From the Catalog:

Direction and support for the development of independent new media projects. Projects might include an online work of journalism such as a photo-documentary with voice-over narrative, a virtual reality illustration or simulation, or a traditional academic research paper examining an issue relevant to new media journalism and published in final form as hypertext.

While I didn't say so in the official course description, I'd like to think of the traditional research paper as a last-ditch backup, in case things don't work out between you and any of the software packages we'll be using. You've all done research papers before, so let's instead try to focus on the media production tools. I'm very eager to see what you'll be able to do with them.