sentences come out right first time, or even the third time.
Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing
is hard, it’s because it is hard. It’s one of the hardest things
people do.”
William Zinsser “On Writing Well”

56. Journalists
Interested in their newspapers, website, webpage, twitter
feed, facebook wall, radio programs, news bulletins,
features.
They have a healthy ego and want to be the first one to
get a scoop.
Compete with each other.
Journalists are suspicious of PR machines.
Under enormous pressure to report across all media
platforms

57.  Media is greatest influencer and provider of information in our
society.
 Therefore digital literacy and its function in our society is
crucial, particularly in a media context.
 Journalists have different attitude to news and information
now that the internet exists.
 To understand contemporary journalistic practice you must
understand digital literacy.
The internet and journalism

58. BATTLE FOR THE INTERNET
 http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/listeningpost/2014/05/
battle-world-wide-web-201452415432260763.html

59.  Threats to journalistic independence
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qftOJX0oJ08
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MutZoNkk3Yw
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcPcD2AWTMQ

60. What’s happening in Ukraine?
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT1eALgDAMo

61. Cutting edge
multiplatform journalism
 http://www.abc.net.au/innovation/blacksaturday/
 http://www.theglobalmail.org/feature/how-much-would-you-
risk-to-start-a-new-life-in-australia/412/
 http://www.rwandanstories.org/genocide/roadblocks.html
 http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-
fall/#/?part=tunnel-creek
 http://mediastorm.com/publication/a-darkness-visible-
afghanistan