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

What do you care about?

Local News?Sports?Entertainment?Music?International News?

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

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 interviewYou 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!)

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Historical documents Artifacts What else?

What makes a good source?

Secondary sources of information are derived from primary sourcesSummaries of primary sourcesAnalyses 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.

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 mediaYour own observations and experiences

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.

Interviewing continued. Record the conversation

Be open and honest about it. Use your cellphone, most operating systems have a voice recorder now.

Take good notesDon’t be afraid! Committing acts of Journalism sometimes requires varying degrees of bravery!

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.

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.

Let’s PracticeLet’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

Now what if you could interview them both

after?What questions would you ask King Arthur What about the Peasant?

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.