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Current revision as of 04:16, 9 May 2007

Welcome To Hofstra Journalism 80's Nassau News Wiki.

Hyperlocal Nassau News: Professor Krochmal's Page

Journalism 80 Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Hyperlocal Nassau News A Project by the Spring 2007 Hofstra University of Professor Mo Krochmal.

This project represents the work of college students in the School of Communication at Hofstra University. The students are enrolled in one-semester, 3-credit class with the goal of teaching a small group of students -- seniors and juniors and one lucky sophomore -- how to cover a community at a very local level, using the multimedia tools of the Internet.

The first stage of the project used wiki software to create a knowledge base of the stories they are going to cover. The project was slated for completion in six weeks, at the end of the semester.

This portion of the project -- the wiki -- was set for Sunday, March 18, at 10 p.m.

The student editor selected for this wiki project is Garrett Frey, who first broached the subject of wikis in an e-mail to the professor. The students have selected preliminary beats and will create wiki pages to serve as a knowledge base for the articles they write and produce.

The student reporters found statistics, data -- sets of information to create what I will call a online backgrounder for their work. This will be referenced as they create their on journalism, and will be open to the world to view, and edit.

We hope that the stories we tell will focus on specific areas of reporting that are not usually covered by mainstream media, stories that reflect portions of the community where cultures overlap and that the individuals the student reporters cover will add their knowledge to this online repository.

Go to http://editthis.info/journalism80/ClassPages to view a list of the student's 'beat wikis.'

We are leveraging the wiki software but are adapting it to our own uses, so this might not exactly parallel the wiki structure that the digirati are used to seeing, but we believe that innovation comes from a willingness to take risks and diverge from the pack. Indulge us as we explore this form and see what we learn.

To see other projects that the students have accomplished so far, please view http://hofstrajournalism80.blogspot.com, a student-edited news blog.

--Sunday night note: At the end of this first part of the process, we had 17 out of 19 students reporters filing to their wikis by deadline, including Mr. Frey, who not only was this week's deadline badger and technical ringleader, but also filed his own piece.[[1]].

For a record of who did what when, please view [[2]]

The next step is for the students to read their colleague's work and be prepared to critique it on Tuesday, as we tackle reworks, edits, and completion of this step of the final project in their class, a project that counts as 45 percent of their grade.

It's on, folks.

Tuesday Update -- We met in class today and discussed the variation to be found in the wiki production. Edits are to happen to move postings closer creating a database/knowledge base for the individual articles, and hooks for readers to add their own work.