January 2-15 (M-F)

9:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. Interactive Fundamentals - Prof. Jeff Jarvis
Required for all broadcast students. Introduction to the tools and philosophy of interactive journalism. Thirty hours of instruction over 10 days. Prof. Jarvis oversees the interactive program at the CUNY J-School.

January 3-4

9 a.m. - 5 p.m. Copyediting Essentials – Jennifer Johnson Hicks
Copy editors are a publication's last line of defense against bad writing and factual errors. And as stories are published online with increasing speed, the copy editor's role becomes even more vital. The ongoing news cycle also makes it more important for reporters to become better self editors. This workshop will focus on the basics of copy editing including grammar, style, punctuation, word usage, spelling, headline writing and news judgment. We will also talk about how copy desks work and careers in copy editing. Jennifer Johnson Hicks is an assistant news editor at The Wall Street Journal Online, where she oversees breaking news and production for the Web site in the evenings. She also is on the adjunct faculty at the CUNY J-School.

January 7-8

1-5 p.m. Freelance workshop – Prof. Fred Kaufman and Ellen Walterscheid
This workshop explores such topics as: understanding the market, getting to the right editor, pitching the story, revising the pitch, understanding the contract, negotiating a good price, working with editors and polishing the freelance piece. The workshop will be taught by Professor Frederick Kaufman, an active freelancer and consortial faculty member at the J-School, and Career Services Director Ellen Walterscheid. Guests will include a legal expert and several editors of national publications, who will vet student pitches. This workshop will focus on the magazine market.

January 8, 10, 15, 17, 22, 24

5:30-8:30 p.m. Sports Reporting – Roy Johnson
More than a Game: Sports Reporting 101, with Roy Johnson, longtime reporter, editor and columnist for Sports Illustrated, now editor-in-chief of Men’s Fitness magazine. The workshop explores the many facets of sports reporting: deadline writing, interviewing, aspects of game coverage, investigative sports journalism, the business of sports, sports columns, covering sports in the digital age. Guests from the sports journalism world will address the workshop; students will write a couple of stories under deadline pressure and receive feedback.

January 9

10 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. Nonfiction book writing - Prof. Glenn Lewis
Take this one-day crash course on the essentials of conceptualizing, researching, organizing and writing a professional-level non-fiction book proposal. The seminar also focuses on techniques for reporting and writing non-fiction books. Students are given insights into negotiating book contracts as well. The session draws on Prof. Glenn Lewis' experiences as a book packager, agent, writer and book proposal doctor. A guest editor may also be invited to participate. Prof. Lewis is director of the journalism program at York College and is a consortial faculty member at the CUNY J-School.

January 10-11

9 a.m. - 5 p.m. Flash for non-interactive majors (2 days) - Prof. Russell Chun
Learn what Flash can do and how Flash is used to present media-rich, interactive and compelling stories for the web. Students will learn how to integrate various media (text, photos, and audio) and incorporate buttons with simple interactivity. We’ll address the important questions of where and when to use Flash versus other kinds of delivery methods. We’ll survey existing new media story sites to evaluate techniques and discuss how other news sites and non-news sites use Flash to present content. Russell Chun is an adjunct at the Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY and at Columbia University. He is an educational media developer and the author of Flash CS3 Advanced Visual QuickPro Guide.

January 10-11

9 a.m. - 5 p.m. InDesign – MediaBistro instructor
No matter how great an editor you are, not knowing how to use a page layout program can stop your magazine job search in its tracks. MediaBistro will provide an instructor to teach you everything you need to know about InDesign, the page layout program that is fast becoming the favorite of designers in the magazine business. By the end of this two-day course, you will be editorially proficient in InDesign.

January 14

9 a.m. - 5 p.m. Covering race and ethnicity – Prof. Lonnie Isabel
Journalists in a multi-ethnic society must constantly ask themselves how best to report and tell the stories of racial conflict, of cultural differences and of religious beliefs. When do these differences become essential to a story and how should they affect our coverage of issues like immigration, health policy, politics, and religion? We'll discuss the journalist's role in sorting through it all. The day will be divided into three parts:

1. Civil rights then and now---A panel discussion among reporters who covered the civil rights movement of the 1960s and reporters who are covering immigration. Is this a new civil rights movement?
2. Covering religion--A discussion among Muslim, Christian and Jewish reporters.
3. Diversity--How can journalists get better at covering people who don't look like, talk like or share our beliefs? And why does it matter?

January 15-16

9:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. The Digital Journalist -- Michael Rosenblum
Journalism is undergoing its greatest revolution since the invention of the printing press, and once again it is being driven by a new technology. Today, small, broadcast quality digital video cameras and laptop edit programs are changing almost every aspect of journalism, from newspapers and magazines to television news. Add to that the capacity of the web to 'broadcast' full motion video globally for free, and open to everyone, and you have some insight into the changes that the world of journalism is about to undergo. In this workshop we are going to look at these new technologies and teach students how to use these new tools to report in an entirely digital world. A former network journalist, Michael Rosenblum was the founder and president of NYT TV, and president and founder of Video News International, a global VJ newsgathering company. He has trained reporters around the globe in videojournalism.

January 17-18

9 a.m. - 5 p.m. Writing for Radio – Beth Fertig
In this workshop, students will get an introduction to writing for radio broadcasts. They'll learn the art of shorter sentences. Very short. Active verbs will sing throughout their copy. They'll hear some professional examples and see what radio scripts look like. They'll also have a chance to go out and conduct quick interviews so they can learn to write around soundbytes (called "actualities" in the trade) on a fast deadline. Taught by Beth Fertig, senior reporter for WNYC radio and the J-School’s audio coach.

January 17-18

9 a.m. - 5 p.m. News Photography - Jim Estrin
This course will cover the technical, visual and journalistic aspects of news photography for print and multimedia. We'll discuss camera technique, composition and how to cover the full range of journalistic assignments. We will also address the modern dilemma of journalistic multitasking. How do you balance photography, reporting and audio or video? It's difficult enough to do one superbly. How do you do two or three? A guest speaker (a web producer from the New York Times) will discuss photographing and creating audio slide shows. The workshop will also include a discussion of ethics in a digital age. There will be assignments before the class starts and during the class. Jim Estrin is a veteran New York Times photographer.

January 22-24

9 a.m. - 5 p.m. Flash for interactive majors - Required for interactive majors
Learn what Flash can do and how Flash is used to present media-rich, interactive and compelling stories for the web. Students will learn how to integrate various media (text, photos, audio, and video) and incorporate buttons for interactivity and navigation. We’ll address the important questions of where and when to use Flash versus other kinds of delivery methods. We’ll survey existing new media story sites to evaluate techniques and discuss how other news sites and non-news sites use Flash to present content. Teaching the course will be Russell Chun, an adjunct at the Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY and at Columbia University. He is an educational media developer and the author of Flash CS3 Advanced Visual QuickPro Guide.

January 23-24

9 a.m. - 5 p.m. Using Excel in Reporting - Jo Craven McGinty
Excel is a very useful tool to reporters for organizing and analyzing data, managing story records and progress, contacts, analyzing polls and surveys, spotting trends and enterprise stories, and turning numbers into graphics. Reporters in all four of the J-School concentration areas will benefit from knowing how to work with spreadsheets and manipulate them. And Excel skills are essential for those interested in doing any form of investigative journalism. Jo Ann Craven trains reporters at the New York Times in how to use Excel to improve their stories and uncover exclusive stories.