Archive for April, 2012
Week 12
This is the final class for this semester’s TV News Writing course, JMSC 0051.
Today’s writing assignment: Myanmar Guerillas
Please write a package, less than 3 minutes long, plus a 15 second anchor intro and a 10-15 second tease to play earlier in a program, promoting the upcoming package.
Use the shot sheet provided and the video at this link:
See also the anchor script that’s been given to you. It would air just before your package intro, also on rleated Myanmar news.
Email to mwalsh@hku.hk by 17:00.
Matt
P.S. Please see previous weeks’ posts for updates, including writing examples from previous assignments.
CNN visit notes
Here is a summary of the main points you observed during the CNN field trip. Note that a question on the final exam will come from these notes.
CNN visit notes
Week 10 notes
Week 10 focused on writing “kicker” stories. A “kicker” is a story about something funny or odd that is often placed at the end of a broadcast.
A kicker story can be a package, if there’s enough of a story to tell and enough video to support a package, or it can be a shorter anchor script.
There are several challenges in writing kickers. Among them, being funny or clever in your writing, without being disrespectful to your subject or viewers. We must also remember that standard journalistic values still apply to kickers and features. We must use proper attribution and fact checking and we must not insert our own opinions into the stories.
We watched a few kicker-style stories by CNN’s Jeanne Moos and Andrew Brown. You can see some of Moos’s packages at this link, and elsewhere on the CNN website. http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/22/gotta-watch-the-top-jeanne-moos-videos-of-2011/