Availabilities:
Unit Summary
Unit type
UG Coursework Unit
Credit points
12
AQF level
Level of learning
Intermediate
Former School/College
Unit aim
Introduces students to news writing, research and interviewing techniques that may be applied broadly across news media formats. Students gain a critical appreciation of professional, legal and ethical issues in contemporary journalism. Practical activities and assessments give students exposure to professional journalism standards and practices.
Unit content
Understanding journalism:
- journalism as a cultural and media industry practice
- news values: filtering and selection
- interrogating objectivity: balance, fairness and multiple perspectives
- news organisations, news sites and newsworkers.
Introduction to journalistic practice:
- distinguishing news from news comment (editorials, opinion pieces, features)
- forms, styles and techniques of news writing for print and online
- news-gathering, research and information routines
- interviewing skills.
Professional issues in journalism:
- ethical journalism: a contradiction in terms?
- introduction to legal issues
- cultural representation and cross-cultural communications
- journalist's relationship to public relations and issues management professionals.
Learning outcomes
Unit Learning Outcomes express learning achievement in terms of what a student should know, understand and be able to do on completion of a unit. These outcomes are aligned with the graduate attributes. The unit learning outcomes and graduate attributes are also the basis of evaluating prior learning.
On completion of this unit, students should be able to: | GA1 | GA2 | GA3 | GA4 | GA5 | GA6 | GA7 | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | discuss the roles that news journalism can play in contemporary societies | |||||||
2 | define news and distinguish its characteristics from feature and opinion writing | |||||||
3 | explain how news is produced and published for different readerships | |||||||
4 | apply journalistic techniques and conventions to the accurate research and writing of news stories | |||||||
5 | critically discuss representational, legal and ethical issues in contemporary journalism |
On completion of this unit, students should be able to:
-
discuss the roles that news journalism can play in contemporary societies
- GA1:
- GA3:
- GA4:
-
define news and distinguish its characteristics from feature and opinion writing
- GA1:
- GA3:
- GA4:
-
explain how news is produced and published for different readerships
- GA4:
- GA5:
- GA6:
-
apply journalistic techniques and conventions to the accurate research and writing of news stories
- GA2:
- GA3:
- GA4:
- GA6:
-
critically discuss representational, legal and ethical issues in contemporary journalism
- GA1:
- GA3:
- GA4:
- GA7:
Prescribed texts
- Lamble, S, 2016, News As It Happens: An Introduction to Journalism, 3rd edn, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, Vic. ISBN: 9780190303747.