JOUR 3101:
News Writing and Reporting
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Basic Information
Prerequisites
Course Description
Expected Competencies
Competency Goals
Assignments and Activities
Workload
JOUR 3101: News Writing and Reporting (3 credits)
- Multi-section course.
- Lecture twice a week.
- Lab session once a week.
Prerequisites
- Major or minor status
- JOUR 3004W (or concurrent registration)
Course Description
Jour 3101 (News Writing and Reporting) is a basic, skills-based course designed to teach journalism students the fundamentals of news writing and reporting as demanded by newsrooms across all forms of media. The course is writing intensive and requires outside research (reporting) that includes interviewing, basic fact gathering and document search.
Expected Competencies
Students should have taken or be concurrently enrolled in Jour 3004. All students should have the following skills:
- An understanding of different media forms.
- An ability to find and evaluate appropriate sources of information.
- A working knowledge of the fundamentals of English mechanics, including sentence structure, spelling and punctuation.
- An ability to type quickly and accurately on deadline.
Competency goals for 3101
Jour 3101 is designed to teach students four basic and interrelated skills:
News judgment, including:
- News values – such as relevance, proximity, timeliness, impact or prominence.
- How news differs from public relations.
Reporting, including:
- The focus on facts, not opinion.
- Basic interviewing skills.
- Techniques for building sources.
- Public records and other documents (introduction only).
News writing
- Concise leads for spot news.
- Narrative techniques for storytelling.
- Proper attribution and use of quotes.
- Associated Press style and proper grammar.
Journalistic analysis
- Credibility of sources.
- Math skills for common stories, including reports on polls, studies or surveys
- Concept of computer-assisted reporting (introduction only).
- Fairness in news coverage.
- Critical thinking skills applied to news events and information.
The course also refers briefly to other reporting competencies such as skills in handling visuals, technology, press responsibility, cultural sensitivity and ethics. But its primary focus is on the basic skills of identifying stories, gathering facts and writing the news.
Return to topAssignments and activities
Writing assignments
Students in 3101 demonstrate their working knowledge of news judgment, narrative, analysis and reporting by competently producing certain kinds of stories typical of newsroom assignments. Those include:
- A spot news story. (400 words)
- A second-day story about a spot event. (400 words)
- A story that covers a speech or a press conference. (400 words)
- A story that covers a meeting. (400 words)
- A story that advances an event journalistically and not as public relations. (500 words)
- An obituary. (500 words)
- A general-interest story about a special area, such as science or business. (500 words)
- A profile or feature. (500 words)
- A news feature using multiple sources and at least one document. (1,000 words)
Tests, quizzes and other graded assignments.
- Instructors often offer quizzes on Associated Press style and current events. Students are asked to correct style errors in sentences.
- Some instructors give midterms, where students are asked to demonstrate knowledge of basic news writing concepts as well as AP style.
- Some instructors may ask students to develop story ideas to teach newsworthiness
Other assignments or activities to complement instruction:
- Speakers to give “press conferences” on health or technical topics so students can have experience reporting with numbers.
- Class assignments to locate public records – for instance, a police incident report – with a follow-up discussion by a media lawyer about access to public records.
- Guest lectures by various newspaper reporters and editors on a range of topics.
Workload
Students work independently through the course and spend time outside class (estimated at least four hours weekly) on three basic tasks:
- Reading, including course texts and at least one daily newspaper.
- Writing, including all lab assignments or stories.
- Reporting, including interviews and fact gathering.
The balance of those tasks change through the semester generally as follows:
First third of the semester:
- Reading 70 percent
- Writing 25 percent
- Reporting 5 percent.
Second third of the semester:
- Reading 40 percent
- Writing 30 percent
- Reporting: 30 percent
Final third of the semester:
- Reading 30 percent
- Writing 30 percent
- Reporting: 40 percent