Construction Day

Here are some helpful links for today’s class:

MSU news story on Construction Day

Construction at MSU: The Physical Plant site

Twitter feed: MSUPhysPlant, #msuconstruction

Last week of class!

Thanks to our two guest speakers last week, Alan Stamm and Dave Poulson. Alan spoke about many aspects of journalism, but emphasized that the basics of good journalism don’t change. Verify, always report much more than you will ever need in your story, do the legwork and be enterprising. Alan also talked about writing with “the voice of authority” and “acknowledging if you don’t know something.” This was great advice, and some of it is captured on the video I’m posting here as well.

MSU instructor Dave Poulson tells students how computer-assisted reporting can help them to write with a voice of authority.

The voice of authority is something our second speaker of the week talked about as well. Dave Poulson discussed  databases, computer-assisted reporting and using data, and pointed out that when you “crunch” your own numbers and analyze data yourself you have information you KNOW is fact because you come up with the conclusions based on your own analysis.

Dave, who teaches CAR, advanced reporting, environmental reporting and ethics, also is “father” of the greatlakesecho.com Web site, which has a staff of MSU students who report and produce environmental news used by organizations throughout the Midwest.

You will need to download these files

Here are the files you’ll need to download for the CAR lecture by Dave Poulson.

CityBudXercise

Keep in mind expert speakers’ advice

Rodney Curtis, photographer, journalist, author and MSU instructor, talks to Journalism 200 students about telling stories with images.

Rodney Curtis visited the class last week to talk about visuals. He talked about the rules — and how once you know them, you can break them. They can come in handy though — so remember rule of thirds, natural framing, going high and low, close-ups, watch the horizon. And that weddings can be very lucrative for a photographer! I hope you all enjoyed seeing Rodney as much as I did. He always makes me laugh, and he really knows his stuff. Passion and talent make a powerful combination.

I also hope you carry some of the things with you as you work this last week on your multimedia projects. I look forward to seeing them.

This week, we’ll have two more guest speakers — and they are likely to be our last. Tuesday, Alan Stamm, experienced journalist, marketing specialist and Internet strategist, will talk about a variety of things, including what an editor expects of a good reporter. I worked for many years at The Detroit News with Alan, where he was one of the best city desk editors at the newspaper. He was fast, accurate and knew what questions to ask reporters to make sure they had the complete story. After leaving The News several years ago, Alan started carving out his own niche in marketing and Internet strategy.

Alan is one of the most energetic people I know. He seems to be everywhere, reading everything, keeping up with every aspect of the news, social media and the Web. He’s a wealth of knowledge about Michigan, Detroit and journalism. So ask lots of questions!

On Thursday, my colleague Dave Poulson will be talking about advanced reporting, databases and computer assisted reporting. Dave teaches CAR and advanced reporting, and he’s also the father of GreatLakesEcho.com, the online site that reports on environmental issues for the Great Lakes area. Please don’t miss this class — you are guaranteed to learn about techniques that will help you deal with databases and how to look and work with what may seem to you a giant mishmash of information.

As you finish up your public affairs stories and last projects, I’m hoping you take advantage of networking with the speakers who come to class. Some of you have already friended speakers on Facebook, followed them on Twitter and kept in contact. I highly encourage this. The more experts you add to your network, the better off you will be.

Don’t forget your news stories for tomorrow! Be sure to add links, categories and your names. And get them in the blog early enough so that Mo won’t be up all night pulling the budget  together.

A last-minute guest for tomorrow

Rodney Curtis, former photo editor at the Midland Daily News, Detroit News and Detroit Free Press and current author, instructor and Spiritual Wanderer, has agreed to stop by the class Thursday. He’ll talk about visuals. I was hoping to get him to class this semester, but he’s been out of the country the past couple of weeks so I wasn’t sure whether he’d have time when he got back. But he’s agreed — and I’m so happy to bring this great resource to all of you. This is what Rodney was doing in London (Camden Town, one of my favorite stops there, although I have to say I did NOT stick my feet in a tub of minnows for exfoliation purposes).

Rodney is well known in the Michigan photographers community, and brings heart and smarts to what he does. He will talk to you about some basics of telling stories visually with still photos and video. This comes at a great time for all of you, as you are finalizing plans for your multimedia. So come with questions and ready for discussion.

Rodney, who teaches magazine writing and co-taught the online multimedia storytelling class with Bob Gould this semester here at MSU, is sure to entertain as well as teach. He is very dynamic and — he won’t mind me saying this — sometimes wacky! He’s lots of fun (can you tell we worked together?)

A quick head’s up on what’s due: Your revisions, based on the suggestions of classmates during the peer review, need to be in the drop box by classtime. If you don’t do a revision, I’ll use your original for grading purposes. You also need to file your public affairs lede. No news budgets — we’ll do that again Tuesday. And if you are doing the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire powerpoint extra credit, put the powerpoint in the EC drop box. There’s a template in the Lessons area of Angel, and Millionaire template.

Blogs for budgets and more

I’m reading through some of the budget line blogs and reading blogs, and some of you are getting really good at linking and including images. Remember to add your names! If you don’t have your name on the blog, I have to go behind the scenes to find it for grading purposes. More importantly, your classmates and others who read the blog really don’t know who wrote it. If you create a category for yourself as well, then readers who like your posts can click and get all your posts, and also can create an RSS JUST of your posts.

Also, in your budget lines, include links to the stories. That helps if I or anyone wants to read more.

Good start!

16 days and counting …

I’m sure you are all counting down the days til you are done with this class; believe me, I’ve seen these glazed looks before. We’re almost there! Here’s the run-down for this week:

Please make sure to put your budget items in the blog tonight, complete with links to stories, tags and the proper categorization. Mo will be assembling the class budget based on your work, so be kind to her and get those items in as early as possible, but by 11 at the latest. At The Detroit News we had a budget czar (her name was Audra, and she was tough) who would send warnings and messages five minutes before the budgets were due, and if she didn’t have them on time, the overall budget was printed without yours. And you were left to bring your budget items in on a separate sheet, copied for everyone, and you felt like a loser for being late. So don’t be late. If you are late, you will have points taken off your current events quiz grade, since your items will not be able to be included in the class budget.

We’ll spend a few minutes going over the items, based on the budget lines, then we’ll have the quiz, which I’ll base on the stories you have chosen (at least the majority of them). I reserve the right to put items on the quiz that I feel are important to the day’s news but have been missed in the budget.

You should all remember to drop your localization story in the drop box before coming to class, and to additionally bring a printed copy of your story to class. We’ll be doing “peer reviews” of your stories, and you’ll have the chance to revise or fix them based on the suggestions of our classmates. But if you do NOT have a story in tomorrow you do not have this opportunity, and you get a “0” for your story. I have talked with a number of you to discuss challenges and questions you have. If you have not talked to me, I’m assuming you are proceeding and have a great story coming on Tuesday.

I hope you are all moving along on your public affairs story as well. The lede is due Thursday, and the story is due April 22.  If you have any concerns, raise them now. There inevitably are logjams in getting hold of sources for these stories. If you are having such issues, look for alternatives, backup plans and ways to be innovative in your reporting and researching. Part of being a good reporter is being resourceful!

See you all tomorrow!

Community journalism and the world of data

This blog about a Detroit neighborhood has sparked discussion and controversy for its participatory approach to journalism.

We had three guests last week that brought some perspective to today’s world of journalism. Journalism 200 is so much about the fundamentals — AP Style, leads, interviewing, sourcing — that it is helpful to step back every once in a while and view  journalism in its ever-changing forms. Michael Happy, Jonathan Morgan and Aaron Olson helped us step back, leaving current events quizzes and story deadlines on hold, for a little while at least.

On Tuesday,  Michael and Jonathan talked to the class about community journalism. Michael and Jonathan both have very interesting backgrounds, having shared time on the online desks of both The New York Times and The Detroit News. Michael now directs Fox Sports Detroit’s online site, but also maintains the Neighborhood Blog: Going Home at the detnews.com site. This is what Michael and Jonathan talked about for most of the hour they were in class. The blog was started nearly three years ago after Michael did an audio slideshow about his old neighborhood on Detroit’s east side.

Jonathan, now a Ph.D. student at MSU, specializes in community journalism, databases and bringing together complex systems and people to do journalism that goes beyond what is traditionally considered “journalism.” Jonathan combines a bachelor’s degree in computer science with a master’s degree in journalism — making him one of the computer-literate journalists who are so highly sought after by nearly every news organization. His path is one you also might like to explore.

Michael and Jonathan talked about the plusses and minuses of “getting involved” in your reporting, especially as it relates to projects such as the Neighborhood Blog. Jonathan emphasized the need to tell the truth — and that the “truth” doesn’t always mean you have to be totally uninvolved. But he also pointed out how much more difficult it can be to walk that line and “find” the truth when you ARE involved in a story or a neighborhood. There’s more about the Neighborhood Blog in this story in the Columbia Journalism Review.

On Thursday, we had a visit from current J-school student Aaron Olson, who is graduating this spring. Aaron is a design specialist and has also become very involved in the “back end” of creating online sites, including the Spartan JLabs site, which is the site for the online newsroom class, JRN 400. You may be interested in checking out Aaron’s online portfolio and blog. I also highly recommend you follow him on Twitter. I always learn a lot from Aaron, and he seems to see cool new things before anyone else does.

Aaron spoke about data, and how we might view data and its integration with journalism. Some of the sites and resources he mentioned are great ones for you to go back to and peruse. They include:

The Guardian’s Data Store

One person Aaron talked a lot about was Clay Shirky, the  NYU professor, author and Internet philosopher. Aaron shares this from him:

“New digital divide question is, how do we go to people who don’t sense they have permission to speak in public and offer them that permission? And then the other, as you say, is the interest. If there are people who are just uninterested in this stuff, how can you make an experience that’s still satisfying for them as, you know, traditional consumers of media, without making them feel bad for not being the people posting the Flickr pictures of potholes or, you know, adding a comment to an NPR story.” – Clay Shirky (in a 2009 NPR interview).

And some of the other links:

“A Peek Into Netflix Queues” from the New York Times
“Investigate your MP’s expenses” – from the Guardian

http://www.ushahidi.com/
http://haiti.ushahidi.com/
http://www.snowmageddoncleanup.com/main
http://www.patientslikeme.com/
http://www.data.gov/
http://data.gov.uk/

Survey story, Thursday and details, details, details

I know this time of the semester gets very stressful for everyone (including me) as we try to get to all the material, finish up all the assignments and learn everything there is to know about newswriting (sorry I won’t be able to deliver completely on the last one — I’m still learning!)

Here’s what I can tell you about the next class and beyond. I hope this clarifies things a bit:

The survey story, due Thursday: Please write a short story based on EITHER the survey results I handed out in class (based on our class’ use of multimedia tools) or your own survey you conduct of at least 20 people. You can write a story based on either one. What the story should include: A lead that targets one angle of the survey. Be as specific as possible — if, for example, your survey shows that 90 percent of the students you surveyed watched the Spartans play in the NCAA semi against Butler, say that. But BE CAREFUL not to say that represents 90 percent of students as a whole. A survey is just that — a snapshot. You need to specify how many people were surveyed and HOW. Your story can zero in on one angle of the survey, or do some overall roundups of the results. Best to do a bit of both — target the most interesting or startling or outstanding aspect, then give a brief rundown of what other things you found. Here are a couple of survey stories you can study to get an idea of how to do this:

Journalists in Iraq

Americans and buying homes

Health care survey

AP style and public affairs reporting quiz: If you read the chapter in the book, listened in the lecture and read the information on the sheets I handed out, you should be pretty well prepared for the public affairs part of the quiz. If you have been paying attention to AP style and have your stylebook, you should do OK on that piece as well. I’ll be giving you sentences to correct. It’ll require you to know some AP style ahead of time — so don’t rely just on looking everything up. I won’t allow unlimited time. The point of learning AP style is to KNOW when you don’t know something, but to know a great deal of these rules by heart.

Revised story plans for public affairs story: Your reporting summary and reporting so far on your public affairs story should be indicating to you whether you need to rewrite your story plan. If you have found that your story is going in a whole new direction, simply revise the plan and put it in the drop box with REVISE in the title.

Localization stories: These are due Tuesday. No lede is due. Simply drop your story in the drop box. This story is NOT eligible for rewrite. So what I am doing instead is giving you the opportunity of peer editing these. Bring a paper copy of your story to class on Tuesday, and you will all be spending a bit of time reading and commenting on several of your classmates’ stories. So bring your story and your editing brain to class next Tuesday.

News summaries: Bring two stories to class on Thursday for the “news summary” exercise. We’ll be putting together a typical news budget — just as a newsroom does. I’ll share budget lines with you in class, and you’ll all add your own to the overall class budget. Then we’ll do this every Tuesday in advance of the current events quizzes for the remainder of the semester.

Clarification on Final Four work: Several of you did some very good work on your Final Four project. If you did a video or audio slideshow that can stand alone, and you did an additional story or timeline or video as well, you can submit your video as one of your video requirements for this class. The story needs to be more than just some video footage. Look, for example, at Taylor’s coverage of the pep rally. That is a “story” on video, and would meet the requirements. If you have questions about this, feel free to ask. I do want to reward the hard work some of you put into that project. As a class, you will be graded on the project and your piece of it, as an in-class story.

I hope that answers some of your questions! And don’t worry: We’ll get through these last few weeks, and you will all be in wonder at what you’ve done once you have gotten through it all. You have come a LONG way in this class, and are all doing terrific.

News teams

For the remainder of the semester, you will work in news teams to present the news at the beginning of class. This mirrors in some ways how news meetings are held at newspapers and other news organizations. Usually, an editor for each “desk” or department comes prepared to talk about the stories of most interest. They prepare a “budget” which looks like the one I’m attaching to this post, and they don’t read directly from the budget, but instead tell enough about the story to give people in the room an idea of why it’s important.

Shoot for doing your news reports this way, starting next Tuesday. Each person should have at least two news items, which he or she should add to the class “budget” either before or at the very beginning of class (have the budget item in by 9:10 a.m.) so that everyone in the class can follow the budget while you talk.

Here are the teams, decided in some cases by Current Events quiz score averages:

National and International: Laura and Lauren

State news (Detroit, outstate — non-Lansing or MSU): Samantha and Mo

Lansing and state politics: Zane, Brittany

MSU: Lindsay and Allen

Sports: Craig and Sam

Entertainment: Taylor and Annie

Health, science and technology: Ansley and Dana

Miscellaneous, quirky, offbeat: Nick and Patrice