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General Information | Grading | Class blog | Week-by-week | Useful links | Viking Code | Berry COM Job Bank

The design of this course reflects my experience in journalism, mostly in print and online. I have been a writer, reporter, photographer and editor. Before earning a doctorate and getting into full-time teaching, I was an editor and reporter covering Internet-related businesses and technologies. Why bring that up? Because my goal is to make this course as real-world as possible. We'll be looking at real issues, real problems and real solutions.

During our time together, I plan to treat you as fellow professional journalists acquiring new skills. I expect you to respond in kind by the quality of your assignments, your ability to meet deadlines, and with active participation, impeccable class attendance and perfect punctuality. Since you already have acquired news writing skills as prerequisites for this course, our relationship is roughly analogous to orienting and training a reporter for the copy desk.

Journalism and the roles of journalists continue to evolve, particularly with the continuing evolution in digital, the advent of tablets and the ubiquity of smartphones. This course will introduce you to what is changing in editing and what is not. We will be discussing the fundamentals of editing that have been vital to newswork for generations. We also will be looking at how new technologies and new challenges are affecting journalism.

Several themes will guide our explorations, including:

· Precision. If the information is not truthful and accurate, it's not good journalism. Our job as reporters and writers is to ensure the accuracy of everything we do and publish.
· Basics. No matter how high-tech things get, good reporting requires the consistent, skilled application of fundamentals.
· Imagination. Great reporting and writing requires creativity and flexible thinking.
· Convergence. The walls have come down within and between media. We need to be able to operate in multiple domains, and to think for a mobile, geomapped, hyperlocal and increasingly personalized future. We need to think of our stories across several media, and to take advantage of each of those media.
· Critical thinking. In journalism as in life, you will find that not every question has a clear, unambiguous answer, if it has an answer at all. Expect to be challenged to think on your feet, to analyze ambiguous information, to find answers on your own, and to evaluate the credibility and utility of various sources of information.
· Industry. The first rule of good reporting: Get out of your chair. Leave the newsroom. Hit the streets. Talk to people. Get the documents.

In this course, it is critical that we communicate well. If there is anything you do not understand, please ask about it immediately. Do not be shy; do not wait, hoping it will all become clear; do not assume that you are the only one who does not get the material. There are no dumb questions. OK, there are, but better to ask anyway.

"Eloquence is an art of saying things in such a way that those to whom we speak may listen to them without pain and with pleasure; that they feel themselves interested, so that self-love leads them more willingly to reflection upon it." --Blaise Pascal, 1657

COM 250 Course Description: Basic reporting and writing for multiple media platforms. Includes an introduction to journalism ethics. Laboratory included.

Course Purpose & Objectives: To introduce students to the fundamentals of news reporting, journalistic writing, basic news judgment and digital publishing. To increase students’ knowledge of local, national and international news and events. To learn basic journalistic skills, such as information gathering, interviewing, source development, ethics and law.

Reading assignments are identified in the week-by-week schedule.

What you will need (required)

What you may want (not required, but recommended)

Class format

This course is hands-on. In the classroom and in the lab we will attempt to simulate a newsroom environment. Students will gather information, check facts, develop sources, use news judgment and write on deadline. We will have lots of small assignments, such as quizzes, in-class exercises and activities, and practice with elements of story development and publishing. In terms of content, we will generally follow the organization of the textbook, Writing & Editing for Digital Media, 3rd edition.

Policies

Assignment rules

While working in class, these parameters apply:

Deadlines

How your grade will be computed:

your final grade, add up your point totals, apply the appropriate percentages, then refer to this +/- grading chart:

It is not just policy, it is foundational to the academic environment we enjoy and in which scholarship thrives. It is in force in this classroom and during all lab sessions. For the complete Viking Code, please consult the student handbook. In short, each student is “expected to recognize constituted authority, to abide by the ordinary rules of good conduct, to be truthful, to respect the rights of others.” The College’s mission, in part, commits to a community of integrity and justice. During an era when ethics are sometimes suspect, there seems no higher goal toward which students ought to strive than that of personal honor.

If you have special needs of any kind, including learning disabilities and/or medications, please let me know. Let us discuss it and work together to overcome. In addition, “students with disabilities who believe that they may need accommodation in this course are encouraged to contact the Academic Support Center in Memorial Library as soon as possible to ensure that such accommodations are implemented in a timely fashion.” – Academic Support Center. 

• The best place to find journalism jobs, internships, fellowships and scholarships: The Berry COM job bank
• Sources of minority internships and fellowships are available at the National Association of Black Journalists, Asian American Journalists Association, National Association of Hispanic Journalists and Native American Journalists Association sites. Likewise, the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association has a jobs board at its site.

• The Exhibits Collection of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Annenberg Foundation is a growing file of interesting material that includes Math in Everyday Life and a separate exhibit on Statistics, which you can find via the site's pull-down search menu. Topics in the stats exhibit include polls and polling, and the use of statistics in an election campaign, random sampling, margin of error, confidence in polling, effect of polls on elections.
• Some other sites, compiled by Deborah Potter and forwarded by Phil Meyer, are the free tools at Newsengin, which include a cost-of-living calculator and percent-change calculator; Statistics Every Writer Should Know, explaining percentages, per capita, margin of error, etc.; and a related page, Finding Data on the Internet -- A Journalist's Guide.
• The jumping-off site for a wide range of calculation engines is the Calculators On-Line Center.
• Speaking of calculators, here's one that converts pounds to grams, decimals to fractions, acres to square miles and other common journalism math conversion issues. Math.com has basic arithmetic to advanced calculus covered in this education site, along with some online calculators and a useful glossary.

Strunk and White without E.B. White. This site offers Will Strunk's The Elements of Style in the original.

Jack Lynch's Grammar and Style Notes page.

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