A course that explores the fundamentals of journalism and coding would help hacks and hackers understand each others' principles, processes, lexicons, etc. For example, the Hacks/Hackers glossary, Zen of Python and Pragmatic Programmer Quick Reference are good possible resources to include for journalists.

Project management: How do you take an idea from the conceptual to launch? Although there are variations, developers usually have very particular processes they go through to meet deadlines & project goals. Have them share the different project stages and the whys behind the process.

Big Ugly Datasets For Thumb-Fingered Journalists:

Say you're a hack covering sports, politics, business -- doesn't matter.

Somewhere out there is a file that ends in three letters: CSV. It could be megabytes and megabytes big. It will probably be so big, in fact, that it will be nearly impossible to navigate in Excel and not much easier in Access.

But it has all kinds of useful information that will help you cover your beat -- if only you could load the file, get the data you want from it, and do analysis.

What now?

The "Data-Driven Journalism" side of this curriculum should address, for journalists:

• An understanding of what a "flat file" is
• An introduction to DBMS and how they work
• How to clean a big data file for use in a DBMS using a tool like a Python script or a robust text editor like vi
• How to load data into a DBMS
• How to use a DBMS to get what you need out of large (100,000+ records) data files, export that to a spreadsheet, and plug that into viz tools like ManyEyes or Socrata to get the chart you want

And for hackers and journalists together:

• How to collaborate on a data-driven journalism project, and who to collaborate with

The Art of Engagement. If journalism is a conversation, what does it take to host conversations that matter? What are the patterns of interaction that show up? How do you create a welcoming environment that makes room for diverse perspectives in civil dialogue?

All about APIs. What they are, how they work -- from popular examples like Twitter and Google Maps to lesser-known gems. How you can create cool new stuff out of other people's apps; when, how, and why you should let other people easily make their own cool new stuff out of your apps.

Thusly show journalists how to get their feet wet with the "open web" in specific, practical ways. Hopefully inspire new, open applications of reporting.

"Mad for Metadata." What is it, how can it be used, how is it being used in newsrooms (in particular: how is it being managed in the cms and standardized across the newsroom), what are best practices outside of the industry for categorizing and organizing information and what ideas can newsrooms steal from them? (kinda broad; this could probably be narrowed a bit more)

I don't know about the structure, but I think some thought needs to be given to the format. The p2pu Digital Journalism course just wrapped up, and that was conducted over Ustream with class recordings available online for viewing afterwards.

Speaking as a programming noob, I'd love to see classes on Ustream where the instructor walks through a screencast demonstration. I always trip up when following text-based instructions, but give me a screencast so I can watch how its done and I'm usually ok.

Defining Collaborative Journalism Protocols on the Open Internet

How can traditionally vertical news organizations and practices open up and collaborate in the ideally open Internet, given limited resources and specific institutional goals that don't always overlap?

Is there a collaborative protocol that would enable independent producers to collaborate and aggregate outside of traditional vertical news structures?

This may merge with Andriak's answer about changing newsroom cultures to create more open and transparent venues for the work of journalism.

I do think it's about culture and practice, however, not necessarily about specific technological applications. This is an issue of expanding the information commons and open discourse.

(Again: I have extracted this from a previous, more lengthy answer, that I decided not to edit and delete due to the interesting but distinct conversation it provoked.)

As a current j-school participant, I think it's really important to for the practice and sharing of reporting, writing, rich media production, data literacy and programming skills to be continuously embedded in the experience of producing news "stories." My experience with j-school has been that there often isn't time in the curriculum for the skills that all my classmates bring with them to come together in innovative and context-relevant ways.

Bringing programmers into the newsroom isn't just a matter of adding new tools, it's adding different ways of thinking and making.

Rather than breaking a curriculum into modules based on skills (programming, GIS, interviewing, video editing) it would be better to structure the modules around "news problems" that teach multiple skills together and value the diverse perspectives and skills that students are bringing with them.

Off the top of my head, here are some ideas of "news problems" that seem like they would involve multiple reporting and hacking competencies:

• The city has released a new data set with thousands of records of information. Find the story in the data and explain in clearly to your audience.
• Neighborhood residents are divided over a proposed development project. How do you capture neighborhood sentiment around the controversy and engage community members to stay engaged as new information becomes available?

Web Design/Content strategy: A course that explores how best to organize online the content a newsroom produces. It's a LOT of content. Very often news sites pick up their print sections and place them into the navigation structure of the website. But does that work? We could talk about how to tell (usability testing, surveys, etc.)

But we could also explore, from the developer community side, information architecture and best practices. And, from the journo side, have print designers describe their best practices. How to marry the two? Should the two be married? ... Some entry points to the discussion might be the topic-based navigation & database libraries of some of the online-only news startups.

Reporting Standards in the Digital Age: The Sherrod incident is a perfect example of why we need to maintain "old fashioned" standards in the 24 hour news cycle universe. We may not be able to do everything as we once did but surely there are new ways to do basic fact and/or provenance checks more rapidly and still get a piece up in a competitive time frame. It is astonishing, given the source, that the Sherrod video wasn't vetted. It's perfect evidence for why we need to find ways to remain competitive and still be what we ought to be for our patrons (readers? viewers? consumers?)

An idea that echoes some of what's been said:
Changing culture, within and without
1. How do hacks/hackers change the culture of newsrooms and IT departments for the better in the new journalism world?
2. How do journalists and journalism organizations work to change information culture to more open and transparent place within their communities?
3. Why should cultures even be changed in the first place, and is it even possible to change existing institutions or is it better to start from scratch?

Courses you want to teach: Basic journalism course for new people doing journalism online. At some point, I might try this independently.
Photography/video along with basic journalism photography, with a strong F2F component. Others could teach this better than I could. I can just vouch that there is strong demand.

I took Joi's course, and I've proposed a basic journalism course in the past. The tools and the subject matter interest me greatly, and I'd love to hear how this idea progresses.

More reading:
Slides and links to open education tools, built during Joi's class:
http://globalvue.wordpress.com/2010/07/06/watch-this-space/
MediaShift story about open, free journalism classes gaining ground:
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2010/06/free-online-journalism-classes-begin-to-gain-ground179.html

Customer service: how this is changing rapidly as journalists adopt to the online world and developers think about products for anyone to use. This would identify audiences, consider topics like the digital divide, and also focus on community building.

Database/Spreadsheet design. How to organize your data, particularly for long-term projects or continuing coverage, so that it helps instead of hindering your reporting. Designing your data so that it helps prevent errors from creeping in and minimizes the maintenance overhead. Writing effective documentation so that you can remember why you did something a particular way when you set up the database or spreadsheet 2 weeks or 2 years ago.

Building, Linking and Sustaining Decentralized Newsrooms.

How can we take journalism out of hierarchical legacy institutions, and turn it into a widespread, open-source practice among peers? Here are elements of that question that we at Newsdesk.org have been exploring, and that we want to share with our colleagues

• Methodologies for identifying issues that matter and communities in need
• Developing co-op/peer-driven editorial models
• Aggregation beyond mere summary
• News items as "social objects" in the decentralized medium
• Local journalism fundraising: individual donors, crowdsourcing, grants
• Building a shared-back office to support aggregate operations and marketing.

We consider this a community effort akin to open-source software development; as such it requires collaboration between peers who may be embedded in or beholden to non-collaborative systems. In my experience this is one of the most important issues and challenges of all.

Another question: What actionable outcomes will result from this class or discussion? A protocol for collaboration? A consortium of like-minded news producers who want to take the lessons learned and apply them in practice? Food for thought.

"Defining Articles As Social-News Objects"

What is the combination of reporting methodology, physical article structure and internal markup/coding that defines an article as a "social object" -- something that is transferable in its entirety between platforms, open to comment/discourse, and that has longitudinal value, i.e., that doesn't get stale as a story, that has legs, is able to update itself. For example, is this process automatic or manually curated? Etc.

(I have extracted this from a previous, more lengthy answer, that I decided not to edit and delete due to the interesting but distinct conversation it provoked.)

What about the business of journalism? How do you finance major stories that require serious chunks of time from an excellent researcher/reporter? How do you use design to tell a story and how do you pay to get that design? As we all know there aren't definitive answers on what the business model for digital journalism is at this point. Grapple with the issues, study what's happening, and engage in conversations about how to tell a story online PLUS where the money will come from for making that story engaging, and connecting it to a wide audience---that's a course I'd like to offer and/or take.

Apologies if this is repetitive (I actually haven't had a chance to read through this thread yet). This was part of my answer to the "What should a Hacks/Hackers glossary aimed at programmers contain?" thread and Phillip asked me to post it here:

...Introduce programmers to how newsrooms operate, because programmers who join newsrooms are likely there to work on projects that compliment reporting. Introduce programmers to the basic editorial structure: how newsrooms are organized; how newsrooms operate day-to-day; how stories go from concept, to reporting, to editing, to publish; who and how many people a programmer is likely to be working with on a project (in our case: reporters, several editors, designers, the copy desk, the web producers, in some cases, IT), etc.

It would be great to see case studies of how projects came to be. The WaPo's recent "Top Secret America" would be a good one. Derek Willis gave a really interesting talk at an ONA meetup on producing NYT's Toxic Waters . The video is somewhere online, but I can't find it. Greg Linch probably has the link, so hopefully he'll see this.

I had joined a computer assisted reporting class a few months ago through an online class, but I got only a few knowledge from it. I guess the course that Hacks/Hackers will conduct should also cover how the Internet can help journalists improve their reporting, data gathering and, possibly, data verification. There should be tips on how journalists can obtain data/information from official government websites. In some countries, government officials tend to conceal the public information such as the amount of budget or officers' monthly payment. Is there a way for journalists to obtain such information? -- Siswoko

Business/Marketing planning: I hear a lot of exciting ideas for new kinds of services, without a well-thought-out idea of what market they're planning to serve, what its needs are, and what revenue sources are suitable for that market. They also need to know how to model their cost structure. A hard-headed review of the current online advertising market is also in order. I'd be interested in contributing to this. I presented on related topics at the UC Berkeley J-School earlier this year.

Content Management Systems/Frameworks: I'd love to see the criteria for choosing among content management systems from a development perspective. What are the strengths and weaknesses of each of the major CMS's and frameworks? What skills do you need to use each one? What kinds of projects is each suitable for? I can't teach it, but I'd be happy to contribute to a discussion of this topic.