Before we go our separate ways, let me share with you my final thoughts. Journalists are writers. And as George Orwell said, all writers write to be read. The only way you have a fighting chance to be read is to produce interesting stories. This is a short memo that a colleague and I wrote for our reporters to keep them on their toes. You may find some of the pointers useful.

Stories worth reading

Club Lunch: Fraud, Financial Crises and The Future of The Big Four

You are to cover the District Council election tomorrow (Nov. 6) IN YOUR OWN DISTRICT. Results will be announced on the following day (Nov. 7). Pretend your story will be published in a local newspaper the day after the results are announced.

For this assignment, you will not only report on who the winners were and by how many votes, but must also explain how and why they won, what they stood for (i.e., their election platforms) and who they represented; also whether they were independent or associated with a political party. Were they dark horses? Were their victories almost certain from the start because of the absence of creditable rivals or because of their popularity?

You need to speak to the election candidates, winner(s) and/or political analysts, and come back with good quotes.

It’s challenging to make district council elections interesting to readers who are not already political junkies, but this one is important because it’s the first held after the government-backed constitutional reform with five new “super lawmaker” seats representing 2.8 million voters, billed as a crucial step towards full democracy.

Besides being factual, your story needs to be interesting as well. You will be judged by what I call the “awake index”, that is whether and for how long that I, the reader, can stay awake while reading your copy. So, find interesting colours, personalities, quirky facts and quotes to keep reader interest alive.

REMEMBER TO WRITE ACCORDING TO THE 4-STEP STRUCTURE:

1. Lead
2. Expand on the lead (two-to-five paragraphs)
3. Background (put the event/topic in context)
4. More elaboration and details of the story

Your deadline is our next class (Nov. 12). Keep it under 800 words.

Here’s an interesting piece from the Observer. Please read and be prepared to discuss: 

What effect has the Internet had on journalism?

- Alex

I would dearly love to have you cover the protest in Central. Unfortunately, it starts at the same time as our class on Saturday. I don’t really think it’s viable to skip a class, especially when we have no class the next week, which is Reading Week.

Still, let’s discuss how we can do a reaction story to the protest, depending on the public response. It can be an alternative to your 2^nd graded assignment on Donald Tsang’s policy address and the revival of the home ownership scheme under the new housing policy. Please go to Week 6 in Readings & Assignments for more background information and instructions.

- Alex

This may be of interest for your graded assignment or final project.

- Alex

Foreign Correspondents’ Club Lunch

The Euro Zone Debt Crisis: How bad is it, and what does it mean for Asia?

Speaker: Hugo Dixon

Editor, Breakingviews, Thomson Reuters

Thursday, October 13, 2011

12:45pm – Lunch

1:15pm – Address

1^st  Floor

  With Greece nearing a default and global markets feeling the pain of a weak European response, what is likely to happen next as European officials wrestle to find a solution? How will Asia feel the impact of a weakened European Union and specifically what does it mean for governments, economies and businesses in Asia?

 Sharing his insights is Hugo Dixon, editor of Reuters Breakingviews, a Thomson Reuters commentary and opinion service focused on global financial stories as they break. In Asia, Breakingviews columns can be read in The International Herald Tribune, Singapore’s The Business Times, India’s Business Standard, China’s Caijing and Korea’s Economic Daily. Before founding Breakingviews in 1999, Hugo spent 13 years at the Financial Times culminating in five years as head of its commentary service, Lex.  He began his journalistic career at The Economist.  Hugo gained his first class degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Balliol College, Oxford. He was a King’s Scholar at Eton College and is the author of the Penguin Guide to Finance and Finance Just in Time. Hugo was named “Business Journalist of the Year 2000” in the British Press Awards and won the “Decade of Excellence Award” at the Business Journalist of the Year Awards in 2008.

 $150 (MEMBERS)    $180 (GUESTS)

Please reserve with the FCC reception at (tel) 2521 1511, (fax) 2868 4092 or (email) concierge@fcchk.org

We will have four graded assignments in the following four sessions. They go towards your final grade. I will discard the assignment with the lowest grade to take some pressure off you.

Please see Readings & Assignments for your first graded exercise.

 - Alex

There is no class on October 1! See you again on the 8th. Have a great holiday weekend!

-Alex

The Guardian has published the long preface to a new memoir, Good Times, Bad Times, by Harold Evans, the legendary former editor of the Sunday Times and a hero of mine. (See link below.)

In it, he offers a front-row-centre view of Rupert Murdoch’s tactics in his rise to global media dominance and an assessment of the negative impact the media baron has had on journalism in the UK, the US and Australia. He shows that the phone-hacking scandal at the now defunct News of the World was not an anomaly; the seeds of corruption were sown at the very beginning.

Evans’ piece is rather long but it’s well worth reading if you are interested in the corruption of public discourse and journalism in western democratic countries.

Evans and Murdoch have always fascinated me. Newspaper publishing is highly specialised, yet they are the few who actually know the whole business – reporting, editing, subediting, editorialising, page layout, typesetting, use of visuals, printing presses – the whole shebang. Murdoch, of course, turns this humble business into a global force of influence and domination.

They are the yin and yang of western-style journalism. Evans and the reporting team he led at the Sunday Times are for me the models of unimpeachable journalistic integrity. As for Murdoch, well, it’s quite the opposite. Evans calls Murdoch Lucifer in the Guardian piece, and he is probably not far from the truth.

By the way, I just realised the double entendre in his book title: good [Sunday] Times under Evans, bad [Sunday] Times after Murdoch took over.

www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/sep/18/harold-evans-rupert-murdoch-leadership

– Alex