We focus on the essentials of online intellectual property and the commons(globally and South Africa specific); search and social media optimisation; transformation of legacy media economics and the long tail, and online marketing.

The latter is quite contentious as I have integrated the learning of concepts and practice into an assignment where students enter into Google’s Online Marketing Challenge. Learners run an active campaign on behalf of a real client with real adspend and simultaneously blog and tweet about the experience.

David: My syllabus is more than a ‘wish list.’ I’m in my second academic year of actually teaching it. Also, when you say it should be “possibly before the advanced reporting classes”, you might be presuming that all my students are journalists. Although half are from the Newspaper, Magazines, and Broadcast Journalism, and other reportorial tracks, the other half are from Advertising, Public Relations, Film, and Com Law tracks. Also, I disagree that New Media is just newer forms of traditional media (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrL-fLbgEts). Indeed, the Nielsen and ComScore data have shown for more than a decade that Mass Media is read less frequently and less thoroughly when shoveled online.

As for others’ suggestions that personal branding, freelance, or entrepreneurial skills be taught, all that’s fine. However, I believe that not all students will be going into business for themselves. Most will be working for companies. So I’m teaching all of them core business skills, not just entrepreneurial skills.

At the graduate level, the latest tools and methods for news production make up 30 to 40 percent of course work, but few students dive deep and fully engage the potential for news production innovation, unaware and uncomfortable with the new tool box.

This syllabus looks like a wish list to me, but it should be a core class, possibly before the advanced reporting classes. Story structure (and better yet, possibilities) can be imagined and created armed with a better vision of the expanding media. New media isn’t new. It is called new because it is constantly evolving. This syllabus is a good example of a J school fulfilling its purpose: to offer students a skill set on which they can innovate and be players in the new media landscape.