3. Course Description

From the Catalog

Course through which students may earn credit on The Setonian (student newspaper) and its online counterpart. Meets for one hour per week, with an additional production lab for each issue (4 or 5 times per semester). Repeatable for credit.

Our theme for this semester is audio journalism, also known as podcasting. I've taught a class on this theme before, but since then, multimedia skills have gone from being an exotic skill to a job-saving, bread-and-butter requirement in the journalism profession.

Production Labs

You are responsible for scheduling your own "production labs" in keeping with the needs of producing the print and/or online issues of the Setonian. Your production lab may involve selling advertisements, editing articles, laying out pages, delivering papers, sorting through archives, fact-checking, or doing almost anything related to getting the paper produced.

To schedule your production lab, contact the editor-in-chief, Tiffany Gilbert, at setonian@setonhill.edu, and ask to be put on the mailing list (so you'll know when the office will be open and what jobs will need to be done).

Please be assertive about finding out when you are most needed.

Because writers and photographers get their names attached to their work, and thus already get credit for their work, the production lab is designed so that more people share the other kinds of very important -- but far less glamorous -- work that goes into producing a paper. (Therefore, taking a picture or writing a story does not count towards the EL200 production lab requirement. You are, of course, welcome to take those pictures and write those articles on your own.)

If you are assigned to write a "breaking news" story or photo for the Setonian Online, outside of our regular print production schedule, I would consider counting such work for part of your production lab, but please talk to me about it beforehand.

Developing and maintaining a good working relationship with your peers is part of the learning process in this course. 

If you cannot carry out a task an editor has entrusted to you, please tell your editor before the deadline passes. Don't leave your peers hanging -- it's a matter of professionalism and simple good manners.

The student editors and managers who work on the Setonian are just as busy as you are. If you wait until the last minute to ask them to give you a job, or if you are only available from 2:17 to 2:43 on alternate Tuesdays when it is raining, I don't expect the student editors to drop everything and find a way to squeeze you in. (You can work for The Setonian from home if you arrange to pick up printouts to proofread, or if you help publish the Setonian Online -- it uses the same blogging software I'll be teaching you to use in class.)