MDIA5001 Writing for Media
The Complete Study & Assessment Guide · T1 2026MDIA5001 Overview
- UNSW Sydney
- 6 units of credit
- Term 1, 2026
- School of the Arts and Media
- In person, 2.5 contact hours
MDIA5001 Writing for Media is a postgraduate course in the School of the Arts and Media at UNSW Sydney, worth 6 units of credit and taught in person over ten teaching weeks on the UNSW term calendar.
- Assessed by A 700 word news article worth 40 percent, a multiplatform media package worth 30 percent, and a 700 word editorial or opinion column worth 30 percent.
- What actually costs marks Conditions outside the rubric. A missing consent form, press release link or reference list caps the piece at a Pass, and a declaration form that was never lodged separately is recorded as zero.
- The organising skill One story, three registers. The same reporting has to survive as a news article, as a platform native package and as an argued column, and each register has its own conventions.
- Where the top band hides Every rubric here rewards material you were not handed. One independently sourced comparison figure is what separates a solid Distinction from a High Distinction.
- How to prepare Write to the published structural word budgets part by part rather than writing long and cutting afterwards.
How MDIA5001 is assessed
| Component | Weight | Format |
|---|---|---|
| News Article | 40% | A 700 word news article, individual. Built from one of the eleven press release publishers the brief lists, or from two interviews you conduct yourself with a signed consent and conflict of interest form. Journalistic attribution in the copy, no academic reference list. Submitted as a single merged PDF through Turnitin and marked against an eight criterion rubric with written comments. |
| Multiplatform Media Content | 30% | Three to five distinct media assets adapted for social platforms, or one video of 60 to 90 seconds, all drawn from one coherent news story published by a quality outlet. Submitted as a single archive of up to 100 MB with a PDF carrying the story link, captions and hashtags. Feedback comes as peer feedback in tutorials plus written comments with a five criterion rubric. |
| Editorial/Opinion Column | 30% | A 700 word opinion column argued in your own voice as an individual columnist, on a current issue with international relevance, compared across at least two countries or regions. Journalistic attribution in the copy plus a reference list at the bottom in a standard academic style, excluded from the word count. Marked against a five criterion rubric. |
These three weights are the figures the University publishes for this course and they add to exactly 100, so nothing else carries marks. The published record carries no hurdle statement, which is why no component here shows a hurdle badge. What the assignment briefs add, outside the marking rubric, is a set of conditions that override a good mark: a news article submitted without the signed consent form for an interview, or without the press release link or full text at the end of the story, is capped at a Pass; an editorial submitted without its reference list is capped at a Pass; and any assignment whose declaration form was not lodged as its own separate submission is recorded as zero, as is work with fabricated citations or a file the marker cannot open.
What MDIA5001 covers
MDIA5001 builds reporting craft first and then tests it in three registers. Weeks 1 to 3 establish what media writing is, what makes something hard news, and how sources are found, weighed and verified, which is the material the 40 percent news article draws on. Week 4 turns to digital writing, scanning behaviour and search, Week 5 to opinion and editorial form.
After the flex week, Weeks 7 and 8 cover adaptation across platforms and audience centred, accessible writing, which together carry the 30 percent multiplatform package. Weeks 9 and 10 close on professional ethics, the national codes and the rules governing artificial intelligence in assessed journalism, which the editorial and every declaration form are graded against.
Media writing today: journalism, PR and branded content
What media writing covers across print, online, social and audio; the media release as an engineered artefact; porous boundaries between journalism, public relations and advertising; branded content and where disclosure sits. (Week 1)02Hard news, newsworthiness and the public interest
Hard news as reporting that is timely, factual and about events that matter publicly; the five reporting areas the course names; how the marking rubric defines newsworthiness; the recency test for a story and the tighter currency test for an opinion topic. (Week 2)03Sources, verification and fact checking
Primary against secondary sources; six rules for using secondary material responsibly; on the record, off the record and anonymity; verification against fact checking; the five verification questions; the seven types of information disorder. (Week 2)04Interviewing: preparation, conduct and consent
Five interview types and matching one to an objective; the funnel approach; the three phases of conduct; leading and loaded questions; informed consent, withdrawal and the signed consent instrument this course requires. (Week 3)05The news article: inverted pyramid, lead and attribution
The four structural parts and the published word budget for each; five lead types and the 5W1H checklist; attribution as person, title and organisation; the two conditions that cap this assignment at a Pass. (Weeks 1 to 2, Assignment 1)06Writing for digital media: SEO, social and search
What eye tracking shows about scanning; the F pattern; six shifts from print to digital; front loading and the kicker headline format; six ways to research search terms; platform posting conventions. (Week 4)07Opinion, editorials, reviews and persuasive voice
Five forms on the opinion spectrum; the five structural elements of an editorial; strong against weak leads; ethos, pathos and logos; the anatomy of a review; the ethics of opinion writing. (Week 5, Assignment 3)08Writing for multimedia platforms
Multimodality and modal affordances; feature, affordance and outcome; four platform interaction models; anchorage, relay, redundancy and contradiction in captions; writing for video and audio; six adaptation mistakes. (Week 7, Assignment 2)09Audience centred and engaging writing
The audience turn and the imagined audience; what analytics can and cannot tell you; who gets left out and why people avoid news; readers, contemporariness, value and story; six dimensions of accessibility; plain language. (Week 8)10Ethics and accountability in media writing
Why public trust creates an obligation; what a code of ethics is and what it can be used for; the Australian and American principles and the eight national codes in the course folder; two case studies in authorship and independence. (Week 9)11Writing in the age of artificial intelligence
The authorship line the course draws; four permitted zones and four uses prohibited even when declared; how the declaration works and why it is a separate submission; the video proportion cap; the three zero conditions. (Week 10)It is a production course rather than a theory course: you write publishable media copy through the term and you are graded on three finished pieces of work.
The teaching arc runs from what media writing is and how journalism sits alongside public relations and branded content, through hard news and news values, sources and verification, interviewing and consent, digital and search aware writing, opinion and editorial craft, adaptation across platforms, audience centred and inclusive writing, professional ethics, and finally writing in the age of artificial intelligence.
Week 6 is a flex week with no classes, which is why the lecture decks are numbered one behind the teaching week from Week 7 onwards.
Assessment is a 700 word news article worth 40 percent, built either from one of the eleven listed press releases or from two interviews you conduct yourself; a multiplatform package worth 30 percent, made of three to five social assets or one video of 60 to 90 seconds adapted from a single published news story; and a 700 word editorial or opinion column worth 30 percent comparing a current issue across at least two countries or regions.
The three weights add to 100. What decides grades here is rarely knowledge.
It is craft plus compliance: the briefs carry conditions that sit outside the marking rubric altogether, so a piece that scores well on every rubric row can still be capped at a Pass when a signed consent form, a press release link or a reference list is missing, and a piece whose separate artificial intelligence declaration was never submitted is recorded as zero.
This guide teaches the craft the rubric rewards, and puts the conditions that override the rubric where you can see them.
Turning a media release into the top of a news article
- +1Fill the six fields before writing a word. Who: the council, and the mayor as the named speaker. What: kerbside food and garden organics collection extends to 41,000 more households. When: from July, following a 12 month trial. Where: the council area, with the trial in three suburbs. Why: the trial diverted 3,100 tonnes from landfill. How: an extension of an existing service rather than a new one. Doing this on paper stops the most common failure, which is a lead that carries two fields and buries the other four.
- +1Choose the news point. Of the six fields, only one is new information for a reader who has never heard of the trial: the number of households the service now reaches. The tonnage is the justification, not the news, and the mayor's quote is evidence for the justification. Rank them in that order and the structure of the whole article is already decided.
- +1Write the headline with the searchable terms at the front. Something like 'Council extends food waste collection to 41,000 more households from July' runs to 11 words, opens on the actor and the service, and carries the number and the timing. Search engines weight the opening words most heavily, and a reader scanning a feed reads roughly the first two, so a headline that opens on an abstraction such as 'Sustainability milestone' throws away the only position that reliably gets read.
- +1Write the lead so it survives on its own. 'Kerbside food and garden organics collection will extend to 41,000 additional households from July, the council announced, after a 12 month trial in three suburbs diverted 3,100 tonnes from landfill.' That is 33 words, inside the 25 to 40 band, and it carries all six fields with the attribution built in rather than bolted on at the end.
- +1Audit for the two things markers actually deduct for. First, attribution: every figure in the lead has to be traceable to the release, and 'the council announced' does that in three words. Second, opinion leakage: the words 'impressive', 'major' and 'finally' are all judgements a news article is not allowed to make, and each one is a straight loss on the accuracy and ethics rows of the rubric.
Key terms
- Inverted pyramid
- The news structure that puts the most important facts first and the least important last, so a reader who stops after one paragraph still has the story and a subeditor can cut from the bottom without losing anything essential.
- Lead
- The opening sentence or two of a news article, carrying who, what, when, where and why with attribution built in. The course sets a band of 25 to 40 words for it in the news article.
- Nut graf
- The paragraph after the lead that states why the story matters now, supplying context, significance and background before the body starts adding detail.
- Attribution
- Naming the source of a fact, figure or quote inside the copy itself, by person, title and organisation. It is what separates a reported claim from an asserted one, and it is scored on its own rubric row.
- Primary source
- Original, first hand material created at the time of the events: an eyewitness, a direct interview, an original record, raw footage or a participant's own post.
- Secondary source
- Material that analyses, interprets or summarises primary sources after the fact, such as other news reports, press releases, expert commentary and think tank background.
- Verification
- The editorial technique of confirming that collected information is accurate, carried out before publication and judged on the process followed rather than on a verdict issued.
- Fact checking
- The application of verification to specific claims, statements or narratives, usually after they have been published, ending in a judgement that the claim is true, false or misleading.
- Platform affordance
- What a platform's technical and design features make easy or hard to do, which is what determines whether a piece of content works natively there or reads as a repost.
- Branded content
- Content produced or funded by a brand, covering advertiser funded programmes, advertorials, native advertising, custom publishing and product placement, and the reason disclosure matters at the boundary with journalism.
- Information disorder
- The umbrella term for false or misleading information in circulation, split by falseness and intent to harm into misinformation, disinformation and malinformation.
MDIA5001 FAQ
How is this course assessed, and does it have an examination?
The course is assessed by three individual assignments and the University publishes no examination component for it.
A 700 word news article carries 40 percent, a multiplatform media package carries 30 percent, and a 700 word editorial or opinion column carries 30 percent, which is the whole 100. All three go through Turnitin, all three are marked out of 100 against a published rubric, and all three come back as written comments in the course site. The practical consequence of this shape is that nothing is recoverable at the end.
There is no final paper that can rescue a weak first assignment, and the first assignment is also the largest single component, so the news article in the first third of the term carries more weight than anything you do afterwards. Treat it accordingly.
What can cap my grade even if the writing is good?
Three conditions sit outside the marking rubric and override it. If you take the interview pathway for the news article and do not supply a signed participant consent form, the whole piece is capped at a Pass no matter how the rubric rows score. If you use a press release and do not include a link to it or its full text at the end of the story, the same cap applies.
If the editorial arrives without its reference list, it is capped at a Pass too. There are also zero conditions: an assignment whose artificial intelligence declaration form was never lodged as a separate submission is recorded as zero, as is work containing fabricated or hallucinated citations, and a file the marker cannot open. None of this appears in the rubric, which is exactly why students lose grades to it.
Build a two minute pre submission check and run it every time.
What are the artificial intelligence rules for this course?
The course draws the line at authorship. Generating assessment text is not permitted, and that covers writing full or partial stories, paraphrasing generated output and passing it off as your own, and using a tool to produce quotes, arguments or narrative structures.
Four zones are permitted when declared: idea development such as brainstorming angles for your own discussion, research support such as mapping literature, organisation such as notes and interview question lists, and language support at final draft stage for grammar and spelling without rewriting whole paragraphs. Some uses are prohibited even if you declare them, so declaring is not a defence.
The declaration itself is a separate submission that unlocks the Turnitin link, and the instruction is explicitly not to merge it into your assignment file.
Should I use a press release or do my own interviews for the news article?
The press release pathway is lower risk and lower ceiling. You choose one release from the eleven publishers the brief names, and using an off list source risks a fail unless your tutor approves it in advance.
The interview pathway requires two interviews with people who hold relevant authority, explicitly not friends or relatives, each with a signed consent and conflict of interest form completed before the interview, and every interviewee named in full because no anonymity is allowed for this piece.
The rubric row that separates a Distinction from a High Distinction rewards initiative beyond the supplied material, so if you take the release pathway you still need at least one independently sourced comparison figure to reach the top band. Choose on the time you have, not on the word count.
What does platform adaptation actually mean, and how do markers see it?
It means the same reporting comes out differently on each platform because each platform makes different things easy.
A carousel is swipeable, so it can build an argument slide by slide; a short video has to land its hook in the first few seconds and be readable with the sound off; a thread is headline driven and rewards a fresh angle rather than a repeat of the headline; a professional network post leads on policy or industry consequence.
What markers look for is evidence that you chose the format for the story rather than reflowing one text into five boxes. The tells they see immediately are a caption that narrates the image instead of adding to it, one register used across every platform, and a press release voice pasted into a social post.
How is an opinion column different from a news article here?
A news article presents several viewpoints, avoids advocacy and keeps the writer invisible; an opinion column promotes a single viewpoint, may use the first person and carries a labelled personal tone. In this course the editorial is explicitly subjective but still has to be evidence based and ethically grounded, and it must compare its issue across at least two countries or regions rather than staying local.
The structural budget the brief publishes runs headline, lead and thesis, two arguments of 150 to 200 words each, a counterargument and rebuttal of 100 to 150 words, and a conclusion of 80 to 120 words. The counterargument block is not optional decoration; acknowledging and answering the opposing case is what the argumentation row of the rubric is looking for.
What does the marking rubric actually reward?
Each assignment has its own rubric with grade bands running High Distinction 85 to 100, Distinction 75 to 84, Credit 65 to 74, Pass 50 to 64 and Fail 0 to 49. The news article has eight criteria, including one that only applies if you conducted interviews; the multiplatform package and the editorial have five each.
No percentage weighting is published for any individual criterion, so treat them as equally live rather than guessing which one dominates.
Read the top band language rather than the criterion names: several rows reward going beyond the material you were given, which means an independently found comparison, a second corroborating source or a piece of context nobody handed you is the difference between a solid Distinction and a High Distinction.
How does the teaching term run, and why do the lecture numbers look wrong?
Ten teaching weeks, with a one hour lecture and a two hour tutorial, and attendance at tutorials is expected rather than optional. Week 6 is a flex week with no classes, so from Week 7 onwards the number printed on the lecture deck is one behind the teaching week: the deck labelled Lecture 06 is the Week 7 class on multiplatform writing, and the deck labelled Lecture 07 is the Week 8 class on audience centred writing.
Always navigate by teaching week and by topic, not by the number on the slide, because the assignments are pegged to weeks. The topic order itself is deliberate: the first half builds reporting craft that the news article needs, and the second half builds the platform, audience and ethics material that the other two assignments are graded on.
The published sources disagree on two details. Which do I follow?
Two figures differ between the University's own course record and the assignment briefs, and this guide does not silently pick a winner. The course record describes the opinion column as a 700 word piece and, in the same sentence, as 500 to 600 words.
Every course page carrying the brief gives 700, and the assessment question and answer document gives 700 with a tolerance of roughly ten percent either way, so the weight of evidence sits with 700 and the shorter figure looks like a stale fragment.
The same course record also reads as though a short video were one of the three to five multiplatform pieces, while the brief and the Week 1 slides both make the video an alternative to them. Work to 700 words and to the video as an alternative, and confirm both on your own course site before you submit.
Where an official source is ambiguous, the safe move is always to satisfy the stricter reading and to say in your submission which one you followed.
How to prepare for the assessments
Work backwards from the three briefs, because in this course the brief is the syllabus. Print all three, and beside each rubric criterion write the one sentence of evidence in your own draft that satisfies it. Any row where you cannot point at a sentence is a row you are guessing on.
Second, build the compliance checklist once and reuse it: consent form signed before the interview, press release link at the foot of the story, reference list on the editorial, declaration lodged as its own separate submission, file merged into one document and opened again after export to confirm it is readable.
Those five lines protect more marks than any amount of redrafting, because each of them can override a good rubric score on its own. Third, write to the published structural budgets part by part rather than writing long and cutting: a lead of 25 to 40 words and a context block of 100 to 120 are far easier to hit on the way in than on the way out, and the adherence row of the rubric scores it.
Fourth, collect a comparison habit. Every rubric here rewards material you were not given, so keep a running note of official statistical releases, regulators and policy documents in two countries for whatever issue you are following; the editorial needs a second jurisdiction and the news article needs one external figure, and both are painful to assemble the night before. Fifth, rehearse the register switch deliberately.
Take one story you already know and write it three ways in an hour: as a straight news lead, as a carousel plan, and as an opinion thesis. The course is really one skill tested three times, and that hour will tell you which of the three registers you default to and which one you have to build.
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