THE BASICS JOU/ENG 113 BASIC NEWS WRITING AND REPORTING Spring 2013 Instructor: David Swartzlander Location:

130 Gaylord Hall Instructor's office: 129 Gaylord Hall Office phone: 402-826-8269 Home phone: 402-643-5135 Instructor's e-mail address: david.swartzlander@doane.edu Instructors Twitter account: @dswartzlander Online course address: https://sites.google.com/a/doane.edu/swartz-says/ Office Hours: MW: 9-11 a.m., 2-4 p.m. Or by appointment No office hours on Tuesday, Thursday or Friday. I teach most of the day on Tuesday and Thursday and Friday is reserved for story conferences. COURSE DESCRIPTION AND GOALS This course is designed to teach students with little or no practical journalism experience the process of reporting and writing news, primarily for print and online. It will introduce you to the way reporters do their jobs - how they think, act and produce newsworthy stories. You will learn by reading, studying, questioning, discussing and practicing the craft of journalism. You will learn how to report, interview, write and revise news stories - and become a more discerning consumer of news. This course is a prerequisite for JOU 213, Beat Reporting; JOU 135, Broadcast Journalism Writing; JOU 315, The Electronic Journalism Program and JOU 360, Multiplatform Journalism. Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to: 1. Prepare for and conduct interviews to gather facts for news and feature stories. 2. Take notes effectively. 3. Organize facts and quotes into different story structures. 4. Create effective ledes that accurately summarize the story and attract the reader. 5. Compose stories on a computer. 6. Explain the basic legal rights of and constraints on the free press, including the laws of libel and privacy, the First Amendment, Freedom of Information Act and Sunshine laws. 7. Recognize and explain wordiness, redundancy, jargon, slang, euphemisms and editorializing in the written word and how to avoid such problems. 8. Recognize and explain the differences in style and organization between journalistic writing and academic writing.

9. Understand and explain the importance of reporting on diverse populations and writing for diverse readers. 10. Recognize and identify fundamental news values. 11. Use reference tools such as a dictionary, directory, thesaurus, stylebook, atlas and reference databases. 12. Explain the major principles of journalistic ethics as enunciated by professional news organizations. 13. Find stories that impact communities. 14. Develop visual elements that complement news stories, including shooting photographs. 15. Understand and explain the importance of perspective in stories. 16. Articulate how journalism has played a role in the history and culture of the United States. 17. Know and articulate how newsrooms work. 18. Produce news for online consumption, including providing links in stories. 19. Write short, compelling pieces of information using a Twitter account. TEXTBOOKS AND SUPPLIES Required textbooks and other reading materials: "Inside Reporting" by Tim Harrower, 2013, McGraw Hill. "The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual. Always bring your stylebook to class Required supplies: At least one notebook and two pens. You should always carry two pens in case one runs out of ink. A camera or a cell phone capable of shooting photos. Recommended: A dictionary and thesaurus Access to the Lincoln Journal Star or Omaha World-Herald, both the newspapers and the online news sites, to see how reporters write stories and to learn about and understand current events. An audio recorder. A Writers Resource for those who need help with the English language and grammar. ATTENDANCE POLICIES Attendance is mandatory because it is difficult to learn how to report and write news without classroom instruction. If you miss a class, you should e-mail me why you missed it. You will be responsible for any missed classes or assignments. Students may not make up quizzes or assignments missed for tardiness or unexcused absences. You are responsible for all material covered or assigned during classes. When absent, please contact a fellow student to find out what was missed or to get notes. Attendance also is required at the weekly news meeting at 4 p.m. Mondays in Gaylord 213. You are to attend the brainstorming session to help the Owl editors determine what stories to cover. Please bring story ideas that the entire staff can discuss.

MENTORS AND TUTORS You have been assigned a mentor from the Owl or Doaneline staff who will help get you started, answer questions and help with problems. To see the list of mentors, go to swartz-says.doane.edu. Mentors also can help you become part of the newspaper staff. They will not write stories for you, but can answer questions, give you tips on writing and reporting and show you how to improve your stories. In addition, tutors for this class are available. Contact Student Support Services for the list of tutors. ONLINE COURSE The syllabus and other materials for this class are included in the course website. Your grade can be found on Blackboard at bb2.doane.edu. REQUIREMENTS You must: Write a minimum of 13 stories. Stories should be of interest to Doane students, faculty and staff and must include at least three sources. All stories must include links to relevant Web sites. The 13 stories are basic news stories that all rookie reporters are expected to be able to handle. In professional newsrooms, if youre assigned a story, you cannot just forget about it or fail to hand it in. If the original story falls through, reporters are expected to find another story in its stead. SEE IMPORTANT NOTE AT THE END OF SYLLABUS ABOUT YOUR GRADE. Submit five newsworthy, usable photos. Most reporters today are expected to at least shoot a photo to accompany the story. Open a Twitter account and tweet at least five newsworthy items during the semester. News happens in an instant. When it does, it should be reported. With Twitter, you can report it instantly. Complete current events quizzes. Read a daily newspaper, watch at least one television news program a day and spend some time reading news online. Reporters must be well versed in current events. Successfully complete an Associated Press Stylebook project and quizzes. Reporters dont memorize the stylebook, but they know how to use it. Complete grammar quizzes. Grammar matters in good writing. Complete mini-quizzes on chapters in the textbook. You should be able to tell me what the main points of the reading are. Attend the weekly news planning sessions. You should come prepared with story ideas that you would like to write and that you think the newspaper, the news Web site or the magazine should publish. Be prepared to report and write stories. Attendance will be taken. Successfully complete a midterm and final examination. For grading purposes, students must be assessed on their accumulation of knowledge. Assemble an online portfolio of your published stories. If you wish a career in Journalism and Media, youll have to develop a portfolio. I'll run this class as if it were a real newsroom. I am the city editor; you are the

reporters. We can have strong opinions and disagreements as long as they're expressed with respect for others' views. Reporters often challenge city editors and this class should be no different. Conversely, expect your colleagues and me to challenge you. You must be able to take and dish out constructive criticism. DEADLINES Deadlines must be met. I am impatient with excuses . Deadlines are religiously kept in professional newsrooms because failure to meet deadline means extra work for everyone. Stories are due as soon as possible. If reporting on an event, the story is due within three hours of the events conclusion, and sent to me and the Owl or Doaneline as soon as its completed. If the event contains breaking news, the multimedia coordinator, his assistants or an Owl editor should be contacted immediately. Deadline for feature stories will be noon Monday. Late assignments will receive a 0 for a grade but you should submit an assignment even if its late. While you may receive a 0 for a late assignment, you can rewrite the late assignment for a better score. Assignments are late if submitted anytime after deadline. I will decide whether you missed deadline. Stories not submitted to me by deadline, even if they have been submitted to newspaper or online editors, will be counted as late. Only on rare occasions will the deadline be pushed back. Students will face no penalty if they have a legitimate college-excused absence, such as a medical excuse, that can be documented. Being unable to contact a source is not a legitimate excuse. Call the source at home. Find another source. Get your work done. Do not wait until the last minute. If you absolutely must talk to a source, send the story before deadline with a note that youre still trying to contact the source. Once you have the information needed from that source, send it with a note telling the editor where the information should be placed in the story. Any request for a deadline extension must be sent in writing to me. I will not grant a deadline extension for grading purposes if you fail to notify me in writing with an extension request. SUBMISSION OF STORIES Submit stories to me using email. All emailed stories should be written on Microsoft Word software. I am not responsible for stories lost because of system failures in your computer, the email network or in my computer. Because the editors of the Owl or Doane Line, at their discretion, might publish your story, you must send a copy of your news story to the Owl and Doaneline or I will automatically lower your grade by one letter. All stories must begin with a slug, the storys identification. The slug should look

like this: student's last name/date story is due/story assignment/any art -photograph, graph, chart, drawing, etc. For example: Swartzlander/Feb. 4/obit/photo (student's last name/date story is due/story assignment/any art available) . Please put these slugs at the top of your story and in the subject box of the email. Failure to adequately slug a story will cost you a letter grade for the first offense; a score of zero for the second. This is how professional journalists and media pros operate. GRADING POLICY Stories are graded on a 30-point scale. WARNING: A factual error, such as misspelling someone's name, will result in an automatic five-point deduction from your score. A gross special error, such as a potentially libelous statement, plagiarism, fabrication, etc., will result in an automatic F for a story and possible further sanctions. Reporters must get the facts right. The first rule of journalism is to spell names correctly. I reserve the right to deduct points for accuracy errors if I discover an error after Ive already graded the story. Students are required to set up weekly conferences with me to review stories. The conferences will take about 15 minutes/story. You may sign up for a time that fits your schedule. I will post a schedule each week on my door or send you a calendar of available times. If all of the times are taken, please leave a comment as to the best time available for you. I will try to arrange it. The conferences are required, as they will provide immediate feedback about your reporting and writing. All story conferences will be in the J-Lab. Feel free to take notes during the conferences. Failure to attend a conference will result in a 10-point deduction on your story. Unless you have a documented excuse, I will not re-schedule conferences. Your semester grade will be computed from the required stories; photos; tweets; AP project and tests; current events, grammar and chapter quizzes; the midterm and final exams and your portfolio. You can earn a total of 1,300 points, not counting extra credit work or any assigned homework. The point breakdown is: Stories: 420 points or 32 percent. Midterm: 100 points or 8 percent. Photos: 50 points or 4 percent Tweets: 50 points or 4 percent AP project and tests: 100 points or 8 percent. Grammar quizzes: 100 points or 8 percent. Current events quizzes: 100 points or 8 percent. Chapter quizzes: 100 points or 8 percent.

Portfolio: 100 points or 8 percent. Final: 180 points or 14 percent. Total: 1,300 points 1,080-1,200 = A 960-1,079 = B 840-959 = C 720-839 = D 719 or less = F I do not give + or - grades. Students must adhere to professional standards, meet deadlines and follow rules of punctuation, grammar, spelling and style. Be forewarned. I am a tough grader. Strive for high-quality work. Your stories will be graded using a rubric, a formalized procedure that will help me be more objective in determining your grade. The following is an example of how the rubric will look: JOU 113, Basic News Writing and Reporting Obituary Assignment 1 Name: Scoring Criteria Skillful :5 points Submitted: Good: Adequat 4 e: 3 points points Some flaws: 2 points Many flaws: 1 point Severe proble m: 0 points

Lede: focused, compelling, draws reader into story, concise yet comprehensive Content and accuracy: Accurate, logical, timely, relevant, researched Attribution: Enough sources; sources identified correctly; relevant, diverse sources

Organization: Impact before details, update before background; coherent structure Sentence Fluency: active voice, coherent, past tense; good sentence flow AP Style/Grammar/Lin ks

WRITING ASSIGNMENTS Your reporting and writing should be appropriate for publishing in a professional newspaper, magazine or online news site. The emphasis is on quality stories, not how long you write. Youll want to tell your story concisely and accurately using multiple sources. The goal is to write a comprehensive story in as short a space as possible. Though concise, your stories should contain details to tell the reader the who, what, where, when, why, how and so what of a story. You will be penalized for omitting important facts. Stories must follow Associated Press style and contain correct English. Get to know intimately your AP Stylebook. Errors of spelling, punctuation, grammar and style will result in the loss of points and a lower grade. Typos are considered spelling errors. Use a dictionary. The 13 stories due are: An obituary. A rewrite of a press release. Call Doane's Office of Communications and Marketing or Student Activities Council to see whether they have press releases that you can rewrite. Please try to get a press release of an event that will happen in the future, not something that already happened, so that your rewrite is timely for use in the newspaper or online. Do NOT go to the two offices mentioned without calling first. A speech story. Attend a speech or news conference and write a news story about the event. Also, a great opportunity to tweet news. A meeting story. Attend a meeting and write a news story about the event.

Again, a good option for tweeting news. A localization. Find a national angle - gasoline prices, for example - and localize it by asking Doane students, faculty and staff what they think about the issue or what they intend to do about it. A sports story. Attend a Doane sporting event and write about it. Or write an advance about the next game, what to look for, how Doane will approach its opponent, whether the coach is happy with the teams play and/or how a significant member of a team is preparing for the upcoming game. Here is another excellent chance to tweet news. A crime story, including accidents, disasters, fires and courts. Go to the scene, get records of crimes or accidents or attend a court proceeding and write a news story. Or develop a feature story about crime. Questions could include: What crimes are Doane students committing? What percentage of Crete criminal activity is related to Doane? What students, faculty or administrators have been cited for criminal behavior? What was the disposition of their cases? Is there a location on campus or in the community where criminal activity is often found? What disciplinary measures do students face when convicted of a crime or when brought before the disciplinary councils? Note: This will involve some extra work. It cannot be done overnight. Plan. Make contacts early. Don't procrastinate. Yet another perfect story to tweet news. A multicultural/gender awareness story. Get information about a minority cultural group on campus or in Crete and write a story about the cultural challenges the group or its members experience. Or, get information and write about issues or problems facing the opposite sex or regarding sexual preference issues. The story must be supported by adequate amounts of research and it must be in good taste. A personality profile. Find a newsworthy person on campus to write about what makes that person tick. A feature story. This story that should entertain and inform. It should let the actions and comments of people carry the story. It should contain human interest. An online story with at least one electronic element that you produce (photo, video, audio, etc.). Generally, this involves breaking news, written on deadline. For example, filing a story about Saturdays basketball game immediately after the game for publication on Doaneline. This story, along with the appropriate electronic element, should be sent to The Doaneline multimedia coordinator at doaneline@doane.edu and me. One general assignment story. An in-depth story. You select a topic or issue of significant interest to college students. Interview faculty, staff, students and community leaders or townspeople about their views. It could be an investigative story or an enthralling feature. Your story should have at least six sources. Get anecdotal information to bring the topic to life. Include national, local, state and/or Doane statistics where available. Package it into a powerful and moving story. Note: Avoid issues in which you are involved. For

example, the president of an organization should not write about that group. This assignment is the most extensive of all so it will be graded on a 60-point scale. Don't procrastinate. After the first story, the assignments can be completed in any order. The first story is an obituary about your instructor. The stories above are listed from the simplest to the most complex stories. In class, well discuss how to approach each story. If you wish, you may submit two ledes on any story. Please label one of the two versions "experimental." I'll grade both, but record only the higher of the two grades. AP STYLEBOOK PROJECT Students will be placed in teams. Each team will get a list of the AP Stylebook entries applicable to categories. The categories are: a. Business and composition titles b. Crime and courts c. Education d. Geography e. History f. Medicine and science g. Miscellaneous h. Religion i. Race, gender, ethnicity and disability j. Politics and government k. Technology l. Military From the list of entries for your category, you choose 10 that you think are the most important for you and your classmates to know. Learn the rules well enough to teach your classmates. For each of the 10 entries, write a multiple-choice quiz question. For example: Yom Kippur begins at sundown a. Oct. 9 b. October 9 c. October 9th d. Oct. 9th Email your quiz questions to me. I will compile your 10 quiz questions with those of your classmates to develop two take-home AP quizzes you will take at midterm and at the end of the semester. In addition, choose one quiz question and devise a creative way to demonstrate the rule to the rest of the class. Justify the rules significance while explaining its subtleties. You may use music, movies, photos, literature, dance, props or humor. The idea is to have fun. As a part of class, well take a few minutes to present the lessons. The first presentation will be the week of Feb. 3.

REWRITES You have the right to rewrite assignments to raise your grade. Rewrites must be submitted no later than one week after the story is returned to you with a grade. A rewrite submitted later than that will not be accepted. Also, rewrites will not be accepted during finals week or the week before finals. Rewrite slugs should be: student name/date/story/art/ rewrite. Place the slug on the top of your story. EXPECTATIONS OF THE PROFESSOR Ive listed expectations I have of you, now here is what you can expect from me: 1. I will care about you as a student and a person. 2. I will conduct class as scheduled every day, including being prompt and prepared. 3. If class will be cancelled, I will notify you by email at least five hours before class is to begin unless Im called away because of an emergency. 4. In most instances, my office door will be open and I welcome students to come to talk to me, even if its not during office hours. 5. I am available by phone either in my office or at home except between the hours of 9 p.m.-9 a.m. because I am asleep at those times or preparing to come to work. Of course, I should be contacted for emergencies no matter the time of day. 6. I will accept calls on the weekend, but please limit those calls to emergency status so that I can enjoy time with my family. 7. I will be on campus for story conferences. All story conferences will take place in the J-Lab. If I must leave for an emergency, I will notify you by email of my absence. 8. I will gladly accept from students ideas on how to improve the teaching of this class. ACADEMIC DISHONESTY Journalists have only one thing to offer - credibility. Making things up - such as quotes, people in stories and facts or stealing the words of another writer or failing to give proper attribution to information obtained from other sources are deadly sins in journalism. If you engage in academic dishonesty - including plagiarism and fabrication - you immediately will fail the course and could be penalized to the fullest extent allowed under Doane College policy. DISABILITY POLICY Students with disabilities substantially limiting a major life activity are eligible for reasonable accommodations in college programs, including this course. Accommodations provide equal opportunity to obtain the same level of achievement while maintaining the standards of excellence of the college. If you have a disability that may interfere with your participation or performance in this

course, please meet with me to discuss disability-related accommodations and other special learning needs. EXTRA CREDIT Reporters normally don't get extra credit, but you can. Here's how: 1. Write extra stories. You can get a maximum of 30 extra points per story by writing more than 13 stories. You may earn a maximum of 90 points by writing extra stories. 2. Produce additional online story packages, with story and visual elements such as photos, video, audio, etc. You can earn a maximum of 90 points by producing online story packages. 3. Get your work published in a commercial newspaper. Turn in a clipping with your byline for 30 extra points. 4. Copy Edit the World. You can earn two points for an error (typographical, incorrect word usage, ambiguous wording, incorrect grammar and punctuation or other) found in a publication intended for general public circulation, such as a newspaper, magazine or website. You may hand in examples until the last day of class (the week before finals week). I am the final arbiter on what counts as an acceptable submission. Examples submitted must identify the error, say what's wrong and show how you'd correct the error. This is not a group project. I reserve the right to change the rules as I deem necessary. Include the original clippings with date and page number when you turn in the corrections.

Important note for those who wish to pass this class:

Failure to complete all required stories means that you will lose a letter grade for each story you fail to complete. In other words, if you complete only required 12 stories, the best grade you can receive is a B. Eleven completed required stories means the highest grade you will receive is a C. If you complete 10 required stories or fewer, you automatically fail the course.