Communication 104: News Writing

Spring Syllabus (pdf) -- Students' pages
Update from syllabus: office hours are M-T-Th 3:30-4:30, Wed. 11-12, or by appointment.

Our main text is Tim Harrower's Inside Reporting, 2nd edition.
The book has an extensive workbook online, including study guides, quizzes and exercises.
You also need the AP Stylebook (2008 or later); bookmark its Ask the Editor FAQ and Recent Questions.

Follow this required texts link to see my bookmark entries for those books and two free downloadable texts. Also browse my bookmarks on the left, or this selection of news writing links.

Read the best and most interesting news writing you can find. Here's a start: The New York Times, The Roanoke Times, The Washington Post, and the Pulitzer Prize archives.

Visit journalism groups and publications, starting with the Society of Professional Journalists (spj.org), Investigative Reporters & Editors (ire.org), Radio & TV Digital News Association (rtdna.org), Online News Association (journalists.org), Columbia Journalism Review (cjr.org) and American Journalism Review (ajr.org).

Class Notes (Some notes and assignment reminders will be added here after class. Be sure to check this page -- especially if you miss class or don't take great notes.)

April 24-The END

Thursday: Final exam preview (past semesters' exams for discussion).
- EXAM: May 1, Tuesday. Section 104-01, 8 a.m.; 104-02, 2:45 p.m.
- If you have been sleeping until 10:40 and racing to the 11 a.m. class, having its exam at 8 a.m. could be a problem! Start getting to bed earlier a few days in advance.
- If you sleep through the 8 a.m. class, come to the 2:45 one. There may be a couple of computers free for you to take it then. If not, you will be able to sign up for a make-up session.
- The "exam" is writing a story in class. There's no value in "cramming for the test," but do review your story comments and the textbook sections on leads, attribution and story structure.
- Bring your AP Stylebook to the exam.
Revising stories based on Charlie Rose interviews: Use these 'for everyone' comments
Tuesday: Discussion of public relations and its "relation" to news writing. Search for PRSSA, Radford's press releases, Virginia lottery press releases.
Rewrites: If you haven't received personal comments on a late or D2L-delayed first draft, you should still revise any "live" story you covered. Use the comments on the Rose story, the Gartner story notes and the general revision tips memo and write a second draft to hand in on the day of the final.
If you have missed several stories and want to request an "Incomplete" grade, see me.

April 17-23

Can't believe it's so close to the finish line?
Stress is getting to journalism grad students too, but in an ethical way: SPJ Ethics Code set to music.
Tuesday:
- Discuss Charlie Rose interviews
- Discuss story revision tips. (handout)
- Not a "Pullet Surprise," but a Pulitzer surprise.
- News writing skills summary (handout)
Celebrity interview stories due Thursday the 19th.
Instead of Thursday class, individual meetings TBA.
IF YOU MISS TUESDAY'S CLASS, EMAIL FOR AN APPOINTMENT

April 10-12

Weekend homework: The BE Charlie Rose interview story assignment. Watch one or more archived shows and observe Charlie's interview technique for an April 17 discussion; write a story from the interview for April 19.
Communication Week reflections, Stories and Tweets
Twitter as a journalism tool: Read this multi-page site from Berkeley's Knight Digital Media Center, including Why Twitter matters and Reporting with Twitter
Writing headlines and "microcontent"; compare a newspaper-oriented headline guide or two, and Melton's handbook, and laugh at the results of a Web search for phrases like "problem headlines" or "headline bloopers"
Guidelines for revising stories: Gartner speech notes and mock-twitter scratchpad. Revision due Friday by sundown.

March 29 (Thursday) through April 9

Grammar follow-up: Visit DailyWritingTips.com and consider subscribing to its email list to get a free grammar handbook.
Reminder: If you came down with the flu or got caught in traffic and missed Comm Week events, send the professor an email saying what you plan to cover instead. (Sooner would be better, but in a pinch there's always the Town Hall Meeting on the Federal Budget April 10, the Music Therapy Symposium or Coach Carter on April 19. Watch the Events Calendar for more.)
Deadline extended: The Gartner assignment parts 2 and 3, originally due March 30, are now due by 5 p.m. April 2 (the after-the-speech story and follow-up questions). You have a speech to go to at 5.
Communication Week assignment: No regular class meetings; two stories due by the end of the week. Catch up on all earlier assignments listed below. See me if you didn't collect your graded test.
Suggestion: Join Twitter and follow @bobstep, @caroletarrant and other relevant accounts. Watch for and use the #rucw hashtag to mark "tweets" about the week's events.

March 20-22

Thursday:

Style and grammar quiz in-class (bring stylebook)
Discussion of weekend (and beyond) speech assignment.
Early alert about Communication Week April 1-6.

Tuesday in-class: Beat reporting, continued. Do Fargo, N.D., storm/accidents story in class.

Due Tuesday: Obituary based on Ex. 5.2-2 in the online workbook Use New York Times news obits as a guideline for writing style. Upload the finished story to the Desire2Learn dropbox before Tuesday's class. Additional obit info.

Interesting obits to read: Art Buchwald (watch the video obit); Joe Thompson, musical mentor; Stan Stearns, news photographer; Michael Hossack, rock drummer)

Other assignments: Already due, News reports from spring break reading and first draft of story about Journalists in Popular Culture course. (See below.)

Coming on Thursday: AP/grammar follow-up quiz. See below for review/prep quizzes to do before Tuesday so that you can ask questions before the quiz.

If you were absent March 13 (Tuesday) please see me during office hours to go over your midterm AP Stylebook & grammar test. (MTTh 3:30-4:30, W-11 a.m., other mornings by appointment.)

March 11-17

Welcome back from Spring Break! Happy Daylight Savings Time! Happy Sunshine Week and Happy St. Patrick's Day! Which one of the above has more to do with news writing? Watch this space. Also, here's an early alert about a special event at the end of the month. Check with Tartan and Whim editors to see if anyone is planning a trip to Elon University for the SPJ Regional Conference March 30. At least one Pulitzer Prize winner will be there!

In class Tuesday: Post examples of "stories good enough to use for textbook examples" on your Web pages.

AP & grammar test followup will be Thursday, March 22; to prepare, do Exercise 7 on page 65 by March 20. Also revisit the online exercises, especially 3-5.11, 3-6.1, 3-6.2, 3-6.5.

If you were not in class Tuesday the 13th, please come see me during office hours to go over the AP/Grammar midterm. (MTTh 3:30-4:30, W-11 a.m., other mornings by appointment.)

Feb. 28-Mar.1

Tuesday "Where do stories come from?" discussion links: A document (JPop course proposal); A related website or two; A related interview (about old-time radio dramas).

I've uploaded MP3 recordings of the in-class "press conferences" about the course from both sections of the special topics course. Write a first-draft of a short (about 400 words) story about it for Thursday. (Drop box added to Desire2Learn.)

Spring Break Assignment: Pick four stories to update the story-examples in chapters 4 and 5. (PDF)

Feb. 21-23

For the weekend and week after the midterm test, review Chapter 3, start Chapter 4, and expect to have a story to write in class on Tuesday.

Spring Break assignment to be announced. Finally, we'll review some of the grammar quiz problems as well as the three weekend editing exercises. Update: The midterm grammar-and-AP open-book test will be Thursday. Because we didn't have a lot of time to review grammar questions, we'll have a follow-up after the "midterm" grades are in, so that one editing session doesn't carry too much weight in your final grade. Bring your stylebook on Thursday!

Fifth weekend:

Pre-midterm AP Stylebook editing... We started one of these exercises in class. Complete all three and drop them in the Desire2Learn dropbox before Tuesday's class. USE your Stylebook!

Fourth week and weekend:

In-class Thursday: Exercises on AP style for addresses, titles, capitalization, abbreviations etc., and a preview of an exercise on fixing problems with lead sentences.

Over the Feb. 10-12 weekend, apply the same "look up the most specific issue, then look for more general rules" process to practice using the AP Stylebook to the rest of the Stylebook exercises: numbers 3-5.1 through 3-5.11.

Getting everything right is good; knowing where the right rules are in the Stylebook is better. Send the results to yourself, not to the professor. Tuesday's class will discuss problems you had -- and ERRORS you found in the exercises themselves. We'll also continue with the "Identify problem leads" exercise, number 3-2.2.

Clipping assignment: "Clip" two interesting stories from any newspaper or online news site and highlight 10 AP Stylebook topics in each one. Bring a printout or clipping to class for Feb. 14 or 16 discussion.

Feb. 3-5 weekend homework: Write the first draft of the Costa Rica story

Submit by sundown Monday Feb.6 using Desire2Learn.

Bring the AP Stylebook to class. (Because Glen Martin was able to visit last week, giving us a chance to write the Costa Rica story, the AP Stylebook "clipping assignment" mentioned in the syllabus is postponed a week.)

Grammar quizzes

NOTE: If you get low grades on most of the grammar quizzes, come see me during office hours (M-T-Th 3:30-4:30; W 11-12, or by appointment) -- especially if you consistently score lower than 70% the second time. For even more help, print them out and review them with a writing tutor at the Learning Assistance Resource Center at Walker.

Desire2Learn has a grammar quiz dropbox and a copy of these instructions:

Submit these reports as soon as you are ready -- preferably one after you have taken the first five of the textbook's online Grammar Quizzes, and another when you take the last five... so that we can review the problems in class the week before the midterm.

After you have taken half the quizzes (or whenever you can), try to figure out why some of your answers were wrong: Check the dictionary, the AP Stylebook and the Chapter 3 editing pages (PDF file of Harrower Chapter 3 part 2) for tips, and try the list of topics at this COMMNET Grammar Guide for help.

Then write a list of the ISSUES that you just can't figure out, illustrating them with quiz and question numbers.

For example:

1. "I couldn't figure out why three questions were wrong. They all had to do with pronouns and 'to be' verbs, such as 'there is' versus 'there are.'" Example: Ch.1, question 3.

2. "I just don't get 'lie' and 'lay' -- ch.4 #8."

Type up the reports and name them something like :

yourlastname-grammar1.doc

yourlastname-gram2.doc

Upload them to the Desire2Learn dropbox.

Third week:

Our guest speaker on Tuesday Jan.31 was philosophy professor Glen Martin, head of the Peace Studies minor at Radford, talking about the study-abroad Maymester program in Costa Rica. If you were absent or aren't happy with the quality of notes you took in class, combine yours with mine and more online background fact-checking research.

After a short discussion of your Morgue reading assignment, we will work on the Costa Rica story in class on Thursday, so put your notes somewhere that you can get at them. (H-drive or Flash drive or email.) Read or review the basic news-writing tips in Chapter Three. I'll decide the deadline for the full story during class.

Second homework:

For this weekend, your main assignment is to browse through the "Morgue" anthology section in the back of the textbook and choose any three stories that interest you.
Write a short report about them, similar to the one you did on recent news stories last week. Bring it to class on Tuesday, Jan. 31. Include each story headline, its page number, a very short summary (one to three sentences) and a sentence saying why you picked that story.
The whole report shouldn't be more than a page or two. I'd prefer double-spaced text for easier reading, but if you need to save paper, make it single-spaced on both sides of a sheet.
Watch your e-mail for a second assignment, which will involve a little online background research for an in-class "press conference."

First homework:

Read the first two chapters of the text. They are about journalism, its purpose, importance, history, people and folklore. If you don't have the book yet, use the online PDF chapters (downloadable here). But you MUST have the printed version of the book for the second weekend's "morgue" reading assignment.
As mentioned in the syllabus, start taking those grammar quizzes! Watch this space for more information.
For local news updates, sign up with Twitter and follow the twitter.com/#!/bobstep/nrvj news source list.
News reading assignment due Monday. (See Desire2Learn.)
In-class during the second week: You'll share the results of that weekend search with the class by becoming an online publisher: Sample Web page with a Dreamweaver exercise link.
Related: See this List of "newsworthiness elements" or "news values" -- the things traditional news editors think readers look for. Are they right? We'll talk about that. Meanwhile, watch for those themes in the stories you choose to read -- and as the semester goes along, emphasize them in the stories you write!