This resource page features course content from the Knight Center for Journalism in the America's massive open online course (MOOC) titled "Mobile Journalism: How to use your phone to produce great videos and build a social audience." This four-week course took place from February 4 to March 3, 2019. We are now making the content free and available to students who took the course and anyone else who is interested in learning how to discover amazing stories online, capture and edit videos with your phone and build engagement strategies so your content travels online.
The course, which was supported by the Knight Foundation, was taught by Yusuf Omar. He created and curated the content for the course, which includes video classes, readings, exercises, and more.
The course materials are broken up into four modules:
As you review this resource page, we encourage you to watch the videos, review the readings, and complete the exercises as time allows. The course materials build off each other, but the videos and readings also act as standalone resources that you can return to over time.
We hope you enjoy the materials. If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected].
Yusuf Omar is a multi-award winning journalist and Co-founder of Hashtag Our Stories, a TEDx speaker, former CNN Senior Social Media Reporter on Snapchat and former Mobile Editor at the Hindustan Times in India where he empowered 750 journalists to tell stories with the phones. He has been a foreign correspondent with just his phone since 2010 and covered the Syrian civil war. In 2018 he Co-founded Hashtag Our Stories, a global video publisher focused on people changing their world. They’ve trained communities in over 40 countries to tell stories with their phones and create daily news shows on social media platforms.
How to find amazing stories online and from around the world, using the latest techniques and tools to discover and verify user-generated content.
This module will cover:
Video Class
1. Social discovery
2. What is the angle?
3. Solution-based storytelling
4. Tools to find amazing stories online
5. Tools to fact-check and verify photos and video online
Readings
1. How Hashtag Our Stories is helping citizen journalists tell better stories [journalism.co.uk]
2. First Draft Checklists [First Draft]
Optional Materials
2. Constructive Journalism is simply a more accurate portrayal of what’s really going on. [SlideShare]
3. Constructive journalism is not only good for journalism, it is good for business. [The Guardian]
This is all about social publishing and how to capture the best possible content with your phone. A few small tips can make a really big difference in producing professional quality videos with the device you already own.
This module will cover:
Video Class
1. 9 Tips for videography with your mobile phone
2. Top 10 tips for live video
3. Top 10 tips for Instagram Stories
Readings
2. SHOOT: Here are the 5 shots every MOJO needs to capture when filming a subject [Matthias Süßen]
3. TRANSITIONS: Create slick transitions while you shoot with these 5 in-camera video transitions to make your social content more engaging [journalism.co.uk]
Now that you’ve shot a video, it’s time to edit your masterpiece and get it ready for various social media platforms. We’ll go from the storyboarding and scripting process, all the way to exporting.
This module will cover:
Video Class
1. Video editing with your phone
2. Storyboarding
Readings
2. APPS: Here’s a really extensive list of mojo apps for both Android and iOS. Have fun testing these.
3. EDITING: This is a really clear and careful breakdown for beginners on smartphone video editing. [Global Investigative Journalism Network]
Instructor's note: I suggest checking out the diagram on page 7, showing a full workflow from finding the story angle to publishing across digital platforms. Page 16 also has a few apps you might not have tried.
You’ve done all the hard work and made an amazing mobile video. Now it’s time to share, share, share. The audience isn’t just going to come to you; we need the story to find them! This module shares the secrets of optimizing your content for social platforms and ensuring your stories bubble to the top of people’s social media timelines.
This module will cover:
Video Class
1. Tips and tricks for social engagement
2. The future of news and MOJO with Caroline Scott
3. Stay connected with the MOJO community
Readings
1. "What 777,367,063 Facebook posts tell us about successful content in 2019 (New Research)" by Brian Peters [Buffer]
Instructor's note: Love it or hate it, Facebook is the world’s most popular social media platform with over 2 billion users. There’s a lot journalists can learn from the world of marketing when it comes to everything from headline writing to engagement strategies. This long read will help you understand what kinds of content are most engaging on the platform.
3. Instagram creators handbook [IGTV]