Reporting & Writing I
City College of New York & Hunter College
COURSE DESCRIPTION
Reporting & Writing I is designed to give students first-hand knowledge of what being a reporter is all about. The class will help you become sharper observers, listeners, readers, and writers and prepare you to compete for internships and job opportunities in the news media, consumer and trade magazines, organizational newsletters, etc. You’ll read newspaper and magazine articles to see how they are constructed and the different functions they serve. You’ll develop and pitch your own story ideas, do background research, conduct interviews, work through numerous drafts with an editor and, with perseverance and a little luck, you’ll eventually see your writing printed in a professional publication.
Over the course of the semester, you’ll be given a range of assignments that require you to travel around the city and campus gathering, organizing and presenting information to an audience. You’ll learn about leads, nut graphs, scene, character, dialogue, action, quality of detail, and other components of a compelling narrative. By the end of the course, you will have built a basic set of criteria for what makes a story work. You’ll also have gained a clear appreciation of what it takes to be a journalist and a good sense of whether or not it is the career for you.
COURSE LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Students in this class will:
• hone their observation and listening skills, developing an eye for detail, an ear for colorful spoken language, and an instinct for using both to support an argument or elucidate a given theme.
• become proficient in the art of taking notes, reporting with accuracy and precision, double checking, corroborating and correctly attributing information. They will rarely if ever make exaggerated claims about what they actually know.
• draw on their reading of journalistic texts to develop story ideas and strategies for reporting and writing and use a range of unfamiliar sources and methods for gathering and confirming information, including online databases like Lexis/Nexis and the Historical New York Times.
• experience what its like to work closely with a professional editor planning, reporting, writing and revising for publication and attending to issues of context and fairness.
• learn how to prepare and organize effective interview questions, approach sources, ask follow up questions, and probe for more information.
• develop their ability to summarize and paraphrase with concision, make hard choices about what’s most important and deploy the basic building blocks of different kinds of journalistic narratives.
REQUIRED MATERIALS (available in the City College bookstore)
•At least two 4” x 8”, spiral reporter’s notebooks.
•See section on “Reading at least one newspaper every day.”
ASSIGNMENTS
Weekly and long term assignments will be discussed in class and briefly described in the “Assignments” section of the course’s Blackboard site. In addition you will receive periodic emails from me calling your attention to articles in the press or directing you to material I have posted on the Blackboard site. You are responsible for clipping or printing this material, and bringing it to class fully prepared to discuss it.
Scavenger Hunt (Information Gathering): You will be divided into teams and asked to go out and collect various pieces of information. It will require looking things up, making phone calls, traveling around the campus and neighborhood and, most importantly, teamwork. You will also have to document how you achieved the results you did.
Capturing the Way People Speak (Dialogue): You will be asked to eavesdrop in public places and write down verbatim several overheard conversations as well as to cover political debates and other events.
Observing a Person (Character): You will be asked to follow a stranger and write down everything you can about his or her appearance, behavior, etc. and then draw some conclusions.
Place Story (Scene): You will be assigned a specific location here in the city, and, in some cases, a specific time of day. You are expected to find out everything you can about it, go there at least once, take stock of your surroundings and what’s going on, speak to several people in or connected to that place, decide what’s interesting or important about what you have read, seen and heard, and come back with extensive material on which to base a story.
Police Ride-along (Action): You will spend several hours riding along with a couple of police officers in a precinct other than the one where you live. You’ll then have to type up your notes and propose a story idea based on the information you gathered.
Query Letter (Focus): You’ll write at least one letter to a professional publication about an original idea for an article you would like to write, explain why it’s important to their readers,
and tell them what qualifies you to do the job.
Other Assignments: In addition, you’ll be given a range of assignments that require you to form interview and follow-up questions, write stories based on interviews we conduct in class, and edit the writing of others for clarity, focus, accuracy, grammar, style, length and content. During the second half of the semester, the coursework will focus on individually designed projects.
GRADING
You should expect assignments—sometimes more than one—for every class this semester. The work will consist of a combination of 1) reporting, notes, drafts, and revisions 2) readings from supplementary sources; 3) writing/editing exercises; and 4) critiques/analyses of stories in the news. Your final grade will reflect a more or less even split between your overall class participation, performance on field assignments, exercises/drills, and your final project. To receive full credit, you must hand assignments in on time and in the designated format. Effort counts. So does progress.
MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS
Students must show up on time, meet their deadlines, and be thorough, conscientious, and uncompromising in their adherence to the truth. The first four items on this list are required of anyone expecting TO PASS THIS COURSE:
Regular, prompt attendance. More than two unexcused absences will automatically lower your final grade. More than four and you may be asked to withdraw from the course. Unexcused absences are any that are not documented by a note from a medical doctor, a court of law, or a funeral director (no exceptions). Three latenesses of even a few minutes count as an unexcused absence. This includes returning late after the break.
Meeting deadlines. Unless otherwise indicated, all assignments must be emailed as MS Word attachments by the deadline. In addition, you should also bring a hard copy to class along with any previous drafts/interview transcripts with my comments. No assignment received later than the deadline will earn you a satisfactory grade (C or better).
Getting it right the first time/Covering your bases. In the professional world, inaccurate or incomplete information (misspelled names, for example, or forgetting to get a source’s age and occupation) invalidates all your best efforts, discredits the publication you are writing for, and makes you a bad risk in the eyes of your editors. These kinds of mistakes must be avoided in order to receive a satisfactory grade on any assignment.
Honesty. You will fail this course immediately if you are caught plagiarizing, inventing sources for quotes, or deliberately disregarding what you know to be the truth.
The following items are required of anyone expecting TO DO WELL:
Reading at least one newspaper every day. Before a journalist can enlighten others, she must first inform herself. In order to come up with fresh ideas and hone her craft, she must constantly expose herself to the work of her peers. You are expected to read a daily newspaper regularly and to come prepared to comment on what you have read. I will also send you links to particular articles which you should print, read, and bring with you to class. There will be occasional, pop
quizzes as well as several “clipping” exercises requiring you to apply what we’ve been discussing in class to items you find in the news.
Initiative/Persistence. In the world of journalism just showing up is never enough. You have to keep at it until you come up with something you can use. If the assignment calls for interviewing at least four people and the first four people you talk to don’t say anything interesting, you have interview four more—or change your whole approach. If an official doesn’t return your first phone call, call her six more times to let her know you’re not going away or show up at her door.
Working With Others. You are expected to support your classmates in their efforts and to confer with the instructor about individual projects in person at least once during the semester.
These meetings will take place outside of regular class hours.
Publication. Students should develop at least one major story with a specific publication in mind and in close consultation with the instructor. The story must meet his criteria and, ideally, be submitted for publication at the close of the semester. No one who fails to be aggressive in this process can expect to receive an ‘A’ in the course.
GUIDELINES FOR HANDING IN ASSIGNMENTS
All work must be posted to the Blackboard site as MS Word attachments no later than 6:00 a.m. on the day of class. They must follow this exact format:
Your Name/Slug (Three Alarm Fire, Maldonado Profile, etc..)/The Date
These are 2″ margins and everything is double-spaced. This is to allow me room to write questions, comments, and make corrections.
Do not indent paragraphs. Use a double return, like this:
On subsequent pages you should put your last name, the slug (in this case “Guidelines”), and the page number up top.
Except where otherwise instructed, you are expected to adhere to the “Stylebook” on pages 583-596 of your textbook. When revising, refer to the attached copyediting symbols.
You are expected to provide typed transcripts of your interview notes and research.
The use of tape recorders is strongly discouraged. Get in the habit of writing down the most important information and interesting quotes and you will save yourself hours and hours of transcribing time and avoid the risk of bringing home an inaudible tape.
Phil Kay/Guidelines/page 2
All revisions must be handed in with the previous draft and my comments.
At the end of your story, write:
–30–