Journalist's Toolbox Newsletter

Issue V: July 28, 2020

Jul 28

Immersive Journalism and Ethics

The Journalism 360 project has released the Guide to Immersive Ethics, authored by McClatchy’s Jayson Chesler and Theresa Poulson. (Full disclosure: they are friends of mine from my teaching days at Arizona State.)

The free document uses recent use case studies, with the “acknowledgment that this space is changing rapidly and new considerations come to light every day.” It lists a series of critical-thinking questions to pose as you document, edit and post-produce an immersive story. Example: Can the subject be captured, or will a recreation be more accurate?

The guide also links to several other ethics resources from journalism organizations, including the SPJ Code of Ethics.

It is one of three the ONA/Knight collaboration has published in the last few months, including a great document on photogrammetry photography.

Read more:

Frontiers offers Ethics Guidelines in Immersive Journalism
Journalist’s Toolbox’s Drones | VR/AR Journalism page includes ethics resources, equipment, user guides and more

Covering COVID-19

COVID-19 data: Thank you SPJ President Patti Gallagher Newberry for this gem: Documenting COVID-19 is a repository of searchable documents related to the COVID-19 pandemic obtained through state open-records laws and the Freedom of Information Act.

You can click on an interactive US map for state-by-state details about the document sets available and news coverage that have used those materials.

For more tools for covering COVID-19, play the video below or subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Around the Web …

Journalism history: SPJ’s Historic Sites in Journalism page has StoryMaps and a Google listing past winners with information and multimedia about that site. It’s helpful for anyone teaching journalism history, especially the StoryMaps, which can be played in class. Students could choose one of the sites to research and write about.
Mobile apps: My friend and CUNY prof Jeremy Caplan from the Wonder Tools newsletter and Poynter shared this recently: GlideApps.com, which turns spreadsheets into apps in minutes. And it’s free. | Find more: Digital Journalism | Mobile Journalism
Education: Marist Mindset List is an annual compilation that offers a glimpse of the world as seen through the eyes of each incoming college freshman class at Marist. It’s an eye-opening study and a great back-to-college story or notebook item.
Learn some stuff: We’ve added some new videos to our YouTube training channel, including a 20-minute tutorial on Google Flourish and how to use Google Earth’s measure tool to determine perimeter, area and distance on the earth’s surface.
Learn more stuff: We built a two-video playlist of productivity tools for reporters and editors, featuring all kinds of collaborative tools.