Knight Center offers online Spanish course “Hyperlocal Journalism”

The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas will offer a second edition of the online course, “Hyperlocal Journalism” from May 2–29, 2011. The four-week course for journalists in Latin America and the Caribbean is taught in Spanish by Argentine journalist and instructor Sandra Crucianelli.

The application period has closed.

The course will introduce reporters to write for hyperlocal media, which cover news and information near their immediate geographic surroundings. Hyperjournalism was popularized by citizen journalists, but spaces for hyperjournalism are also used by major media such as The New York Times.

Crucianelli’s course was first offered by the Knight Center from Oct. 17 to Nov. 12, 2010. Thirty-five journalists participated, and the popularity of the class led the Knight Center to offer it again.

The course will be conducted entirely online. It will be divided into weekly modules that contain audiovisual presentations, documents and online resources. Weekly exercises, online discussions and forums and additional assignments are also part of the course.

There is a $50 administrative fee to cover a small portion of the operating costs of the Knight Center’s distance education program. (The Knight Center is financed mostly through donations from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.) The fee covers course participation, and issuance of a certificate of participation.

Crucianelli has won national and international prizes for her work and is a specialist in precision journalism. She has taught her popular online journalism classes for the Knight Center since 2004 as part of the Center’s distance education program. Rachel Barrera, a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin in instructional technology, will serve as the teaching assistant for the course.

The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at the University of Texas at Austin was launched in 2002 by professor Rosental Calmon Alves. Thanks to generous grants from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the center has assisted thousands of journalists in Latin America and the Caribbean. For more information, contact the Knight Center’s program manager, Nuri Vallbona at nvallbona at mail.utexas.edu or +1 512 471-1391.