This version of the course guide is provisional until the period for editing the new course guides ends.

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Workshop on Journalistic Production

Code: 43966 ECTS Credits: 9
2025/2026
Degree Type Year
Journalism and Digital Content Innovation OB 0

Contact

Name:
Pedro Vicente Ortin Andres
Email:
pedrovicente.ortin@uab.cat

Teachers

Carlos Sanandres Martinez

Teaching groups languages

You can view this information at the end of this document.


Prerequisites

Knowledge of journalism and information production routines, as well as the user level of the basic elements of journalistic production in multimedia formats.


Objectives and Contextualisation

This module aims to consolidate, in a practical, experimental and innovative way, the knowledge and skills acquired across the master's program, within a dynamic and realistic journalistic production environment.

Students are invited to design, produce, publish, and manage a wide range of journalistic content, applying quality standards, creativity and narrative innovation, while exploring emerging formats, cross-platform storytelling, and new ways of engaging audiences.

The course spans both semesters of the program and operates as an active lab for production, reflection, and experimentation in journalism. Its structure mirrors the workflow of a 21st-century newsroom or media agency, requiring students to strategically plan content production in the short, medium and long term, manage teams and resources, and respond to real or simulated assignments from media outlets, institutions or platforms.

Special focus is placed on collaborative work, adaptability to digital environments, innovation capacity, and the integration of technologies such as artificial intelligence, cross-platform audiovisual production, and social storytelling. It is a space to explore new ways of doing —and rethinking— journalism.


Competences

  • Adapt to new situations, have leadership ability and initiative, while maintaining creativity.
  • Analyse and evaluate trends in the digital narration of information companies, and be able to propose alternatives for the construction of the story in a digital and interactive context.
  • Apply knowledge and experience through the development of a professional routine for journalistic production.
  • Apply tools of management, analysis, organisation and planning of information in accordance with objectives and specific information projects.
  • Design, create and develop digital strategies oriented to the positioning of journalistic content.
  • Knowledge and understanding that provide a basis or opportunity for originality in developing and / or applying ideas, often in a research context.
  • Students can communicate their conclusions and the knowledge and rationale underpinning these to specialist and non-specialist audiences clearly and unambiguously.
  • That the students can apply their knowledge and their ability to solve problems in new or unfamiliar environments within broader (or multidisciplinary) contexts related to their field of study.
  • Understand and analyse the trends and dynamics of change in the communicative, informative and regulatory ecosystem of the media company in the twenty-first century.
  • Work in teams in a coordinated and collaborative manner and demonstrate skills for contributing to interdisciplinary teams.

Learning Outcomes

  1. Analyse and evaluate trends in digital narration in news companies and apply innovative alternatives within a specific product.
  2. Appropriately communicate the findings and the fundamental rationale of the research work conducted.
  3. Conduct applied research on the market for digital content targeting social networks.
  4. Develop a research project that uses the scientific method in solving a particular problem in the area of journalism and digital communication.
  5. Handle technological tools for managing and producing digital news content, integrating them into new content-distribution platforms
  6. Identify the different formats and platforms for distributing and sharing content, adapting the message in an innovative way.
  7. Identify trends in digital content and recognise the characteristics of the new professional environments related to digital news.
  8. Make critical analyses of documentation, bibliography and audiovisual information based on case studies put forward.
  9. Make innovative, creative and responsible decisions when conducting research for the master's dissertation.
  10. Organise, analyse and evaluate information from audience measurement systems to propose content and creative methods for producing and positioning news.
  11. Present results of the work done to corporate-sector audiences and the target audience, dynamically and clearly.
  12. Present the news products arising from a specific journalism production routine, clearly and attractively.
  13. Recognise and decide on the possibilities and formats of digital narration, adapting to specific formats and audiences.
  14. Recognise and formulate applied-research problems together with suitable methods for solving them.
  15. Recognise the new professional profiles in journalism and their roles in news companies' innovation models and journalistic products.
  16. Understand and critically interpret the changes introduced by technology in journalism production and management.
  17. Understand and evaluate the potential of the different formats of digital content and narratives within an environment that is interactive, hypertextual and transmedia.
  18. Understand the process for solving a research problem, identifying original ideas and integrating previous proposals.
  19. Work independently and with self-discipline, under the specific guidance of a tutor, in a competitive workplace.

Content

  • 1. Liquid Structures: The 21st-Century Newsroom
  • How do today’s newsrooms work?
  • From the classic model to the decentralized creative collective.
  • New professional roles, emerging profiles and hybrid dynamics.
  • Introduction to the living newsroom laboratory: our collaborative workspace for the course.

 

  • 2. Creative Architectures and Collaborative Working Models
  • How do we organize ourselves to innovate in content production?
  • Types of newsrooms: data-driven, audiovisual, mobile-first, transmedia.
  • Collective creation methods: Design Thinking, Agile, Editorial Sprints.
  • Inspiring models: AJ+, La Pulla, El Orden Mundial, Fumaça, Maldita, Brut.
  • Collaborative tools: Notion, Trello, Miro, Figma, Canva (team version).

 

  • 3. Everyday Innovation: Rituals, Routines and Re-evolutions
  • How is innovation born from the everyday?
  • Social-native microformats: reels, stories, vertical video, newsletters, micro podcasts.
  • The aesthetics of immediacy and written orality.
  • Practical use of generative AI tools (ChatGPT, Midjourney, ElevenLabs, D-ID, Synthesia).
  • Designing experimental and automated editorial workflows.

 

  • 4. Active Labs: Research, Trial and Error as Methodology
  • Introduction to course content labs: audiovisual, AI & digital tools, data visualization, strategy and impact.
  • Design of small-scale narrative investigations based on real cases.
  • Tools for researching the context: platforms, algorithms, trends and global microrrelatos.
  • Tools for prototyping (Descript, OBS Studio, AI videotools, Notion DB, Substack).
  • Managing impact-driven projects: critical thinking + data visualization + distribution strategy.

 

  • 5. Critical Production: From the Case to the Published Piece
  • Multiplatform content production: from idea to pitch, from pitch to prototype, from prototype to publication.
  • International case studies: La Pulla, El Hilo, Brut, Disclose, Rest of World, El Surtidor.
  • Evaluation tools: ethics, aesthetics, impact, and narrative sustainability.
  • How to produce in saturated contexts? And how to stand out?
  • Strategic editorial planning for short / medium / long term.
  • Advanced curation and verification (OSINT, AI checkers, visual research).
  • Journalistic narrative + visual design + sonic storytelling.

 

  • IMPORTANT
  • This course is not based on lectures, but on explorations.
  • Knowledge is built through doing, debating, and making mistakes.
  • Each session combines brief inspiration + intensive practice + critical reflection.
  • Work is collaborative, iterative, and uses the city’s real stories as a journalistic and narrative stage.
  • Topic order may vary depending on the group’s rhythm and needs.
  • The full schedule will be presented in the first session and uploaded to the Virtual Campus, along with resources, exercises, references and tools.
  • Teaching will be sensitive to gender and diversity perspectives, as well as to the ethical implications of technology (AI, data, algorithms, platforms).

Activities and Methodology

Title Hours ECTS Learning Outcomes
Type: Directed      
Laboratory activities 55 2.2 1, 16, 18, 17, 2, 4, 13, 8, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10, 9, 12, 11, 15, 14, 19
Lectures 12 0.48 1, 16, 18, 17, 4, 13, 8, 7, 10, 9, 15
Type: Supervised      
Tutoring and workshops 45 1.8 1, 16, 17, 4, 13, 8, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10, 9, 12, 11, 15, 14
Type: Autonomous      
Search, selection and reading of bibliography and other resources. Personal study. Planning and individual work / teamwork. 113 4.52 1, 16, 18, 17, 2, 4, 13, 8, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10, 9, 12, 11, 15, 14, 19

  • A detailed schedule outlining the content of each session will be presented on the first day of the course and will be available on the course’s Virtual Campus, where students will find all teaching materials and necessary information for effective course monitoring. Should the teaching modality change for health-related reasons, the teaching staff will inform students of any modifications to the course schedule and teaching methodologies
  • The course will focus on debate, practical exercises and the collective construction (between students and teachers) of knowledge around the subject. The course will be developed in an essentially practical way, with the intention of developing journalistic projects with students based on their own design, production and dissemination. The students could receive orders for real products or informative companies that will have to be carried out in the workspaces of both the University and the company. We will use the website www.somosperiodismo.es (specially).
  • The basis of the teaching methodology will be to achieve autonomous learning by students.
  • The activity supervised by the teacher, with a constant and active participation of the student, will allow the student to assume the generic and specific competences raised in the design of the subject, within the curriculum.
  • The learning activities (practical classes) occupy a prominent role in the framework of the subject.
  • The students will attend theoretical classes where concepts will be explained, debates will be developed and materials and cases will be discussed.
  • The separation of the group into subgroups of practical nature will allow a varied and very detailed work and exercise of the exercises proposed.
  • The virtual campus will be an important tool within the framework of the subject.

IMPORTANT: The proposed teaching methodology and evaluation activities may undergo some modifications depending on the healthauthorities' attendance restrictions.

Annotation: Within the schedule set by the centre or degree programme, 15 minutes of one class will be reserved for students to evaluate their lecturers and their courses or modules through questionnaires.


Assessment

Continous Assessment Activities

Title Weighting Hours ECTS Learning Outcomes
A) Attendance and participation in classes, debates and presentations 30% 0 0 1, 16, 17, 13, 8, 5, 6, 7, 9, 15, 14
B) Practical activities 50% 0 0 1, 16, 18, 17, 2, 4, 13, 8, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10, 9, 12, 11, 15, 14, 19
C) Submission and presentation of assignments 20% 0 0 1, 16, 17, 2, 4, 13, 8, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10, 9, 12, 11, 15, 14, 19

The course follows a system of continuous assessment, so it is assumed that is mandatory the attendance of students to all training activities mentioned above.

To be able to pass the course, it is necessary:

a) Carrie out and submit all the assignments (activities A, B and C). In case of absence for justified reasonsof force majeure, the student must present the corresponding proof to the teaching team; otherwise, the activities will be considered as Not Completed.

b) Obtain a minimum grade of 5 in each of the activities. Regarding teamwork assignments, professors may adopt control measures to verify the participation of each member in the common work. Consequently, the grades may be different for members of the same team, which could mean that one or several members pass the evaluation, while the others don't.

Reevaluation

The student will have the right to the reevaluation of the subject if he/she has been evaluated of the set of activities, the weight of which equals a minimum of 2/3 of the total grade of the subject.

Activities of point A are excluded from the reevaluation process. 

Use of A.I.

In this course, the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies is permitted as an integral part of assignment development, provided that the final outcome demonstrates a significant contribution from the student in terms of analysis and personal reflection. Students must clearly identify any content generated using AI, specify the tools employed, and include a critical reflection on how these technologies have influenced both the process and the final result of the assignment. Failure to disclose the use of AI in this assessed activity will be considered a breach of academic integrity and may result in a partial or total penalty to theassignment grade, or more serious sanctions in severe cases.

Plagiarism

The student who performs any irregularity (copy, plagiarism, identity theft, etc.) that can lead to a significant variation in the qualification of an evaluation act, will be graded with 0 this evaluation. In case of more than one irregularity, the final grade of the course will be 0.


Bibliography

The following is a basic list of the course bibliography. The teaching team may include new resources as the subject develops.

Bell, E., & Owen, T. (2023). Journalism and the algorithmic public sphere. Oxford University Press.

Bro, P. (2018). Models of journalism: The functions and influence of the press. Routledge.

Crusafon Baques, C., González-Saavedra, C., & Murciano Martínez, M. (2020). Las redes sociales y las aplicaciones móviles en las estrategias de transformación digital de los medios de servicio público europeos. Comunicació: Revista de Recerca i Anàlisi, 37(2), 33–54. https://doi.org/10.2436/20.3008.01.195

Díaz-Noci, J. (2021). The life of news and the wealth of media companies in the digital world: Reader revenues and professional practices on a post-COVID world. DigiDoc Research Group.

Fletcher, R., & Nielsen, R. K. (2017). Paying for online news: A comparative analysis of six countries. Digital Journalism, 5(9), 1173–1191. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2016.1246373

García-Avilés, J. A., Carvajal-Prieto, M., Arias, F., & De Lara-González, A. (2018). How journalists innovate in the newsroom: Proposing a model of the diffusion of innovations in media outlets. The Journal of Media Innovations, 5(1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.5617/jomi.v5i1.3968

Jarvis, J. (2023). The Gutenberg parenthesis: The age of print and its lessons for the age of the internet. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Kuiken, J., Schuth, A., Spitters, M., & Marx, M. (2017). Effective headlines of newspaper articles in a digital environment. Digital Journalism, 5(10), 1300–1314. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2017.1279978

Mozilla Foundation. (2024). AI & news futures: Risks and opportunities for public interest journalism. Mozilla Research Reports. https://foundation.mozilla.org

Moten, F. (2023). Los subcomunxs (S. A. González, Trad.). Caja Negra Editora.

Peres-Neto, L. (2022). Journalist-Twitterers as political influencers in Brazil: Narratives and disputes towards a new intermediary model. Media and Communication, 10(3), 28–38. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v10i3.5363

Perreault, G., & Stanfield, K. (2019). Mobile journalism as lifestyle journalism? Field theory in the integration of mobile in the newsroom. Journalism Practice, 13(3),331–348. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2018.1424021

Petre, C. (2021). All the news that’s fit to click: How metrics are transforming the work of journalists. Princeton University Press.

Rincón, O. (2016). Narrativas bastardas: Periodismo, televisión, ficción y redes sociales. Gedisa.

Rincón, O. (2020). El periodismo que no fue: Narrativas bastardas en América Latina. Revista Chasqui, (144), 23–31. https://doi.org/10.16921/chasqui.v0i144.4426

Ripley, A. (2022). High conflict: Why we get trapped and how we get out. Simon & Schuster.

Rogers, S. (Ed.). (2023). The data journalism handbook 2.0. European Journalism Centre & Google News Initiative. https://datajournalism.com

Simelio, N., Ginesta, X., San Eugenio Vela, J., & Corcoy, M. (2019). Journalism, transparency and citizen participation: A methodological tool to evaluate information published on municipal websites. Information, Communication & Society, 22(3), 369–385. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2017.1386706

Tejedor, S. (2022). Artificial Intelligence and newsgames in journalism: Proposals and ideas from the case study of three projects. Visual Review: Revista Internacional de Cultura Visual, 12(3), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.37467/revvisual.v9.3749

Tejedor, S., Cervi, L., Pulido, C. M., & Pérez Tornero, J. M. (2021). Análisis de la integración de sistemas inteligentes de alertas y automatización de contenidos en cuatro cibermedios. Estudios sobre el Mensaje Periodístico, 27(3), 973–983. https://doi.org/10.5209/esmp.77003

Zelizer, B., Boczkowski, P. J., & Anderson, C. W. (2022). The journalism manifesto. Polity Press.

IMPORTANT: During the course we will also work with materials derived from weblogs, websites, media and congresses in the sector.


Software

This workshop proposes a crossover between the journalistic craft, the design of emerging formats and practical experimentation in real conditions.

It is a hybrid space between newsroom, laboratory, creative studio and critical cell.

The focus is not only on “telling stories”, but also on innovating ways of telling what is urgent, what is uncomfortable, what does not yet have a clear journalistic language.

We want students to think as journalists, but also as flow designers, audiovisual storytellers, programmers of ideas, cultural creators and creative remixers of information. 

The work is developed in laboratories.

Virtual sessions will be conducted through Teams or Zoom.


Groups and Languages

Please note that this information is provisional until 30 November 2025. You can check it through this link. To consult the language you will need to enter the CODE of the subject.

Name Group Language Semester Turn
(TEm) Theory (master) 60 Spanish annual morning-mixed