Broadcast News II (3 Credits)

C&J 460 Sec. 001 – Spring 2008 (CRN 30395)

Instructor: Dr. Richard Schaefer, Associate Professor

Office Hours: Tues. 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. and Wed. from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. in C&J 252

Phone: 277-9556

Email:

Classes: Tues. & Thurs. 12:30 to 2:20 p.m. (Class will run the full time.)

C&J Bldg., Room 124 (The Mac Lab and at KNME-TV, which can be entered through the front door of KNME on University Ave NE.

Description: This class, which is an extension of Broadcast News I, is designed for journalism students with a Broadcast Concentration. The course emphasizes broadcast news. Students learn how to make reports for television and streamed Internet. They will use ENG cameras, and video editing equipment. They will develop their audio-visual and writing skills and make reports and programs that demonstrate their digital software, newsroom, studio and field broadcast skills.

Prerequisites: Completion of C&J 171 and C&J 259/269 with a grade of “C” or better. Students must also have completed C&J 267 and C&J 360 with a grade of “C” or better.

Fees: There is also a special $125.00 equipment fee for this course. The fees are used to partially defray the cost of course equipment and materials.

Materials: Students will need to buy Sony MiniDV tapes. Do not purchase cheap tapes because they do not hold up well in the editing process and therefore cost students a great deal of time. Do not purchase MiniDV tapes that are longer than 63 minutes because they will not work with the C&J equipment.

Course Objectives:

• To provide a laboratory type setting for students to hone their newsgathering, writing and news presentation skills. To acquaint students with the reporting, writing, shooting and editing techniques and production skills of broadcast news.

• To give students an introductory opportunity to research and organize contents for reports in television. To learn some of the jobs and routines of broadcast journalism professionals, including on-camera and in-studio work.

• To enable students to critically understand and use broadcast journalism, both as producers and consumers.

• To expand students’ repertoire of creative capabilities, including editing aural and video imagery and studio production skills, to make them more competent information packagers and presenters. These concepts should also be applicable to a variety of organizational and electronic media applications.

• To develop and demonstrate an understanding of theories and legal and ethical constraints on news makers about how to shape media reports that will be presented to diverse audiences.

• To help students gain live-on-tape experience and produce tapes that demonstrate research, reporting and technical abilities.

Assignments and Requirements:

Students will rotate through various editorial exercises, including producing, anchoring, doing interviews, and recording/editing packaged news reports. They will also rotate through various positions in the studio during tapings. Students' work may be streamed on the KUNM, KNME, C&J and other Websites, including the University’s various Websites. Programs and stories may also be broadcast on The Mountain cable channel and Online Student Television Network (OSTN). Every story should be available for steaming or airing, as well as for sharing with other members of the class. In each of these tasks, students will be required to learn some basic competencies in the use of electronic news gathering (ENG) conventions and equipment.

Students in this class also grant the Department of Communication and Journalism the right to enter any report done as part of this course in student journalism or student TV production competitions, and to re-edit and re-air any portion of the work done for this class for airing and Webcasting. It is important to remember this when arranging interviews or constructing your reports. As part of this class, you also are required, upon request, to make your work available for broadcast on other student-produced newscasts and Web streams outside the Albuquerque market.

Students will also be required to participate in at least one production shift during the KNME Spring fund-drive. Students will have to sign-up for a specific shift. Missing a shift will result in a 5% reduction in your grade. In the past, students have found this to be an excellent learning experience.

C&J 460 students should also expect to do team Web projects with journalism students from Dennis Herrick’s C&J 475: Multimedia Reporting class. For more info on that class, as well as helpful tutorials, see the following URLs.

Multimedia Journalism Website: http://www.unm.edu/~herrick/cj475/index.html

C&J 475 dates/tutorials: http://www.unm.edu/~herrick/cj475/pages/schedule.html

C&J 460 students should also expect to work with broadcast students from Mexico who are participating in a UNM exchange program. These team experiences are excellent practice for real world broadcast and Web work, which is typically team based.

This class will require a great deal of out-of-class work. Expect to spend many hours working on assignments.

Assignments generally should be made available to the instructor and program producers in the appropriate form – tape, firewire drive, CD, DVD or electronic files. Hard copies of scripts should be handed to the instructor in class on the day they are due.

Everyone, including the instructor, will face embarrassing situations at some point during the semester. Students who move beyond those situations will succeed in this class.

Equipment Policies

Starting on Jan. 28, 2008, field equipment can be checked out and checked in at the C&J broadcast engineer’s office. Check out hours are tentatively scheduled as follows:

Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. through 3 p.m.

Rick Bustos ( ) will again be helping with equipment checkout. If he is not there during checkout hours, contact Sean Solowiej (277-2819, email: ). Students should reserve equipment in advance and even try to set up a time to pick up the gear. Recording equipment must be returned within 24 hours or on the next working day. Students should set up cameras and recording equipment and roll some tape before leaving campus. This makes certain that the student has functioning equipment and that the student knows how to use it before going out on a shoot.

Each student who wants to use C&J equipment must sign the equipment check out form at the start of the semester. (See the last page of the syllabus.) It clearly indicates that students are responsible for equipment they check out. If equipment is lost or negligently damaged, the student who has signed for the equipment will be responsible for its replacement or repair. Particularly as deadlines approach, access to equipment becomes more difficult. Try to reserve equipment in advance. Students, who do not pick up reserved equipment or who turn equipment in late will be penalized. Not returning equipment on time will result in a 3% reduction in your grade, as well as loss of the ability to reserve equipment in the future.

As a student enrolled in this class, you have priority access on the editing work stations in C&J Room 118.

Class attendance, expectations, and withdrawals:

Broadcast journalism is a collaborative endeavor. Students are expected to be dependable and cooperative. Attendance problems or difficulties working with others will certainly detract from a student’s final grade. After the second missed class session, each additional session missed will result in a 2% reduction in the student’s overall grade.

ADA Accessibility:

Qualified students with disabilities needing appropriate academic adjustments should contact the instructor as soon as possible to ensure your needs are met in a timely manner. Handouts may available in alternative accessible formats upon request for those with documented disabilities.

Diversity:

This course encourages different perspectives related to such factors as gender, race, nationality, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, and other relevant cultural identities. This course seeks to foster understanding and inclusiveness related to such diverse perspectives and ways of communicating. Students whose work fails to demonstrate this will be penalized.

Ethics:

The course emphasizes ethical practices and perspectives. Above all, students and instructors should strive to communicate and act, both in class interactions and in assigned coursework, in a manner directed by personal integrity, honesty, and respect for self and others. Included in this focus is the need for academic honesty by students as stated by the UNM Pathfinder. Students need to do original work and properly cite sources. For example, be aware of plagiarism—directly copying more than 3 or 4 words from another author without quoting (not just citing) the author is plagiarism. Further, course content will encourage the ethical practices and analysis of broadcast and Web journalism.

Duties and Grading: The course will likely be graded on a curve. However, the relative importance of each test or assignment is indicated by the points below. Students should recognize that the following grading scheme is tentative and may be adjusted to meet the developing pedagogical needs of the class.

Students must accrue at least 750 points of assignments for this course. Each student must do two video packages (100 points each) and one of each of the following: video in-depth PKG; news co-producer; anchor or Webcast talent or interview; news interview or LOS; team reporting or producing exercise, which entails working with C&J 475 or Mexican students; and the DVD demo reel exercise.

Assignments Points

Video PKG 1 100 points*

Video PKG 2 100 points*

Video In-depth PKG 3 150 points*

News or Webcast Co-producer 100 points*

Team reporting / producing ex. 100 points*

News Interview 25 points

LOS 25 points

VO-SOT 25 points

Anchor 25 points

Newscast Direct / Webcast Direct 25 points

DVD demo reel exercise 100 points*

TV and Webcast Production Positions (Students will rotate through the following un-graded production positions. A poor effort in any one of these assignments can result in an overall reduction of your grade.)

Technical director Teleprompter

Character generator Audio

VTR playback Floor director

Camera 1 Camera 2

Camera 3 Webcast master

Video Packages 1 and 2: All video packages should be interesting to the UNM campus community or to the people of northern and central New Mexico. Video packages 1 and 2 can run between 1 min. (1:00) and 2 min. 30 sec. (2:30) in length, unless otherwise cleared by the instructor.

In-depth Video Package 3: This should be an in-depth issue-oriented report that is of interest to the UNM campus or to the people of northern and central New Mexico. The in-depth report should run between 3 min. and 4 min.

Interviews should run between 1 and 3 minutes. Interviews can be pretaped at KNME for rolling into newscasts and Webcasts.

LOS reports of either 60 or 90 seconds should generally complement and follow the airing of packages done by the reporter.

Co-producers are responsible for organizing broadcasts, assembling and preparing scripts, and fixing taping and other problems before the newscast airs or is uploaded to the Web.

Team reporting or producing will be negotiated on an individual project basis. Students will get to pick particular story angles from general story topics. Once a general topic has been chosen, students must coordinate differentiated team coverage on the topic and work productively in conjunction with other team members. C&J 460 students should be prepared to turn in an evaluation of individual team member’s contribution to the overall project. Further directions will be forthcoming.

DVD demo reels will be produced by each student during the last week of the semester. Only items produced in C&J 360 and C&J 460 can be included in the demo reel. Instructions for organizing and burning a demo reel will be distributed during the second half of the semester. Copies of these demo reels will be evaluated by local news professionals.

(Tentative) Schedule of Class Meetings and Campus Report Taping Dates

This schedule is subject to change.

Date Location Anticipated Activity

Jan. 22 C&J 124 course organization

Jan. 24 C&J 124 FCE editing workshop and rotation sign-up

Jan 26 Schaefer’s house, optional class party starts at 7 p.m. (It ends by 10:30 p.m.)

Jan. 29 C&J 124 journalism on the Web (guest speaker) and finish rotation sign-up

Jan. 31 C&J 124 working on the Web demo

Feb. 5 KNME practice newscasting

Feb. 7 KNME Tape Show #1

Feb. 12 C&J 124 journalism on the Web (guest speaker)

Feb. 14 C&J 124 Web graphics, video and animation demo with Chantal Foster, Duke City Fix Designer, <http://www.dukecityfix.com/>

Feb. 19 KNME Tape Show #2

Feb. 21 KNME Tape Show #3

Feb. 26 KNME Tape Show #4

Feb. 28 C&J 124 team project organizational meeting with C&J 475

March 4 KNME Tape Show #5

March 6 KNME/CJ124 organizational class

March 11 C&J 124 joint class with C&J 475 (team projects due)

March 13 C&J 124 joint class with C&J 475 (team projects refined and posted)

March 18 & 20 SPRING BREAK

March 25 KNME practice Webcasting for sports

March 27 KNME Tape Show #6

April 1 KNME Tape Show #7

April 3 KNME more sports Webcasting

April 8 KNME Tape Show #8

April 10 KNME practice & project organizational meeting with Mexican students

April 15 KNME Tape Show #9

April 17 C&J 124 Final Cut Intro (Mexican and C&J 475 students welcome)

April 22 KNME Tape Show #10

April 24 KNME Tape Show #11

April 29 KNME Tape Show #12

May 1 C&J 124 DVD training session

May 6 KNME Tape Show #13

May 8 C&J 124 DVD training session

May 13 C&J 124 no class, but a help session - DVD demo reels due