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