JOMC 491.3 - "PARNM" - Spring 2009

Course Syllabus

Grades: Blog/Publish2 - 15%

Due Dates

Each student will keep a blog on which they will write about the experiences they have working with partners on the class project. The blogs will be publicly available and are intended to bring transparency to our reporting process. Our project's audience will be able to read your blogs and see what we're working on. Ideally, they will provide feedback and point us in new directions. At its core, blogging is "process oriented journalism."

Students are expected to post to their blogs at least once a week.

Blog Grading Scale

Each blog post is worth 100, from which points are deducted or added according to the following rules.

+ 100 points if the blog post breaks original news, and includes at least two sources.

-10 for every error in grammar, style or punctuation.

-10 for every broken link

-25 for every day a post is late

-50 for every factual error

-50 if the student links to a hoax site

Publish2 Grading Scale

Students will use the Publish2 social news bookmarking site to collect and categorize relevant online resources. The collection of bookmarks will live on the Publish2 site, and also (through RSS feed) live on the the UNC hosted site and any partner sites who choose to use it.

Students are expected to post, tag, and annotate any related Web page they encounter during the course of the semester. The two students with the most number of (relevant) Publish2 posts will receive a 10% boost in their Blog/publish2 grades.