Thanks for attending "Student Innovations in Data Journalism" with Hacks/Hackers and ONA Austin on May 21. Here's my list of links:

• Light of Day Project -- Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas
• Original public information request
• Crucial help from Matt Stiles and Ryan Murphy
• Spring 2011 project
• Fall 2011 project
• First Amendment Award
• SPJ and TIPA awards
• Easy class data assignment: Coffee prices (Example 1) (Example 2) (crowdsourcing)
• Helpful handout: "Data Visualization with Google Fusion Tables" by Brittny Goodsell of ASU

We did it! The Light of Day Project is officially live. The Dallas Morning News "Scoop" blog already picked up our project, and more may soon follow. Thanks to everyone for your work and dedication all semester long.

Your final project, worth 10 percent of your overall grade, is a solo presentation profiling a startup news organization and assessing its journalistic impact and sustainability. You will publish your findings on Storify, the annotated curation tool that allows you to construct a story with text, multimedia and social media. Fuzzy on what Storify is? To refresh your memory, here's the timeline of our Twitter scavenger hunt with TCU students earlier this semester.

Your first step is to pick a nonprofit news startup to profile. A great place to start is Columbia Journalism Review's News Frontier Database. Email me your choice by 11:59 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 22.

Your Storify presentation must include annotated links/embeds to least 20 pieces of content such as stories, video, data, tweets, photos. (The only content you are required to create yourself are charts that visualize the startup's finances and web traffic.) Your content, all of which you must put into context, must include:

• At least one story that explains the startup's mission and business model.
• Examples of your startup's journalistic impact and viability.
• Statistics regarding the startup's operating budget, fundraising and web traffic. You can find the financial information by looking up the nonprofit's Form 990 on Guidestar.org, and you can use Compete.com or Alexa.com for an overview of its Web traffic.
• Embedded multimedia content that shows how well your startup takes advantage of Web storytelling tools. 
• Examples of your startup's social media presence on Twitter, Facebook and other networks. 
• At least one data visualization, created by you on Google Fusion Tables and/or ManyEyes, that shows the startup's finances, web traffic and other numbers. You will create a spreadsheet with financial and traffic numbers and then make a chart(s) that puts those numbers into visual context, along with explanatory text.

You will deliver your final presentation during our final exam period from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Dec. 7, 2011. You will have up to 15 minutes to present an overview of your findings, as well as your assessment of the news startup's prospects for future success.

This week, we'll be watching Page One: Inside The New York Times, a documentary that shows the inner workings of the Times' Media Desk, particularly reporters David Carr (@carr2n) and Brian Stelter (@brianstelter). By 10 a.m. Friday, post a 250-to-300-word reaction as a comment to this blog post answering the following question: What does this movie have to say about how technology is changing journalism?

Watch the above CNN video and listen to this 5-minute NPR report about the recent death of Mohamed "Mo" Nabbous, whom Andy Carvin called "The Face Of Libyan Citizen Journalism." Feel free to search for other news reports and background information about Mr. Nabbous.

Your assignment is to write a short essay (500 to 750 words) -- due at the start of class Wednesday, Oct. 19 -- addressing the following questions:

Was Mo Nabbous an activist? A journalist? An almost-journalist? Or some combination of all the above? What distinguished his reporting from the stereotypical blogger or so-called citizen journalist?

This is an open-book, open-Web, take-home exam. In your answer, I would encourage you to weave in some of these ideas from Shirky and Gillmor:

Shirky

• Power accruing to the former audience
• Everyone is a media outlet
• Strong vs. weak ties

Gillmor

• "Acts of journalism"
• Principles of becoming an active user
• Journalism's evolving ecosystem
• If I ran a news organization

• Based on our readings so far this semester, how do you think 1) Clay Shirky; 2) Malcolm Gladwell; and 3) Dan Gillmor would assess Andy Carvin's Twitter-based reporting about the Middle East so far in 2011? Be as specific as possible with your reasoning for each author.
• What does Carvin's reporting say about the role of a 21st-century journalist?

Today we'll begin the on-campus portion of our Light of Day Project, tracking how well SMU is following the Clery Act, a federal law requiring colleges and universities to disclose crime-related information and security policies. SMU released its 2010 Clery Act Report a few weeks ago.

You are responsible for researching and answering several questions for our Light of Day Project Clery Scorecard, which was created mostly by May '11 SMU grad Meredith Shamburger. Some questions may be answered through Web research alone; other questions will require contacting campus officials directly. Here's how to fulfill this part of your assignment:

• Start reporting. Research your assigned questions and, if necessary, contact the appropriate campus official.
• Enter the answer to each assigned question on the Clery Scorecard located in our class Google Docs account. Your first answer should be a simple yes/no; your second answer should be more specific and detailed.
• Clery Scorecard entries are due by 11:59 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 20.

We also need to enter specific campus crime data for SMU in the calendar year 2010. There is a spreadsheet in our class Google Docs account where you can enter the data from the SMU Police crime logs. Your assignment follows below. Please be sure to use identical terminology when entering data, especially with addresses. For crimes and crime categories, use all lowercase. You must enter specific addresses for campus buildings whenever possible with the ZIP 75275 -- here is a list of campus addresses.

For the Crime field, list the official crime as described in the police log.

For the Crime Category field, narrow the crime down to one of 10 categories: alcohol related, assault, criminal mischief, drugs, false identification, fire, fire alarm, sexual assault, theft, other.

Enter all SMU crime logs from these dates by 11:59 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 30:

• Shelby Foster: January and February 2010
• Michael Murphy: March 2010
• Brad Namdar: April 2010
• Chandler Schlegel: May and June 2010
• Meghan Sikkel: July, August and September 2010
• Ali Sisto: October 2010
• Essete Workneh: November and December 2010

Five percent of your grade in this class entails creating your own "anchor" journalism portfolio website OR optimizing a site you recently created OR assisting/mentoring a classmate in creating/optimizing theirs.

Jeremy Caplan's How to Launch You.com site has pretty much everything you need to get started. You'll want to use a professional-looking template such as Wordpress. Here are the requirements for your site:

• needs to have a polished feel
• must list your résumé, contact information (e-mail and Twitter), an "about me" section
• links to at least three examples of your work.
• publish your edited reporter profile, along with your multimedia element(s)
• A professional-looking picture is optional, as is a Twitter widget that automatically feeds your tweets to your website.

You’ll also want to replace the standard “Hello World” post with a “Welcome” post explaining that this is your journalism portfolio site. (At first, you’ll probably want to explain that it’s under construction and to come back soon.) For examples, explore last semester's student pages on the right-hand rail of this page. You'll likely need to use some basic HTML -- here are a couple resources that list basic commands.

When finished with your site, just email me the link and I'll add it to this page. Your finished website is due by 11:59 p.m. FRIDAY, NOV. 11 Friday, Nov. 4.

Former U.S. Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), a 2008 presidential candidate, speaks in Columbia, S.C. Photo via Flickr by Jonathan Walczak.

For our class on Monday, Oct. 3, we will have a case study: News or Rumor? Politico and the Edwards Affair. The case, which costs $3.95, is part of the Knight Case Studies Initiative at Columbia University‘s Graduate School of Journalism. You can print out a PDF if you’d like. This case study assignment is worth 5 percent of your overall grade.

The first part, worth 2.5 percent, is to post a brief response (250 words or less) as a comment to this blog entry addressing this question as specifically as possible from the facts of the case:

• What, if anything, distinguishes online (blogger) or tabloid journalism from mainstream journalism? When does a piece of news bridge that divide?

Your response must be posted by 9 a.m. Monday, Oct. 3 for full credit. In your response, cite specific facts from your own reading of the case. It is not acceptable to piggy-back on your classmates' answers without reading the case yourself.

The second 2.5 percent will be awarded on the basis of your contributions to the case study discussion in class. Enjoy the case!