Week Six; Kennedy's Eulogy

Greetings, classmates!

Week six looks to be uneventful. Bereft of our Commander in Chief, professor Eisman, we occupied ourselves with an in-class assignment. I think the highlight of the class was when the TA introduced the activity as "Obama's Eulogy," and most of us got scared that Obama had died without us even noticing.

Remember there is no class on Thursday, but be sure to e-mail professor Eisman with activity 9.9 from the syllabus.

Stevia

To Do List

Speaker 2 article due TOMORROW (9/25) by 5:30

Read ch. 9 for Monday

Information about upcoming American Forum

:

AMERICAN FORUM ON OBAMA, MEDIA AND YOUNG PEOPLE, ONE YEAR LATER
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 13TH, 6:30 TO 8 P.M.,
KATZEN ARTS CENTER


Dear Colleagues:

We have a terrific group of panelists for our Oct. 13th American Forum on Obama, media and young people, one year later. Young people played an important role in voting and organizing for Obama through innovative media in 2008. In this American Forum we'll talk about how 18-to-24-year-olds view Obama and the issues facing the country, from the economy to health care--
and the role of social networking and media in reaching them.

The Forum will be held from 6:30 to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 13th, in the Abramson Recital Hall in the Katzen Arts Center, across the street near Ward Circle on Mass Ave.
Please tell your students they need to be there at 6:30 p.m. We will tape the program for WAMU from 7 to 8 p.m. for broadcast later that night,
and the doors will close before then. We have also invited other media coverage, including C-SPAN. This is a great topic and a great showcase for our students--so please
encourage them to attend. Thanks, as always, for your support. .

Student Questions --Also--Please encourage your students to get to the mikes and ask questions--AND to submit questions beforehand.
The email address for that is americanforum@american.edu.

.

Our panelists are:

• David Gregory, journalist and moderator of NBC's Meet the Press
• David Corn, Washington Bureau Chief for Mother Jones magazine and columnist for PoliticsDaily.com
• Jose Antonio Vargas, technology and innovations editor for Huffington Post
• Erin McPike, reporter for Congress Daily
• David Winston, Republican strategist and President of the Winston Group

I Adore...Week Four!

Monday, Sept. 14 – HOW TO WRITE NEWS I

How news content is written
What makes news—news? Well, there are several traditional ‘news values’ that help us know when a story is worth writing about, including:
-Timeliness of the incident. For example, once Oregon State beats Cincinnati this weekend at football (I’m crossing my fingers…), there will be a number of news stories written in the next 24 hours about their glorious victory.
-The impact/consequences. After the Beavers beat the Bearcats by a whopping 40 points, they will be ranked in the top 25 in the country! Not exactly surprising, but still news worthy.
-Prominence of people involved. Jaquizz Rogers, our 5’6’’ running back and former PAC-10 offensive player of the year is a national hero. Inevitably, everyone in the country will be reading about him after he destroys the Bearcats.
-Conflict. The Beaver’s will trounce them. Period. The only news story focusing on ‘conflict’ that could be written would be about the Bearcat’s players fighting over tissues to wipe away their tears.
-Unusual Nature. Professor Eisman gave the example that a ‘dog biting a man isn’t news, but a man biting a dog-NOW THAT’S NEWS!’
-Proximity of Readers. The Corvallis Gazette Times will cover different aspects of the game in at least three or four articles, whereas the Ney York Times might only cover the game in two.
-Interest or Novelty. These could include public service announcements about floods, storm warnings, etc.
In other words…News stories are written for: relevance, usefulness, and interest

Structures of News Stories
I: The News: Who?/What?/Where?/When?/Why?/How?
II: The secondary news; important details that were not included in the lead.
III: More information and evidence about the story
IV: Either quotes or context about the story
VI: Conclusion

Exercise on leads, collect Lincoln homework
Writers should develop an attractive lead. A lead could be: a summary, one side of a debate (followed by the other side of the debate later in the story), or an expert’s view of what happened.
The class proceeded to do an exercise on leads, and Professor Eisman collected our Lincoln homework.


Thursday Sept. 17 – HOW TO WRITE NEWS II

Grammar/News Quiz
We started class with a grammar/news Quiz. From now on, we should expect random news quizzes! To study, know all of the main, headline stories out of the on the Washington Post and CNN. A great way to stay caught up on the news is to set Google News as your homepage. It isn’t biased (like the Huffington Post, Politico, or the Drudge Report), and it presents links to several different articles.

Lessons learned from the Lincoln Assignment:
Then, Professor Eisman returned the Lincoln assignment. The students reviewed their scores, and asked Professor Eisman a number of questions. The lessons learned from the assignment were:
-When starting a new quote, it can be used within a pre-existing paragraph.
-say: 4 million, instead of four million. When describing a number in the millions, use the #. It is one of those weird grammar rules we have all come to love so much
- Attribute statistics-ALL THE TIME! Never trust a statistic without a source, and expect your audience to think the same way.
-Try to break up long quotes and insert a ‘said so-and-so,’ at natural breaks so it is easier to read. For example: “As soon as I looked up,” said Bearcat’s quarterback Tony Pike, “I was immediately smashed to the ground by the Beaver defenders.”

Quote Notes:
-Paraphrase long quotes.
-Use correct punctuation inside of quotation marks.
-Do no convict a criminal before his trial. (Unless he is OJ Simpson…)
-Follow AP Style (duh!)
-Do not back into a sentence with a prepositional phrase. Sadly, I do this all the time. Prepositions are used to indicate location. Examples are: with, on, in, at, etc. Writing a sentence like: “At the twenty yard line, he dropped the football” is worse than re-arranging it and writing it like this: “He dropped the football at the twenty yard line.” The second example is more active and direct, and therefore superior. You want active, direct sentences in news stories, so avoid beginning sentences with prepositional phrases.

Homework for next week: Read the three articles that Professor Eisman sent us via email to prepare for the guest speaker.

And that, my friends, is the week review. See you guys Monday!

I Adore...Week Four! the week in review

Monday, Sept. 14 – HOW TO WRITE NEWS I

How news content is written

What makes news—news? Well, there are several traditional ‘news values’ that help us know when a story is worth writing about, including:

-Timeliness of the incident. For example, once Oregon State beats Cincinnati this weekend at football (I’m crossing my fingers…), there will be a number of news stories written in the next 24 hours about their glorious victory.

-The impact/consequences. After the Beavers beat the Bearcats by a whopping 40 points, they will be ranked in the top 25 in the country! Not exactly surprising, but still news worthy.

-Prominence of people involved. Jaquizz Rogers, our 5’6’’ running back and former PAC-10 offensive player of the year is a national hero. Inevitably, everyone in the country will be reading about him after he destroys the Bearcats.

-Conflict. The Beaver’s will trounce them. Period. The only news story focusing on ‘conflict’ that could be written would be about the Bearcat’s players fighting over tissues to wipe away their tears.

-Unusual Nature. Professor Eisman gave the example that a ‘dog biting a man isn’t news, but a man biting a dog-NOW THAT’S NEWS!’

-Proximity of Readers. The Corvallis Gazette Times will cover different aspects of the game in at least three or four articles, whereas the Ney York Times might only cover the game in two.

-Interest or Novelty. These could include public service announcements about floods, storm warnings, etc.

In other words…News stories are written for: relevance, usefulness, and interest

Structures of News Stories

I: The News: Who?/What?/Where?/When?/Why?/How?

II: The secondary news; important details that were not included in the lead.

III: More information and evidence about the story

IV: Either quotes or context about the story

VI: Conclusion

Exercise on leads, collect Lincoln homework

Writers should develop an attractive lead. A lead could be: a summary, one side of a debate (followed by the other side of the debate later in the story), or an expert’s view of what happened.

The class proceeded to do an exercise on leads, and Professor Eisman collected our Lincoln homework.

Thursday Sept. 17 – HOW TO WRITE NEWS II

Grammar/News Quiz

We started class with a grammar/news Quiz. From now on, we should expect random news quizzes! To study, know all of the main, headline stories out of the on the Washington Post and CNN. A great way to stay caught up on the news is to set Google News as your homepage. It isn’t biased (like the Huffington Post, Politico, or the Drudge Report), and it presents links to several different articles.

Lessons learned from the Lincoln Assignment:

Then, Professor Eisman returned the Lincoln assignment. The students reviewed their scores, and asked Professor Eisman a number of questions. The lessons learned from the assignment were:

-When starting a new quote, it can be used within a pre-existing paragraph.

-say: 4 million, instead of four million. When describing a number in the millions, use the #. It is one of those weird grammar rules we have all come to love so much

- Attribute statistics-ALL THE TIME! Never trust a statistic without a source, and expect your audience to think the same way.

-Try to break up long quotes and insert a ‘said so-and-so,’ at natural breaks so it is easier to read. For example: “As soon as I looked up,” said Bearcat’s quarterback Tony Pike, “I was immediately smashed to the ground by the Beaver defenders.”

Quote Notes:

-Paraphrase long quotes.

-Use correct punctuation inside of quotation marks.

-Do no convict a criminal before his trial. (Unless he is OJ Simpson…)

-Follow AP Style (duh!)

-Do not back into a sentence with a prepositional phrase. Sadly, I do this all the time. Prepositions are used to indicate location. Examples are: with, on, in, at, etc. Writing a sentence like: “At the twenty yard line, he dropped the football” is worse than re-arranging it and writing it like this: “He dropped the football at the twenty yard line.” The second example is more active and direct, and therefore superior. You want active, direct sentences in news stories, so avoid beginning sentences with prepositional phrases.

Homework for next week: Read the three articles that Professor Eisman sent us via email to prepare for the guest speaker.

And that, my friends, is the week review. See you guys Monday!

Twitter and "off-the-record"

I thought I'd just start a quick discussion.

In a recent pre-interview with CNBC, the president called Kanye West as a "jackass" for his recent antics at the Video Music Awards.

ABC's Terry Moran, who was watching at the time, twittered that the President called Kanye a jackass. ABC later apologized for the reporter publicizing comments that were "off the record".

What do people think?



For further reading:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/reliable-source/2009/09/jackass-gate_what_obama_actual.html

ABC's apology:

http://www.politico.com/blogs/michaelcalderone/0909/ABCs_Moran_tweeted_OTR_Obama_swipe_at_Kanye.html?showall

Here's the TMZ audio:

http://www.tmz.com/2009/09/15/obama-calls-kanye-a-jackass/

Writing would be rewarding if it wasn't all carets and sticks.

Week #3, Sept. 10, 2009.

Class focused on how to get a story started quickly, how to end it punctually, and how to write it in AP style. There were four discussions this week:

1. Feedback on the High School interview
2. AP Basics Handout
3. Discussion and Submitted Romeo and Juliet Assignment
4. Emancipation Proclamation Story Assigned

1. Feedback on High School interview
Professor Eisman peppered the High School assignment with comments and returned the papers to students. As she handed out the pages, she made some suggestions for the class. I am going to extend some of her comments a little bit.

It is easier to create attention-grabbing writing from an interesting interview than from a bland interview. The stories she recalled were of experiences of white exclusivity, church school and Guam. I, who struggled to find an exciting anecdote with my subject, had never considered doing another interview to find something fresh. Better ingredients, better pizza.

In the news business, a writer has to get into the point. It's not an essay-- where an author can take a paragraph to set up some context. In news, the context is right now. The world that readers are living in. Readers are interested in what is happening. In week 2, we looked at some effective leads and learned a formula: (who) did (what), according to (who). A story should start like lighter fluid-- fast and with danger and a flash of light.

Don't end with an opinion. After a long struggle to write down only hard-news fact, it seems tempting to end it with a penetrating conclusion that cuts through to the gut truth. Sometimes it's a wonderful insight, but more often it just looks like the writer's judging the situation. That brings the reader's focus onto the author.

Always read the writing aloud. This is a key to editing. Sometimes, when you write quickly, you make mistakes that need to be caught. Reading aloud helps prevent jargon, unclear language, unintentional alliteration and subject/verb agreement errors. Read my lips... aloud.

Don't assume. If you're wrong, you misinform the public, hurt your credibility and make your source think you didn't listen. In the real world, you should call your source back and ask another couple questions. The only assumption you should make is that people with intimate knowledge of the event will be reading the story. And they will know... Assumptions aren't careless, they're criminal.

Use quotes sparingly. Good quotes are like chocolate chips; a few sprinkled into cookies makes them delicious, but you wouldn't want to bake an entire bar of chocolate. By using a different recipe, you can make delicious cookies that don't use chocolate chips.

2. AP Style Handout

In class, we got a big piece of paper with some pointers about AP style. This is a good resource for the upcoming style quizzes.

My top five lessons:
1. Internet is capitalized. So is the Web and CD-ROM, but not online, cyberspace or email.
2. Some descriptive job titles are not capitalized. ex. assistant coach, astronaut.
3. Write out percent. ex. Half of something is 50 percent.
4. Do not use parenthesis to set off a political party. ex. Rep. Joe Willson, R-S.C., shouted at the President of the United States. (not Joe Wilson (R-SC), like on TV).
5. Heroin was once a trademark. ???

3. Lessons from Romeo and Juliet leads
Professor Eisman led the class on a discussion of what should go in the lead of the story. It seems like there is a simple formula:

discovered dead bodies > grieving families
and
grieving families > yesterday's dead bodies

I wonder if professional newsrooms have a hierarchy like this for determining the layout of stories. Certainly writers organize within stories by the inverted pyramid method. Do editors know how many dead civilians is equal to a dead B-list celebrity? Does someone actually keep an A-list and a B-list? Who? How do you measure celebrity (outside of the ability to make news)? Do news editors make celebrities by giving them prominent coverage?

It seems like the key to a news item is to deliver the five W's as quickly as possible in the story. That means leads should try to hit two or three categories in the first sentence.


4. Abraham Lincoln

The entire class had a lively discussion about what the lead for a news story about Abraham Lincoln should be. This was really a discussion about what were the important facts in the story. Some people thought the "4 million slaves" the most important part of the story. Others made the case that "only in rebel/seceded states" should be in the first sentence.

Earlier I wrote "in news, the context is right now." I think its interesting that we were having so much difficulty deciding which word to use, or how portray the announcement. We trying to put the news together, without any real sense of the context. The news lead would be what an average Sept. 22, 1862 American didn't know on Sept. 21. The Honors students in the multi-media center had different ideas of what that was. I think that made it a lot harder.

Weekend Anchor/Speaker on Sept. 28

I promised you a great broadcast speaker for our Sept. 28 class. It is now confirmed: We will hear from Will Thomas of Fox5. Here is his bio.

AP "Sex Change" Section

The AP Stylebook is under attack! A recent piece in the Washington, D.C. City Paper's "Sexist" blog focuses on how the style fails to respect trans individuals in a truly inclusive manner and instead, in an arbitrary and heteronormative style.

I thought it was pretty interesting: http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/sexist/2009/09/08/how-the-ap-stylebook-fails-transgender-subjects/

So I think I'm doing this write (haha get it, it's a pun!)

First of all, I'd like to congratulate all of us on getting through our second week of classes.

Now, on to the notes for this week of class:

Watch for flabby writing!

Always get the Who, What, Where, When, Why and How in your story. Make sure you're telling a story as you're writing and avoid repeating words. Give lots of detail but don't keep saying the same thing over and over again, try to keep your focus.

We also learned an important lesson today when talking about the Senate. Everything you write could be published. Make sure your facts are correct and if you're not sure, don't say it. And on that note, make sure you get names right and permission to use those names. You can't give attribution if you don't have permission to and your source could get in serious trouble if you reveal them without their knowledge.

Remember, it's Kleenex, Xerox, and Metro but don't make up verbs like Xeroxing. As a rule you should probably just say copying instead of Xeroxing and tissue instead of Kleenex.

Interviewing was a big part of this week in class so I attempted to get all of the notes for it. If I'm missing anything, let me know.

1. Get the name and background of the person you're interviewing
2. Decide the type of interview you'd like to do
3. Get your background and deep research done
4. Contact the person you'd like to interview (or the person responsible for handling their schedule)
5. Identify yourself, add context to what you're doing, ask for a good time to do the interview.
6. Make sure to let the interviewee know if you'll be bringing a crew and get permission to record the conversation if you'd like.
7. Have the interview. Make sure it's a quiet place where you can get all your questions asked without distractions. Don't do an interview over a meal. Especially at Guapo's apparently. You don't want to be chewing and cutting food while trying to ask questions.
8. Be nice to the person, make them feel comfortable telling you things.
9. Ask your questions. Get them to tell you a story, don't just always ask yes or no questions. Get facts and emotions.
10. Be sure to ask, "How can I follow up?" Make sure they're going to be available within the next few weeks so if you have additional questions, you can get a hold of them.

Today, we learned the horrific results of our latest grammar quizzes. The grades won't count, so that's good. But props to Tasha for doing really well! We also got back our letter rewrites, nice job to Shannon and Taylor for being clear and concise. We saw that you don't need to have all the extra fluff in a letter to sound important. The goal is to just get the information out there.

On to the sibling stories! Tight vingettes were the best. It's good to get the details. Some of the best stories were the ones with quotes. But don't use the quotes just for the information. Use them for the emotional pause and to give voice to your subject.

So for homework we all read the fabulous William Zinsser chapter on leads. I know sarcasm doesn't travel well over the internet, but I'm not a fan of Zinsser. I do always enjoy his examples though, they definitely help in getting perspective on things. And we saw more examples of leads today and I've tried to get the basic gist of best parts of them.

1. The quick lead is usally subject, verb, object, context, attribution. Then support the lead, with some combination of context, then quote.
2. We saw with a broadcast one that attribution often comes first.
3. A feature lead, like the CNN one we saw, often uses first person to add a human aspect to the lead.
4. Don't misuse first person though, it takes you a long time in reporting to be able to even use first person.
5. Don't use cliches, but that's something we've been learning as we go.
6. Don't write press releases like FEMA did. Get the information out and be done with it.

So there's our second week of classes. Everybody have a fabulous labor day weekend and I hope you comment on this post and let me know how I did!

--Amy

AP Stylebook link

As promised ...

http://www.aladin.wrlc.org/Z-WEB/Aladin?req=db&key=WRL06474AU