A news-sampler for Bob Stepno's news writing students
Before the semester ends, you should know how to keep your self out of jail as a journalist…
SO… Go to the course home page and copy the links to media law resources into YOUR blog, so that you will always have them where you can get at them when needed.
We’ll talk about them a bit in class, but you also should (have) read Chapter 7 in the textbook.
This has been a long strange winter with a winterlike spring… So for today’s assignment, in honor of the Judeo-Letterman tradition of the “Top Ten List,” I am sending students out into the world to come back with ten descriptive sentences using strong verbs and concrete nouns to make it clear that “Spring is finally here.”
Literal descriptions of concrete are not eligible.
Be as specific as possible about colors, textures, materials, locations and other details that do not require adverbs… strong verbs, nouns and specific adjectives are eligible. Here’s another source of advice on the subject: from a squirrel fan.
Classroom instruction: Leave the computer logged in. Go outside. Walk around. Look around. Come back by the last 20 minutes of the class period and add 10 sentences to your blog. If you only have five, we’ll survive.
For this exercise, you don’t have to weave the scenes and descriptions together into a story, but we’ll talk about doing that when you get back… or at the next class. Write an introductory sentence or two saying what the assignment was, and link it back to this page. Write a headline that sums everything up more creatively than mine does.
As always: This is a journalism course. Don’t make stuff up!
Check out each other’s descriptions here!
REMINDER: WordPress does have a spelling checker. While editing in “Visual” mode, look for the ABC icon with the checkmark under it. These blog posts are out there on the Internet for the world to see, so make your writing clear, grammatical, and properly spelled and punctuated — even when it’s a fun assignment like this.
Would a real newspaper ever have a story like this? Sure…
Back on my homepage, there’s a news reading assignment for you to post to your blogs.
Meanwhile, over in the right column you should see a new “widget” — a list of my last 10 Twitter posts. Some will be relevant to this class, some won’t. Watch for stories to cover, jobs and internships, tools and distractions.
Note: For those new to Twitter, something beginning with “RT” is someone else’s Twitter post that I’ve forwarded to my readers because I think it’s interesting — not always because I agree with it 100 percent. A hashmark — # — is a keyword that may help explain a group discussion, collect tweets from or about a particular event [e.g. #sotu for the president’s State of the Union address], or help a writer collect ideas on a topic for publication or just for fun [e.g. #datelikeajournalist].
I’m posting this here to remind myself to mention Grammarly and other grammar websites in class… But maybe some students will check this blog BEFORE class and get a head start.
Using Grammarly grammar-checking website through Radford
RU has paid the subscription fee for all students and faculty to use this service! Maybe you have used it already. I’ve tried using Grammarly with our Inside Reporting textbook’s online grammar quizzes. The results were mixed, but even when Grammarly misunderstood the problem, figuring out its logic was interesting.
Grammarly wants to check full paragraphs, so sending it individual sentences from our multiple-choice quizzes won’t work. You can try copying and pasting a whole quiz into Grammarly as if the sentences made up a paragraph. The site’s grammar robots will flag some things as questionable that are perfectly O.K., and learning to tell the difference will be part of your education.
My course home page and bookmark lists also have links to a variety of free grammar sites on the Web. Browse around and find one or two that look like fun to use — and use them.
Remember, as a journalism student “finding out the answers” is a skill you should be practicing. Be curious, check multiple sources, get to the truth. You can do that with textbooks, websites, Google or Bing searches, the library and — in a pinch — by asking the professor! Also remember no one source is right all the time. 🙂
It was quick and crazy, but as just a part of the first day’s classes, two 20-student sections of my News Writing course dove into WordPress.com and signed up for free blogging accounts so that they could do the “What You Read” assignment posted at the top of this page.
The follow-up assignment will be for the students to get to know each other by reading their “Media Diet: What I Read” articles and talking about them in class. To do that, I’ve made a page with all the students’ WordPress addresses. I asked everyone to create a WordPress site using their campus username plus the course number 104.
The shortcut list on the tab above is based on that idea. If WordPress blocked you from using that exact combination, or if I typed it wrong, or if you misunderstood the naming idea, the link won’t work. If that’s the case, e-mail me the correct URL (the “whateveryoucalledit104.wordpress.com” address) for your blog or show it to me in class on Tuesday.
Note: As my About Page explains, I changed the “Theme” of this blog today to make it a little easier to use on the small monitors and small projector screen in the Whitt 222 computer lab.
This also demonstrates that YOU can change the theme of your blog without affecting its contents. From the WordPress Dashboard, “Theme” is a selection on the “Appearance” menu. Note that some themes are free, but some cost extra. I am not requiring anyone to spend money on this project, and I am not giving extra credit for having the money to spend!
Also, if you don’t like the “Tagline” under your blog title, the place to change that is on the Dashboard’s “Settings” item, under the “General” heading.
Tavis Smiley and Cornel West helped Radford University celebrate the life and message of the Rev. Martin Luther King last night. For those who missed their presentation — and as a demo of WordPress’s ability to embed YouTube videos — here are some clips of their appearances elsewhere:
The issue is poverty… “The Rich and the Rest of Us”
Cornel West on Tavis’s PBS interview show…
If and when I see stories or video of them at Radford, I’ll add links here.
For class I have told students to create their first WordPress posts saying something like:
I have to find out what other people read, and then write something about what I read. Oh no!
I asked them to include links to these pages:
All of this can be edited at the next class or on your own.
Note: WordPress has two tabs that let you edit your posts and pages in either “Visual” or “Text” view.
The most common problem at Tuesday’s class was landing in “Text” view by mistake. Once you add formatting — boldface, italics, bullet or number lists, etc. — the difference between Visual and Text editing mode are more obvious:
Visual Mode
Text (Code) Mode
However, in “Visual” view you also can type a more meaningful clickable phrase — such as the titles of the pages in the bullet list above — and turn that phrase into a link by highlighting it, then clicking on the chain-link icon in the editing window’s toolbar.
Linkage tips:
The first draft of the assignment sheet used the full-visible link codes for all of the “What I read” articles. I’m editing them today to make them easier to read.
Nope, the “104” title above does not mean that this is Bob Stepno’s 104th WordPress blog, although it sometimes feels like it.
COMS 104 is the introductory News Writing class at Radford University, which explains the “stepno104” address. I use this site to demonstrate WordPress software to students, and sometimes to share information during class.
WordPress.com sites are free, supported by advertising that is only visible to not-logged-in visitors.
I have students create their own WordPress.com sites in class as a quick way to share summaries and links to stories from major media sources. We only use them a few times during the semester. Our use of the system has inspired several students to create separate personal blogs, online portfolios and online publications.
(Since COMS 104 is an introductory class, I don’t ask students to “publish” their unedited stories to the world. They turn in stories to me using a password-protected campus system called Desire2Learn.)
The main website for the course is on the main campus Web server and requires no logging in to see the syllabus, assignment reminders and weekly notes. Here it is: http://www.radford.edu/rstepno/104: COMS 104 with Bob Stepno
Note: Other professors teach COMS104 from time to time and use their own Web resources; some have different policies regarding WordPress.
Here are some of my other WordPress sites, including instructions on using the program in Web Production classes:
News Reports for COMS 104 at Radford University 