JEM 200 - Introduction to News Writing

Weekly lecture schedule

Instructor:
Jim Stovall
School of Journalism and Electronic Media
333 Communications UEB
974-5109
stovall@utk.edu

Web site: http://www.jprof.com/courses/jem200/jem200.html

Spring 2010: Thursday, 5:05 to 6:20 p.m., 416 Daughtry Engineering

This weekly lecture section supplements the instruction and practice in news writing that you will receive in your lab section. The lecture will give you information that you will need to be successful in your writing lab.

Unless you have had professional experience of some kind, the kind of writing that you will learn and practice in this course is different from anything that you have been asked to do before. Media writing means writing in a professional environment and with professional standards. It means writing for an audience. It means meeting deadlines. We will explain many of these requirements and concepts in the lecture, and you will be expected to apply them in your work in your writing sections.

In order to be successful in this course, you will need to have consistent online access. In addition, you should have access to a digital audio recorder and a digital camera, and you should be comfortable and confident in taking pictures from the camera and uploading them to web sites or servers.

Grades

Thirty percent of the grade for JEM200 will come from this lecture section. (The other 70 percent will come from your work in your writing section.) We will usually begin the lecture with a news quiz, which helps us record your attendance and which will contribute to the 30 percent of your grade. There will be two exams covering the lecture and text material during the semester. Each will count about 10 percent of the grade.

Attendance

You are expected to attend all lectures, and you are expected to be on time. (Those who arrive after the news quiz will not be counted as present; those who leave the lecture early will not be counted as present and will be penalized for academic dishonesty.) If you miss three lectures, we will assume that you have dropped the course.

Individual section instructors will set attendance policies for their labs. In general, however, they will adhere to the following principle: attendance in this course is mandatory, not optional.

Academic honesty

University policies regarding honesty can be found in Hilltopics, the official student handbook. You can download this handbook as a PDF file at this page. Your rights and responsibilities are explained in detail. In all JEM 200 labs plagiarism, misrepresentation or any form of cheating is a serious offense. In the lecture section, a minimum penalty would be a failing grade on a quiz. Each lab instructor will explain lab rules.

Texts

James Glen Stovall, Writing for the Mass Media (Seventh edition), 2009.
AP Stylebook and Libel Manual

How things work

Each section of JEM 200 operates under the direction of the section instructor. Jim Stovall, the instructor for the lecture section, is the coordinator for the course. As such, he helps assure that all sections of the course are following the same track and that all students are getting basically the same experience. He is not a czar, however. Section instructors have the final word on policies and grading for their sections.

Schedule (tentative)

We will follow the schedule below as a general outline for the course but will also remain flexible about the topics we cover. Occasionally, there will be a guest speaker who may not talk directly about the topic on the schedule. Students are responsible for lecture notes for each week. News quiz questions can usually be found at the end of each set of lecture notes.

Week 1: Introduction

Reading: Writing for the Mass Media, chapters 1, 2 and 3

The following are concepts to understand about the web as students begin to use it for journalism:

• Capacity The web can handle more material than either print or broadcast.
• Flexibility The web is a platform for a variety of forms - text, audio, photos, audio and video - and journalists must decide what form to use to present their information.
• Immediacy The web is an immediate medium; information can be posted immediately, even as events are in progress, and journalists must learn how to do this.
• Permanence Nothing on the web need be lost, and everything that is on the web is retrievable and easily duplicated.
• Interactivity Readers, users, and other journalists can contribute to the coverage of a topic or event; journalists should learn to understand and manage interactivity.
• Linkage Journalists tap the power of the web when they learn how to link their content to other information.
• Mobility Cellphones and hand-held devices are the medium of choice for many news consumers; journalists who want to communicat with them have to understand the nature of this mobility.
  
  Lecture notes

Week 2: Beginning writing

Reading: Writing for the Mass Media, chapters 4 and 12

• Nature of news News is about matching information to audience. On the web, this connection becomes critically important.
• Writing journalistically Writing in journalism exhibits four characteristics: accuracy, clarity, precision and efficiency. Accuracy remains the chief goal of the journalist. The writer must master all four characteristics in writing for the web.
• Ethics and law Journalism is judged by the process by which it is produced, not just by its outcome. Ethical behavior - and adhering to the ethics of the profession - is vital to that process. In this country, journalists operate free of many, though not all, restraints on expression.
  
  Lecture notes
  

Weeks 3-4: Reporting

• Information and sources Journalists have to find out basic information about every even or topic they cover: who, what, when, where, why and how. They have three types of sources from which to draw this information: personal (or people), stored, and observational.
• Interviewing Effective interviewers find the right people to talk with, gain their cooperation and get information efficiently. They do this through research, planning and asking the right question. They listen carefully. They use follow-up questions to increase their understanding of the information.
  
• Quotes and attribution Direct quotations are the exact words that a source says. Paraphrasing is when the writer uses his or her own words to say what the source says. Journalists must become experts in relating to readers what other people have said. Attribution is a necessary of the verification process of journalism.
• Being there - on-the-scene reporting Being a good observer grows from planning and practice. In the age of the web, it also means begin able to describe what you are seeing in clear, coherent language that can be posted immediately after (or sometimes during) the event.
  
  Lecture notes (Week 3)
  Lecture notes (Week 4)
  

Week 5 - Writing to be read: Nutshell structure

Reading: Writing for the Mass Media, chapters 7 and 8

• The nutshell structure This story structure uses a headline, summary, lead paragraph, three bullet points and links. Its design allows students to think about how to put news and information onto a web site quickly.
• Headlines Headlines are the most important words you?ll write for the web. Nothing substitutes or makes up for a bad headline - not a good lead, not good pictures and not good design. Search engine optimization (SEO) makes headlines easier for search engines to pick them up and use them.
• Summaries, leads and lists Summaries are general descriptions of an entire article, event or news story. They can vary in length depending on the style of the news web site. Lead paragraphs are one sentence and tell the most important information in the story. A bulleted list is a sent of complete, compact sentences that tell the reader three things about the story.
  
  Lecture notes
  
  Additional reading
  • Writing headlines for the web
  • Summaries
  • Lists
  

Week 6: Writing to be read: Technology (HTML, links, CMS, CSS)

• Links Links direct the reader to other information about the subject on the web. Good links indicate what the reader will find if he or she clicks on that link.
• HTML tags and other tech Knowledge of a few basic HTML tags can make an extraordinary difference in the way journalists write for the web and in how that writing is presented to the reader. Content management sysems are the software engines that control the content of many news web sites. Knowledge of basic HTML page structure and web site structure gives the journalist additional understanding of how web sites work.
  
  Lecture notes
  
  Additional reading
  • The art of linking
  • Learning HTML tags
  

Week 7 - Writing to be read: Inverted pyramid, quotations, attribution

Reading: Writing for the Mass Media, chapters 5 and 6

• The inverted pyramid structure The basic news story structure, the inverted pyramid, requires the writer to select and tell the most important information in the first paragraph (the lead paragraph). The second paragraph expands on something in the lead.
• Feature stories Feature stories use many techniques to bring to the reader an indepth examination of a subject, event or person. Feature writing is always based on thorough reporting.
  
  Lecture notes

Week 8 - Test 1

Weeks 9 - Photojournalism: Basics

• Taking photos Photojournalism means capturing drama, action, expression and the visually unusual with a camera. Good photos are the result of careful planning, knowledge of the equipment and a sensitivity to the environment and people that are being photographed.
• Cutlines and captions The words accompanying a picture are as important as the pictures themselves. Very few, if any, pictures explain themselves. Photographers must get the information necessary to write good cutlines and captions and must know the appropriate forms and conventions of this writing.
  
  Lecture notes
  
  Additional reading
  ? Introduction to photojournalism (first of JPROF series)
  ? Rob Heller's Guide to Making Strong Photographs
  

Week 10 - 12 - Writing to be heard: Principles of writing for audio

• Principles of writing for audio Writing for audio and video is writing that is read aloud. This writing differs in some important ways from writing that is meant to be read silently. Still, the basic characteristics of journalistic writing - accuracy, clarity, precision and efficiency - muist be evident in the writing.
• The audio news story Traditional formats for audio news stories require adherence to traditional journalistic standards.
• Recording and editing audio The web has freed audio from the bounds of radio. Now journalists are free to experiment with new formats as well as old ones. Still, sound quality and other factors about recording and editing audio must be observed.
• Audio slide shows Audio slides shows are a marriage of pictures and a journalistic form that has become popular on many web sites. Selecting and sequencing photos and writing the script for the show are processes that need to be mastered by student journalists.
• Writing for video As with audio, writing for video means writing that will be heard rather than read. The writing must conform to the standards of good video journalism. The writing must also integrate any video that may be a part of the story. And as with audio, video journalism is no longer confine to television.
  
  Lecture notes (Week 10)
  Lecture notes (Week 11)
  Lecture notes (Week 12)

Weeks 13 - 14: Building your audience

• Blogs, Twitter, social networks and the new face of journalism Journalists are now responsible, at least in part, for finding the audience for their work. Weblogs, Twitter and social networks - beginning with Facebook - are vital parts of this process. Journalists must build their audience by establishing their brand.
  
  Lecture notes (Week 13)
  Lecture notes (Week 14)
  
  Additional reading
  ? Writing for Twitter: good journalism in 140 characters
  

Week 15 - Test 2

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