Online and Research Journalism is an advanced subject building on the basic skills that most of you will have acquired by doing the introductory subjects JOUR901 News and Feature writing and JOUR902 Journalistic Method. JOUR903 Journalism, Ethics and Standards is also relevant to aspects of this subject. It is not an easy matter to break up the disparate elements of professional journalism and present them as distinct components. In later courses we will deal with the presentation of news through print production, radio and television. In the conduct of journalism, research is often referred to as the provision of background or backgrounding .
Most news stories require some form of research or backgrounding in their development.
Although research for news purposes has much in common with standard research techniques, it is usually necessary to adapt or modify these techniques, sometimes substantially, for news purposes. The research component of this course is mostly concerned with these processes of adaptation and modification. Investigation in a news sense is to be distinguished from the application of the spirit of inquiry to other fields of professional endeavour such as the law or science. Journalistic investigation invariably lacks the amplitude of time associated with academic and scientific inquiry. It does, however, share with elements of legal investigation and, particularly, police investigation, a sense of urgency in its application.