The people formerly known as the audience

Who’s your audience? Photo: © David R. Banta

The audience is an important determinant of news – it’s logical that news of interest to some people isn’t to others. Journalists need to know what their audiences want and need to know.

Week 11: Brainstorming ideas

Ideas are all around you. Photo: pikrepo

Why Brainstorm Ideas?

The purpose of brainstorming story ideas is firstly to find an idea that you want to write about and then to develop a concept for your story – not a fully outlined plot. Just the seed of inspiration that captures your attention wholeheartedly. Once you’ve found that seed, you can begin to develop a premise.

Constructive journalism

Ulrik Haagerup’s graphic depiction of Constructive Journalism. Photo: Anna L. Schille 

BY RUTH BERAN

A lot of news these days is “bad” news, focusing on doom and gloom.

A new, emerging form of journalism called constructive or solutions-focused journalism is taking a different approach.

Hate, trolls, and phone addiction (and what to do about them)

Pepe the frog was killed off by his creator after becaming an alt-right symbol. Photo: twitter.com/therealdonaldtrump

BY RUTH BERAN & VERITY CHAMBERS

Orientation

Let’s go through the Subject Guide including Assessments.

Saying mean stuff online

WATCH: Celebs read mean tweets, from the Jimmy Kimmel Show

Hate speech

DISCUSSION: What is hate speech? How would you define it?

Great apps for digital content creation

Photo by Rakicevic Nenad on Pexels.com

Some tools to help with photos, illos, videos, and memes

Snapseed – excellent photo editing tool
Mobile: Android/iOS
Read: Getting Started with Snapseed +
Snapseed photo editing tutorial

Lightroom – photo editing + pro camera
Mobile: Android/iOS
Read: Snapseed vs Lightroom +
Get started with Lightroom on mobile

Canva – easy to use graphic design
Web: https://www.canva.com/en_au/
Mobile: Android/iOS
Read: Getting started with Canva

PicCollage – collages, photo editing, text
Web: https://piccollage.com/
Mobile: Android/iOS
Read: Getting started with PicCollage

Stencil – graphic design
Web: https://getstencil.com/
Read: Canva v Stencil

Giphy – GIF and sticker maker
Web: https://giphy.com/
Mobile: Android/iOS
Read: How to make a GIF

Piktochart – charts and other graphics
Web only: https://piktochart.com/
Watch: A simple guide to Piktochart for beginners

Caption Writer for Instagram – fonts, spaces and line breaks, generate & save hashtags
Web: https://www.captionwriter.app/
Mobile: Android/iOS

Adobe Spark – make videos, social posts, graphics – anything really! Intuitive and simple
Web: https://www.adobe.com/au/products/spark.html
Watch: Getting started with Adobe Spark

Adobe Spark Post – really easy and beautiful graphic maker
Mobile: Android/iOS

Imgflip – meme generator with templates
Web: https://imgflip.com/memetemplates
Mobile: Android only

Imgur – meme and GIF maker
Web: https://imgur.com/
Mobile: Android/iOS

Lumen5 – super easy video creation
Web only: https://lumen5.com/
Watch: Lumen5 explainer

InShot – brilliant and simple mobile app for making videos
Mobile: Android/iOS
Watch: InShot tutorial

VN – another awesome mobile video-making app
Mobile: Android/iOS
Watch: VN video editor tutorial

Animoto – simple video editing
Web: https://animoto.com/
Mobile: Android (outside the Play Store)/iOS

Animaker – create animated videos
Web only: https://www.animaker.com/
Watch: How to make animated videos [beginners’ tutorial]

TIP:

To learn how to use any of the apps and programs above, search “getting started with …” on YouTube. I’ll add some video links above as I find them. Most apps are very simple and recommended for mobile content creation in particular.