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media type="custom" key="4015573"

Eleventh-grade journalism


**WECOME TO NEWS WRITING**, a two-week journalism unit that will teach you the basics of how to write news stories. Most of you will never write for a media outlet; that’s O.K. If you work at it, this unit will make you a better thinker, writer, and communicator. You will learn how to identify different types of news stories, how to write an effective lead paragraph, how to ask strong interview questions, how to write an inverted-pyramid news story, how to edit and revise your stories, and more. At the end of the unit, every student will write a news story that will be published in an in-class newspaper. Students also have the option of making a video or audio broadcast.

Unit objectives
 • Students will be able to identify the key information from a news interview • Students will be able to formulate a news lead using the five Ws and H • Students will be able to distinguish the differences between news, feature, and editorial writing• Students will be able to determine what makes an event newsworthy • Students will be able to write clear, well-organized news stories

Lesson 1: What is news? A scavenger hunt
How do newspapers and news stations decide what to print or broadcast? Why is a baseball game big news in Philadelphia, and a fatal mud slide in Myanmar relatively small news in Denver? Students will learn what constitutes "news" and "news judgment" through a series of websites linked to a Word document. News judgment is subjective and students will be allowed to express their thoughts through a series of ten questions that explore such issues as: What should or shouldn't count as a major news story, when is video more effective than print, and when, if ever, should the public be prevented from viewing graphic images? Afterward students will write a short reflection on what they learned and what they think about news judgment issues. We'll then discuss these reflections as a class. **Lesson objectives**: Students will know what elements make a story newsworthy Students will be able to explain the issues that increase or decrease a story's news value Students will be able to discern the difference in impact between print and visual journalism

Definition of the news Issues affecting news judgment
 * Basic concepts, skills to be taught:**

Computers, Internet access Document files: (This tool will provide an easy-to-use,visually compelling, and enjoyable introduction to many of the subjects we will discuss in this unit).
 * Resources, materials needed:**

Lesson 2: What is news writing?
 How does a news story differ from an essay or other forms of writing? We will discuss the importance of answering the five Ws (Who,What, Where, When, Why) and H (How) in a news story. Students will learn about the inverted-pyramid style of writing in which the most important facts are placed at the top of the story. The class will be introduced to the unit’s final assessment in which each student will write a news story, or produce a broadcast or audio cast, about a story of their choosing (subject to teacher’s approval).Assignment: Student will report on a familiar story or fairy tale, writing an opening paragraph that answers most of the five Ws and H.Materials: Examples of “The Wizard of Oz” and Charlotte’s Web, reimagined as news stories, handed to students. Directions for final assessment, due on Day 9, handed out. Students assigned reading in News Reporting and Writing by Melvin Mencher

Lesson 3: What is a lead?
 A lead is the opening paragraph of a news story that reveals the most essential information to the reader. We will discuss how to write a news lead that answers the 5 Ws and H and grabs the reader’s attention. The class will look at good newspaper and broadcast leads, as well as some poor examples. We will explore the concept of “burying the lead,” in which the most important information is dropped in the middle or the bottom of a story. [|News terms flash cards] 
 * Assignment: Students will read letters, flyers, and newspaper stories to determine if the writers “buried” the lead, then rewrite the material to put the buried lead on top. ** Activity: Teacher will explain fifteen journalism terms, from "agate" to "lead" to "sidebar," then break class into four groups to play a brief game with on-line flash cards. Displaying the flash-card page on a classroom screen will allow everyone to see the questions and answers in an immediate, visual way — rather than the teacher reading the definitions, they will appear before the students' eyes. I would keep this activity brief and make if fun because it's far from essential that students know all these terms all their lives, but a little familiarity will allow us to converse in a common language for the rest of the unit. **Materials: **  Letters, flyers, articles supplied by teacher.

Lesson 4: What makes for a good interview?
Interviews often supply a reporter with his/her most essential information. How do reporters listen, learn, and take effective notes? We will talk about phrasing good open-ended questions and look at some infamous examples of bad interview questions. **Assignment**: Students will formulate at least five questions and be assigned one-on-one interviews with classmates that they will conduct on Vocaroo. Below is an example where Mr. Dawson interviews his wife, Ila. Students will then write brief stories on what they learned from their interviews. media type="custom" key="4059995"

Students can access Vocaroo from the website below. After accessing the website, just click to record, click to stop, listen to the recording, click on Post on the Internet, copy the HTML code, and paste it onto your wiki. This will be demonstrated in class. [|Vocaroo.com] (The Vocaroo tool allows students to easily interview one another and access it on the Internet. Hearing the voices makes it come alive more than an interview on paper and demonstrates the importance of phrasing questions carefully, waiting patiently for an answer, and possibly trying out follow-up questions).

Lesson 5: How do quotes fit into a story?
Now that you’ve quoted someone, what do you do with those words? We will explore the difference between a good quotation (something fresh, illuminating, perhaps surprising) and a poor quotation (predictable, dull). We will look at different examples of placing quotes — at the top of the story, the middle, the bottom. And we will discuss the value of using “said” for an attribution verb rather than “exclaimed,” “retorted,” “remarked,” etc.Assignment: Students will choose two newspaper or online stories, which can be news, sports, or features stories, that include at least five quotes. They will rate the quotes from “most important” to “least important,” with “most important” defined as a quote that provides major insight into some aspect of the story. They will then rewrite the story with the quotes in the order they prefer (This lesson adapted from John Deyab, Charlestown High School in Boston).Materials: Newspapers, online stories. Students can bring their own or teacher will provide.

Lesson 6: How do we write a news story?
We’ve touched on many facets of news writing, now we’ll put it all together. We will examine how news stories need to be brief and to the point with one-sentence lead paragraphs and short, usually one or two sentence, paragraphs to follow. We will explore the value of clear, declarative sentences. We’ll talk about mapping out the story beforehand. Most important, we will look at the reader and what he/she wants and needs to know. That is what should drive every news story. We'll also discuss the basic difference between a print or on-line story, where the viewer can read the material, and an audio/visual story where the quotations have to be explained (you can't just put quotation marks around speech when you're talking). **Assignment:** Students will take stories filled with long sentences and paragraphs and rewrite them in short, to-the-point news story style, then recite them into voki.com, a website that creates animated audio-visual files. This technology brings the thrill of seeing one's words spoken on screen by an animated figure, and in listening to the words you can pick up on mistakes you made and think of possible improvements to the text. A common exercise to improve writing is to say the words out loud; this exercise allows you to view someone/something else voicing the words, which should be even more instructive. Students need to keep your stories brief. media type="custom" key="4058761"

(This tool provides students with an animated video of a person delivering the news, as well as the audio that the students provide. Seeing and hearing a news story delivered points out the necessary differences between writing for print and writing for speech or broadcast).

** Materials: Teacher will provide stories to be rewritten . ** Lesson 7: How do we sell a story?
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left; display: block;">Your story may have everything it's supposed to have except, well, it's boring. In this lesson we concentrate on finding the best information for your lead and writing it so that someone would want to read it. The key is to determine what makes the subject and incident intriguing, focus hard on that, and sell it to the reader. We'll look at different types of creative leads, and then we'll practice. **Assignment: Students will choose one individual from this list and write three short paragraphs about them. Each of the individuals accomplished something remarkable at age 15, 16, or 17. The idea is to make the two or three sentences compelling enough that readers will want to know more. Students will post their stories on an online newsletter, below, so we can share them as a class. Placing the stories on an online newsletter allows you to see your work in a visual setting and forces you to keep the stories short: there's only room for about three paragraphs per story on the website. You can also write your own headlines and set up the page to your liking, although you shouldn't spend too much time on the visuals of this assignment. The teacher has supplied an example below. ** [|newletter]  **<span style="text-align: left; display: block; font-size: 14px; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;">Materials: Teacher will provide rough stories for editing. **

Lesson 8: Accuracy, objectivity — why does it matter?
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left; display: block;">We will back off on the nuts-and-bolts work for a day and examine the importance of accuracy, objectivity, and other factors that inform strong news writing. We will touch on Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass, two journalists who “cooked” (i.e., fabricated) news stories. We will analyze the shades of objectivity and look at broadcast and print stories that show a subtle bias. We will touch on “New Journalism,” which often makes no pretense of objectivity, and discuss how some believe that true objectivity is impossible. <span style="text-align: left; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 99%; font-weight: normal;"> **Assignment****: Students will research two instances of fabrication and plagiarism, write two-to-four page papers, and report out to educate the class on how these cases happened and how to to prevent them. The tumblr.com site provides video and multiple websites students can use for research. Putting all this information in one place gives students a good start-up place and makes the research seem manageable. It also gives students toward reliable websites to work with.

The lesson can be accessed below:

** <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; text-align: left; font-size: 110%;">[|Bending the truth] Here are some books to consider for this and other assignments: [|Journalism books]

Lesson 9: Print vs. broadcast vs. online: what’s the future?
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left; display: block;">What are the advantages and disadvantages of each of the different mainstream media used today? How would a newspaper story be altered if turned into a broadcast story? How are online newspapers integrating video? What will the media of the future look like? We will discuss a variety of topics that touch on the similarities, differences, and futures of various news media. **Assignment:** Students will write on which news medium (or media) they use the most in their personal lives and why, and what they see as news media’s future. **Due:** Final revisions on unit project news stories. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 121%; text-align: left; display: block;">View: <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left; display: block;">**<span style="font-size: 110%; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; text-align: left; display: block; font-weight: normal;"> The following playlist includes: ** **<span style="font-size: 110%; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; text-align: left; display: block;"> Nourishing Journalism & American News Appetite: <span style="font-size: 110%; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; text-align: left; display: block; font-weight: normal;">Where people go for news today, what those platforms provide. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; text-align: left;"> ****<span style="font-size: 110%; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; text-align: left; display: block;">Has the Internet Killed Print Journalism? ****<span style="font-size: 110%; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; text-align: left; display: block; font-weight: normal;"> A captivating Web 2.0 debate on whether website journalism has the same public value as newspapers. <span style="font-size: 110%; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; text-align: left; display: block;">Rocky Mountain News to Close After 150 Years: <span style="font-size: 110%; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; text-align: left; display: block; font-weight: normal;">A CNN report on the death of Denver’s newspaper, and a look at why other newspapers are failing. ** **<span style="font-size: 110%; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; text-align: left; display: block;">Tom Bettag on the Future of Journalism : ****<span style="font-size: 110%; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; text-align: left; display: block; font-weight: normal;">A Journalism instructor says a “forest fire” is burning out all the old journalists, creating a void and need for young journalists. ** **<span style="font-size: 110%; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; text-align: left; display: block;">Michael Rosenblum on the Future of Journalism part 1: **<span style="font-size: 110%; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; text-align: left; display: block;"> A video guru talks about our culture going more and more to video story telling, bringing an end to traditional print journalism. **<span style="font-size: 110%; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; text-align: left; display: block;">Creative Future Journalism: <span style="font-size: 110%; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; text-align: left; display: block; font-weight: normal;">A look at how people will get their news in 2010. ** media type="custom" key="4129661"

(Watching this series of videos provides students with multiple perspectives on the possible future of news reporting from experts in the field. The instructor can provide his own opinions but it helps to get information from a variety of sources).

Lesson 10: What did we learn? How will it help us?
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: left; display: block;">We will explore and discuss how knowing how to write a news story can make us better communicators and more valuable employees. Most people will never write an essay for work, but many will write a proposal or position paper that requires answering the 5 Ws and H and communicating clearly and emphatically with co-workers or clients. Cover letters for job applications also, at their best, follow news writing techniques. We will look at cover letters that catch the employer’s interest and emphatically state, at the top, why the applicant should be hired (employers, like newspaper readers, are known to stop reading after a paragraph or two). **Activity:** We will look at cover letters and discuss, as a class, whether we would hire the person after reading the first two paragraphs. We will also discuss the similarities between cover letters and news stories. **Activity 2**: We will unveil the class newspaper, which may be in print or may be on-line. Students will be given time to look over everybody’s work in class. **Assignment:** Students will write for 5 to 10 minutes near the end of class about what they will remember most from the class, and what they wished we’d covered more.