Spend a month improving your storytelling, photography and video skills while living in a beautiful Renaissance town nestled in the hills of central Italy.

The Program: June 1 – June 30, 2012

Join a team of media professionals creating a web site and print magazine about the town of Urbino, Italy, and get a taste of being a foreign correspondent. The Urbino Project is about telling stories. This class is your passport to explore a picturesque area of Italy in search of  interesting people and situations that you can report on.

All students will report, write, shoot photos and video and post their stories to the project website. Although you will work on developing a full range of storytelling techniques,  you’ll have the opportunity to focus on a set of skills that are either print or web oriented. Past students have produced multimedia stories on food, wine, parenting, athletics, history, tourism, music, traditions, religion, art, design and dance. During this four-week program, students learn

• how to write for the web or print.
• how to take great digital photos.
• how to shoot and edit quality video.
• the ins and outs of intercultural communication.
• how to work as part of a production team.

Students in both sections will work on skills critical for successful journalism, including the basics of finding and reporting compelling stories with words and images. Students will be coached by a Pulitzer Prize-winning staff in writing and photography as well as online video. They will learn how to navigate as professional journalists in a foreign culture by working with interpreters and crafting ready-to-publish features and news stories. Students will also study “survival” Italian and learn about the history and culture of the region. University of Urbino students will work as interpreters for fieldwork.

You’ll work in assigned production teams, using computers, digital cameras and video cameras. Students are required to bring their own laptop computers and digital still cameras. JMU students participate with students from other institutions and are led by a JMU professor who coordinates their involvement during the four weeks.

The program occurs in cooperation with The Institute for Education in International Media’s (ieiMedia) Urbino Program.