Writing Question
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To demonstrate what we now know about producing 21st-century journalism with examples of article-writing that represent our best-quality work.
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To reflect on our accomplishment of course objectives and the ways this course material may be valuable in our future activities and careers.
** As a reminder, those course objectives are:
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Identify the major principles that guide 21st-century journalists, including newsworthiness, style, modality, and some ethical and legal frameworks.
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Identify the parts of a news story, describe the relationship among those parts, and explain the way they work together to produce meaning.
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Demonstrate an understanding of a journalistic story’s context and audience.
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Articulate, evaluate, and justify journalistic writing choices at various stages of the revision process, including sentence-level grammatical errors and stylistic effects, AP style, structure, coherence, and multimedia integration.
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Consume media content with a more informed and critical eye.
COMPONENTS
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(A) ONE original multimedia article, from pitch to publication-ready
DETAILS
(1) ONE original multimedia article, from pitch to publication-ready.
You will make a pitch for a story idea that you would like to cover for the Albion College Pleiad. The pitch should include (a) as many of the 5Ws + H questions as you can answer; (b) which aspects of newsworthiness (FOCII) readers would care most about with this story; (c) the section of the publication in which the story should appear (e.g. “Sports” or “Features”); and (d) opportunities or challenges the reporter should keep in mind.
Then you’ll get down to the reporting — schedule “interviews” (use the name Aanika Batra a sophomore at Albion College and Athena Levigne a junior at Albion College for your interviewee names!) , perhaps do some internet research, — in short, gather all the materials you need to make the story the best it can be.
Components you MUST have in your story:
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Headline
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Byline (author’s name)
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Date
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Lead — standard (Inverted Pyramid) or narrative/anecdotal
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Clear organization — Inverted Pyramid, ice-cream cone, kebab, other
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Quotes from multiple sources — indirect AND direct, all properly attributed
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Emphasis on one or two distinct FOCII elements
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At least ONE non-text media — photo slideshow with captions (3 or more photos), short audio or video clip, short form (good content that is effective as a visual element)
SAMPLE ASSIGNMENT