Hi all,
You should have gotten your feedback from the structure exercise, and anyone who has turned in their hard news out-of-class draft has received feedback from me.
Reminder: Tomorrow instead of class we will attend Alec Ross’s lecture. As an in-class assignment, you must write a hard news/event story no longer than 600 words long with at least three people quoted in the story. Must follow the 4-step structure.
Deadline for the story: Wednesday March 21 at 9 p.m.
Save as a Word document with the name: Alec Ross (Your Name Here). Subject line of your email should be the same: Alec Ross (Your Name Here).
Because of the assignment, we will not had labs this week. However, I will be at the lab on Tuesday from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. to answer any questions you have on this assignment, progress on your out-of-class hard news assignment, ideas on your feature story or any other question you have.
Already mentioned this before, but will say again:
DO NOT PLAGIARIZE (COPY) WORK. ANYONE CAUGHT USING WORDS THAT WERE COPIED AND PASTED FROM PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED OR ONLINE WILL FAIL
If you use material on Ross that has been previously published, you must cite the source. Example: according to his State Department biography … Or: according to the Washington Post.
I noticed several of you in your backgrounders clearly cut-and-paste content without telling where the information came from. The idea is to write background — and all content — in your own words, citing sources where appropriate.
Also, as I mentioned on the blog, several of you wrote very long background material. Frankly, if you write more than a 100 words background, that’s far too much (the less you need, the better).
The real goal of the exercise last week wasn’t for you to pre-write the piece, but to get your head in the game — to go into that room tomorrow more informed than anyone else, better able to predict what we might say, and better able to react if he says something unexpected.
Looking forward to seeing you all tomorrow!
Questions? Let me know.
-Kevin