Assignments for April 4

Reporting Assignment No. 5
Due: April 13
Sports/Entertainment

Your assignment is to cover a sporting or entertainment event that is held on campus in the next 10 days or so and write an article of 350 to 500 words.

This kind of story will test your observational skills and your ability to translate what you observe into language that allows your readers to see, hear and feel what you did.

Remember that you are writing a hard news story and not a review. While you may include opinions, particularly from participants or informed observers, your story is an account of what happened—not impressions of and reactions to it.

Try to avoid clichés (which unfortunately abound in this kind of reporting).

While your focus is on the event you attend, you should still background yourself in the topic before you start reporting—and particularly before you start writing.

For this assignment, post to the class blog by April 4 the campus event you intend to cover. Check the calendars on the university Web site for what is scheduled.



Reporting Assignment No. 8
Due: May 11
Enterprise

Your final project for this class will be an “enterprise” story, in other words something that you have come up with on your own.

By now everyone should have selected a topic area and should have started the backgrounding process, by checking “the clips” to see what has already been published on this subject. As a next step, I would like you to identify at least three human sources you will use for your article and a general statement of what you think your story will say.

Post this to the class blog by Monday, April 4.

This article may help you think about the reporting process:
http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=79244