Undergraduate - UnitATS4366 - Reporting cops, courts and councils

This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2013 only. For students planning to study the unit, please refer to the unit indexes in the the current edition of the Handbook. If you have any queries contact the managing faculty for your course or area of study.

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12 points, SCA Band 1, 0.250 EFTSL

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Level	Undergraduate
Faculty	Faculty of Arts
Organisational Unit	School of Applied Media and Social Sciences, Gippsland
Offered	Gippsland First semester 2013 (Day) Gippsland First semester 2013 (Off-campus)
Coordinator(s)	Ms Elizabeth Hart

Synopsis

This unit enables students to apply principles and methods of reporting in regional and local contexts, with emphasis on the reporting of legal cases, crime, and local government activity. Students will visit courtrooms, police and municipal councils to complete assignments, thus applying journalism skills learned in earlier units. The unit also addresses social and industrial aspects relevant to local media. Students engage with the growing body of theory on local and community journalism by tracing the history of the provincial media, contemporary trends, and the role of local audiences in the wider framework of the fourth estate.

Outcomes

Understanding of newsroom cultures outside the metropolis;
Skills in evaluating theories of regional, local, and community journalism;
Evaluate, explain, and identify historical and contemporary trends;
Engage merit in a specialist field of journalism and display a high level of practical skills;
Ability to utilize sensitive primary sources to investigate contemporary issues.

Assessment

Essay (4500 words): 25%
Folio of five news reports (2500 words): 40%
Fieldwork - extended news or feature story (2000 words): 35%

Chief examiner(s)

Dr Alistair Harkness

Contact hours

One 2-hour seminar per week

Off-campus attendance requirements

No attendance requirement for off-campus students

This unit applies to the following area(s) of study

Journalism

Prerequisites

Completion of an undergraduate major in journalism or cognate discipline.