Among my journalism handouts: how to write a hard news story, the news story vs the English essay, and how a journalist stays out of the story.
As circulation has declined, local newspapers have had to adjust for the loss in revenue, sometimes by shrinking the size of their staffs, sometimes by selling out or closing up shop all together.
This is an important time to teach people what journalists do and why it matters. “The media” is much larger than “journalists devoted to the objective coverage of the news.” If you don’t like the slant, or the shallowness, or the opportunism of the media you run across, then check out several different sources, including reputable ones with slants that differ from yours. (If nowhere on the planet can you…
I don’t want to make light of a little girl’s fear, but she wasn’t seriously hurt, and this is a damn fine lead: When they heard the screams, no one suspected the rooster. (Tampa Bay Times, 2002) And from a little farther into the story: The rooster struck around noon as Dechardonae ventured from her house in the middle of the cluster to visit her Uncle Tony, waiting in the…
These folks are amazing! It’s such an honor to teach them.
My own students haven’t described encounters like this, but I have encountered students who enter the classroom with the idea that there is a fairly consistent, uniform, organized entity called “the media” that it’s fashionable to distrust. It’s fair to point to specific news stories that got specific facts wrong or that showed bias, but attacking “the media” is blaming the messenger — it’s propaganda that benefits the status quo.…
A recent video that shows a kid in the bleachers bobbling a foul ball, and a man picking up the ball and presenting it to the woman next to him, doesn’t show what it seems to show. Julian Green of the Cubs said in a statement, “Unfortunately, a video that was quickly posted and unverified has made a national villain out of an innocent man.” The man doesn’t want to…