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Final Project Peer Review (5-8 min, with draft of online presentation)

Online presentation of final project
Use your blog. Post the MP3, with introductory text and links your listeners would find useful. Images and a transcript are welcome, but optional.

During the final exam slot, you will present this web page in an informal oral presentation, and we will listen to the audio. Be sure to focus on making sure the listener has a clear idea of who is speaking. Explain the background audio, too -- you know where you were standing and what was happening, but your listener won't know unless you put the explanation in words.

Due: Portfolio 4

Final Project Draft (3-4 minutes with intro/outro)

Progress Report (in class)

• Due: Final Project Pitches
• Due: Portfolio 3

• Due: NCCHE feature (including about 20sec intro and 10 sec outro)

Your assignment this week is to gather sound from an event during the NCCHE conference. You will have time in class on Nov 2 to edit your work, but I would welcome a completed story (with intro and outro) at that time.

Peer Review

• Get into groups of 3 and read your editorial aloud. 
• Share the printed copy, and offer feedback and suggestions in small groups.

Technical Practice

• Download Audacity Portable to a thumb drive or your network space.
• Add MP3 support (which is not included in the free Audacity download due to copyright restrictions; it can be easily added, however). (Note:  We were required to have administrator privileges to unzip the required export file, so we couldn't complete this assignment in class.  Next week, I'll come around and share with you the files you need to export an MP3. In the meanwhile, just save your work as an Audacity Project.)
  

During class, practice recording this text (the First Amendment)

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

If we have time, practice editing it, normalizing the result, and exporting it as an MP3.

• Edit.  Remove any false starts or unwanted sound before and after your text.  While it is unethical to edit live sound in order to alter or change the way a source speaks, it is acceptable for you to remove mistakes in your own studio recordings, and it is of course acceptable to isolate parts of what a source says, so long as your editing does not distort the source's meaning.
• Normalize. When you are happy with your result, select the whole file (CTRL-A), and select Effect -> Normalize. (This will make everyone's selection play at roughly the same volume, which is very important when you are working with an archive of sound from different sources.)
• Save and Export. Save your project (which includes all the digital information in an uncompressed form), and also File -> Export as MP3. (You will be prompted to point to the file you placed in your AudacityPortable\App\LAME directory, after which you should be able to export MP3s normally.)

A podcast is the production of a short audio piece featuring the spoken word, for release on the internet.

The term combines "iPod" and "broadcasting," emphasizes the collapsing distance between creator and producer of 21st century media. 

In the past, you needed the support of a broadcasting studio to get your voice in the public arena, but now the internet is full of chatter, of all levels of professionalism and quality.

From time to time, groups of students express interest in starting a radio station at SHU. Typically these students graduate before they make much progress, but I don't want to wait for a radio station to exist, before I teach my new media journalism audio  reporting skills.

The multimedia nature of 21st Century news reporting means that the ability to gather high-quality sound -- as well as digital stills and video, web links, and ideas for interactive features like polls or discussion forum topics) is increasingly becoming a core journalism skill.

The term "podcast" can apply variously to personal rants, informal product reviews, or comedy routines. This term, however, our "Media Lab" podcasts will be in the tradition of radio news.

• An opinion piece, like NPR's This I Believe).
• Some on-the-spot reporting (where you will record live sound in the field, from a speaker or interview, and work brief clips into the body of your own story) (samples -- KQV PittsburghKDKA Pittsburgh).
• And some news features (NPR is the king of this sort of thing... here's a link to a story about the cancellation of "Reading Rainbow".... you're probably humming the theme song now.)