Principles of Journalism 1/24/2014

1. Principles of Journalism 1/24/2014 Recitation Section: 150 Blog Expectations/What Makes a Good Source/Newspaper Assignment

2. What do you care about? • Local News? • Sports? • Entertainment? • Music? • International News?

3. 1st Blog Post • Due Monday, January 27, 2014 at 5:00 p.m. • Must be 500 – 600 words. • Post it to your own blog • I’ll make a post on the class blog where you must submit a link to your blog post. • PICK A THEME and Expand.

4. What’s required? • Word Count must be met. • Pay careful attention to grammar and syntax. • You must have one credible source. • Meaning you’ll have to conduct an interview • You must provide me their contact information • Email, phone number, website, etc. • simple background research to make an informed argument on the subject (this is not just an opinion piece — no spew allowed!)

5. What makes a good source • Primary sources are the original sources of information recorded at the time an event occurred. • First-hand accounts of events like JOURNALISM! • Data collected for scientific studies • Historical documents • Artifacts • What else?

6. What makes a good source? • Secondary sources of information are derived from primary sources • Summaries of primary sources • Analyses or interpretations of primary sources • Why use Secondary Sources? • To get expert opinions in order to evaluate what really happened. • To gain insight by examining the same event from different perspectives. • To form your own opinion. • To save time by reading information collected from a number of different sources.

7. What about Journalistic Sources? • People who are responsible for decisions and actions. • People who have to take the consequences. • Who who know something (EXPERTS). • Formalities (laws, rules, agreements) • Other media • Your own observations and experiences

8. A quick introduction to interviewing. • Who? • What? • When? • Where? • How? • Why? • Be honest • Be available • Be accurate • Use open ended questions. The best quotes come from people that are comfortable and are free to speak their minds.

9. Interviewing continued. • Record the conversation • Be open and honest about it. • Use your cellphone, most operating systems have a voice recorder now. • Take good notes • Don’t be afraid! Committing acts of Journalism sometimes requires varying degrees of bravery!

10. How you should write it. • Journalists don’t want their stories told from the beginning of a news event. • They focus on the end result, and then may go back to the beginning. • They like giving away the ending. • They are more interested in the outcome. • News writing is about the only form of writing in which you start with the climax.

11. The Inverted Pyramid • Ledes are mini-inverted pyramids as well. • You analyzed the who-what-when-where elements • Find the elements that are the most important or compelling. • You assign value to a few facts • In the Inverted Pyramid, you will have to weigh the news value of whole sentences and paragraphs. • The rest of the story should support and elaborate on the lede and also provide the information that didn’t make the cut up top. • These first few sentences, or the first paragraph, are usually 40-50 words.

13. Let’s Practice • Let’s watch this clip • You are an observer to a very unique situation. • What’s important about this interaction? • How would you report on this or write a lede? • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAaWvVFERVA

14. Now what if you could interview them both after? • What questions would you ask King Arthur • What about the Peasant?

15. Assignment for next week • Newspaper Assignment: Due Friday, January 31 @ 5:00 p.m. • Read through an entire issue (review it all – you don’t have to read every article word for word) of a daily newspaper and compare its content and coverage to the same newspaper’s online site. 500-600 words. 15% of recitation grade. Also, what was your experience reading a Newspaper from cover to cover.