Texts
An Introduction to News Reporting by Yopp and Haller (no other stuff needed, just the textbook, available used). This is our main text.
Writing Tools by Clark, a great little writing book.
You will also need (free):
* A Google account for accessing documents and Fusion Tables. What's a fusion table? Here's a simple one that shows what states UGA students come from in Fall 2011.
* A Twitter account, set to public viewing, to practice tweets and see how journalism orgs use it.
* A bit.ly account to practice tweets and by using shortened URLs.
Grades
We will have quizzes on the main text chapters just to ensure you read them, possibly a bigger test when we're finished with the book. Also expect a lot of busy work assignments, stuff not graded but you get checks for, and a failure to have a lot of these "checked" will hurt your grade. These will include compare/constrast assignments, bringing in stories to analyze, etc.
Of course there'll be lots of reporting and writing assignments -- both in class stuff and out-of-class stuff, from mundane in-class fact sheets to coverage of real governmental meetings. There'll be some computer-assisted reporting assignments. And you'll have a major story or two over the course of the semester. The bulk of your grade will come from writing and my mood at the time of final grade assignments.
Attendance
Required. There are no excused or unexcused absences. You get three freebies. On the fourth miss, it's a 5-point drop on your final average. Fifth miss, 10 points. Sixth miss, 15 points. And so on until we hit negative numbers.
Base Expectations
You are expected to cover three public meetings. A failure to cover all three will result in an Incomplete for the class. All meeting stories are due by 10 a.m. the day after the meeting, hard copy only, given to me or slid under my door. Also, keep an electronic copy because we may be uploading meeting stories. Not decided yet. More to come.
* An ACC commission meeting or agenda-setting meeting (not committees, not work sessions).
* An ACC school board meeting or agenda-setting meeting (not work sessions or committees).
* A UGA Council meeting (once a month, I think Thursday afternoons). You may replace a Council meeting with one of the two meetings above.
I recommend doing March or April meeting stories once we've had a chance to talk about how to cover them. Focus on a single topic unless nothing major happens; in that case, do a catch-all kind of story.
When are Meetings?
ACC Government | Meeting stuff
ACC Schools | Board Meetings
University Council
Also
ACC registered neighborhoods
DEADLINES
The last meetings you can cover to satisfy this requirements above are in April (usually the first couple of weeks).
A package (minimum, 3) neighborhood immersion stories are due by April 23.
One public affairs stories beyond the work above, more enterprise-type stories. These can be on anything you can connect to a "public affairs" topic. Due date? Wed., May 9, by 5 p.m. By end of Friday (4/27) you must email me your topic. |
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Class Schedule
Check often because I add links for you to read as the week progresses. I'm cruel that way.
Tue, 1/10: Intro class. Review of what you forgot from jour3410. Some writing as a skills check. Coffee consumption. Go away, get your texts, come back in a coupla days.
Thur, 1/12: More 3410 review and writing to see where you stand. Also, read chapter 1 in Yopp & Haller for discussion this day. Set up your Google, Twitter, and bit.ly accounts, begin following via Twitter three news orgs and two individual journalists.
Tue, 1/17: Read Y&H chapter 2. Bring to class, printed, a straight news story that uses public documents in some way. Be prepared to discuss and to turn in with your name on it. By Thursday (1/19) have three possible neighborhoods for you to adopt. Give them to me in class in order of preference on paper. By now you have your Twitter requirement mentioned above up and running. We will discuss in detail documents again later in the semester. This is just an intro.
Thur, 1/19: Read Y&H chapter 3. Find a straight news story, identify how much info came from interviews, how much from documents, how much from other sources. Bring to class for discussion. Also bring me your three preferred neighborhoods. Also, write a brief (100 or so words) that compares and contrasts how the three news orgs and two journalists make use of Twitter. Keep following them, though.
Tue, 1/24: Read Y&H chapter 4, read Clark tools 1-4. On the tools, bring to class a story that fails to follow at least one of them, if not all. Class discussion on law/ethics too because, ya know, we wanna be legal and, I suppose, ethical too.
Thur, 1/26: Read Y&H chapter 6 about the basics of local government through page 111 to where the section on Special Districts comes up). This is the heart of the book. Find and bring to class a bad local government straight news story for discussion, be prepared to discuss in class why it's bad (nothing written needed). Also read Clark tools 5-7. See any of the tools so far (1-7) and ask whether any could have helped your bad local news story. Again, for discussion, not written. ALSO ... see above, at top, for neighborhood list (so far, may get tweaked).
Tue, 1/31: Warning -- it's possible some accreditation folks might drop in the classroom and watch for a few minues. We're supposed to carry on as if they're not there (which seems damned impolite to me, but I'm not in charge). Finish Y&H chapter 6 (pp 111-end). For Tuesday, get to know the Athens-Clarke web site. Scour it for story ideas beyond the usual meeting story. There's good stuff there, if you dig and are creative. Bring to class at least two solid story ideas from the site, written up to turn in. You'll be pursuing these. Also, read Clark tools 8-10.
Thur, 2/2: Y&H chapter 7. Clark tools 11-13. We're going to do a bit of writing in class, probably a meeting story.
Tue, 2/7: read this report about the gap in local reporting (if prompted, ID and PW are both grady). And just for fun (as opposed to the report), read this very different way of telling a public affairs story. Does it work? Finally, read Clark (14-16). We'll chat about the stuff above, then write a canned meeting story.
Thur, 2/9: Read Clark 17-20. Turn in meeting story based on fact sheet handed out Tuesday. We'll discuss. Meetings coming up for coverage, neighborhood coverage, etc.
Tue, 2/14: Read chapter 8 of Y&H (covering education). Bring to class a LOCAL education story of some kind -- skul board meeting, or just about scores or teachers or whatever. Also, Clark 21-23.
Thur, 2/16: Clark 24-25. Your challenge at this point -- find a local news story and analyze it in terms of the first 25 tools. You don't have to use ALL of the tools, but several of them. Write a one-page (single-spaced) discussion of the tools you believe the writer of the article failed to address. We'll talk writing, such as how to craft the lede. Also, an interesting NYT schools story.
Tue, 2/21: Read Y&H chapter 10 (cops).
Thur, 2/23: Read Y&H chapter 11 (courts). Important to note that we'll revisit both these topics later in the semester. Visit by Joe Johnson, criminal justice reporter for the ABH (unless some major event comes up). Before the visit, read some of his stuff at onlineathens.com or, even easier, follow him on Twitter. A lot of stuff out of his beat this week. ALSO ... due today, your three "police blotter" brief stories based on ACC incident reports.
Tue, 2/28: Clark, tools 26-29. Discuss 'em. Return your graded police blotter stuff (for those who did it, else a big fat 0). We'll perhaps write a cop story in class as warmup, that and/or look at the campus crime site I showed you the other day and do an in-class or out-of-class assignment. Also for fun, UGA crime log page and ACC police and Sheriff's Office.
Thur, 3/1: No class. You're welcome. Work on various stuff, such as neighborhood stories. Really, no excuse on this. Also, lots of meetings next week!
Tue, 3/6: Read Clark tools 30-34. Read Chapter 13 of Y&H, bring to class this day a straight news story that includes a poll of some kind for discussion. Resources I'll use in talking about polls Tuesday and Thursday: AAPOR, SPJ toolbox, pollingreport, ANES, Pew on poll methodology, and probably more to come, such as two to follow the money: FundRace and OpenSecrets and the FEC page.
Thur, 3/8: Read Clark tools 35-39. More on polls because, hey, it's an election year.
Tue, 3/20: We're back. Catch up on those Clark tools we didn't talk about before break (tools 30-39, we're done with the Y&H text). Talk about meetings and individual story ideas and neighborhood stories. Basically, we catch our breath, then start the serious stuff. CAR basics presentation.
Thur, 3/22: Read this BEFORE class. I begin introducing you to the wonderful world of computer-assisted reporting and crunching data for stories and (gasp!) math. We're going to discuss a ton of stuff here, with inside and outside work, in which you learn how to find and clean data for stories, how to use Excel, and probably how to do simple mapping. Expect this for the next few weeks in class while you work on other stuff out of class. Some data we may play with (basic sewer data, Athens traffic data, ACC Permits). Just warm up stuff.
Tue, 3/27: For today, write a compare/contrast one-page (single spaced) paper looking at this poverty story and this cop speeding story. Look at such things as the kinds of data used, writing style, tone, presentation, use of graphs or multimedia, and whatever else makes sense given the stories. If multiple parts to a story, make sure you look at them all. In class, more data crunching. I'll put here soon the parking ticket data and teach you the magic of Excel pivot tables. (remember, pword and ID, if needed, is always grady).
Thur, 3/29: Yet another compare/contrast. This story and this story in which, well, the theme is kinda obvious. More analytic journalism in class using these data on what counties UGA undergrads come from in 2001 and 2011.
Tue, 4/3: A different, more complex, version of the data above on 2001 and 2011 undergrads at UGA. Simply click on the these data data above (or right here, I updated the original file with new stuff). Remember to save it to your puter and all the passwords, etc., are grady. Your challenge is to analyze it over the weekend and write up, for this day, in a one-page single-spaced report on where you think the story is, who'd you interview to flesh out a story, your main findings, etc.
Thur, 4/5: A day off. That deadline for neighborhood stories is fast approaching, so take today to get some work done. I may also post an assignment for Tuesday, using the data from above, to get you into the challenge of mapping.
Tue, 4/10: Today is about mapping. Well, maybe more than just today. Here's a link to Poynter's guide on how to use Fusion Tables (warning, slow to load, at least for me today). A slimmed down version of our UGA data will be publicly available on my documents page for you to work with when the time comes. But make sure you have a Google account and, what the hell, play around with fusion tables beforehand if you like.
Thur, 4/12: More mapping. This link should take you to the UGA student data (I'm gonna double check this later). Make sure you save it to your own documents folder. When in Google Fusion Tables, you should then be able to see it. Again, make sure you've saved the data in your own documents because you won't be able to edit the one in mine. Manipulate this map and hopefully Thursday we'll do some more. A different, good Fusion table tutorial is here. Check it out.
Don't do this one until class Thursday when I show you how, but we'll mess with merging data. So we'll have new data on states and teen birth rates and data that defines the states for a map. I'll walk you thru it, then let you try. May put some more up.
Tue, 4/17, find your own data, create a map of some type, and email me the link by midnight Monday. I'll show you some of how to do this beforehand, but you'll need to learn some by playing. I did the homework too. See below. Based on 2009 Census data, the percent of people by state who use Facebook. The actual merged data is here. I used our Basicstates data with a simple list of states by FB use that I found via Google search.
Thur, 4/19: No class. Work on neighborhood stories, come up with ideas for your single public affairs story, etc.
Tue, 4/24: We'll talk about final stories. Also do class evaluations. Also look briefly, probably first thing, at this USA Today package.
Thur, 4/26: no class. you're done (except for working on that final story).
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