Seriously, welcome. I'm glad to have you here. Let's talk about this class in greater detail.
First,
a little about me. You can just call me Omar, since (as you can see
from the syllabus) my last name is a mess. I've been the adviser at The
State News for the past six years, and teaching JRN 200 for the past
five. Before that, I was a professional
journalist for 17 years, most recently in Las Vegas, and I've covered
everything from car crashes to Hurricane Katrina.
And
in those 17 years I learned a lot, namely this: in journalism we learn
by doing. That is, we report and write, then we review what we did well
and what we could have done better, then we put those lessons in
practice the next time around. Each day in those 17 years I got better;
some days more than others. You don't learn journalism passively.
To
that end, during this semester we will have many writing assignments
called practice stories. In these assignments, we will work on a
particular area of news writing (which will always be preceded by a text
reading assignment and an online lecture or lecture summary) by giving
you a set of facts, and then asking you to write a story based on those
facts (using the techniques mentioned in our readings and lectures).
Then,
we will learn from those practice stories in two ways: first, you will
get a personal evaluation of your individual work, where I will go over
key points, both good and bad. Second, we will look at prime examples of
each others' work via the blog (with names stripped out to protect the
innocent), where you will benefit two ways: first, by seeing how your
peers handled the exact same assignment; and second, by the blog
highlighting good techniques and common mistakes and ways to avoid such
errors.
Because we do learn by doing, practice stories
will be weighed relatively minimally as to your final course grade. And
that's by design. We want you to have the opportunity to make mistakes
without seeing a serious dent to your final grade. So if you feel you
didn't do well in a few practice stories, don't fret.
What
we're building up to will be out-of-class stories, which will be a big
part of your final grade. But the goal is to use the practice stories to
build good habits and identify and weed out bad ones, so that by the
time we get to out-of-class stories you are in a position to kick ass.
With
all these writing assignments, we are going to be strict in two
particular ways. First, ANY factual error -- even just one misspelled
name or incorrect number! -- will automatically result in an assignment
grade of 1.0, no matter how well you otherwise did the work.
That's not an arbitrary thing because I'm an asshole. Rather, it's to emphasize an important point: journalism isn't about writing, it's about getting it right.
We write in journalism not for personal expression, but to share
information that is relevant, interesting and/or useful to your
audience. And if the purpose is to share information, it must be
accurate. Wrong info is hardly interesting, relevant or useful to
anyone.
Also, errors can be dangerous to your career.
When I was working in Vegas, my paper had a five-error-per-year rule.
After the first error, you'd get a verbal reprimand. The second one got
you a letter in your file. After the third, you had to outline a
corrective plan of action. The fourth got you an unpaid suspension. And
the fifth got you fired. And this was while I was writing over 200
stories a year! Gulp.
I'm not saying this to scare
you; rather, it is to motivate you to have good fact-checking habits in
place so it never gets that drastic. (I was never fired during my
professional career and I'm not a genius, so I know it can be done, and
done easily), and to impress upon you that truth is the cornerstone of
what we do.
Odds are you're going to have a few
"fatals" (as we call 'em) in your practice story. That's okay; virtually
everyone who has taken my JRN 200 class has had multiple fatals,
especially in the first half of the semester when everything is new and
good habits are still being built. Don't be scared of 'em and don't fret;
just learn how you can do a better job of fact-checking, and become
aware of some common traps that lead people into fatals.
Second,
we are going to enforce deadlines to the second. So, let's say an
assignment is due at 9 a.m. sharp, and it's time-stamped on my email as
having been received at 9 a.m. and four seconds. I will unmercifully
grade that assignment as late, and late assignments automatically get a
0.0.
Again, I'm not doing that to be an ass. There's a
journalistic reason for that. And that this is a deadline business in
which we can NEVER miss a deadline. Ever. If you're writing a script for
the 11 p.m. news, the scripts have to be in before 11 p.m., each and
every time. After all, you've never flipped on the news and hard the
anchor say, "Welcome to the 11 o'clock news. Just give us a minute and
we'll get back to you." It's because people who blow deadlines are
immediately exiled, so we have to start building a habit of never
missing deadlines.
I'd rather have you learn that lesson here than during your first (or would it be, last?) job.
Okay,
I know all of this can sound intimidating. And I can't promise that you
won't have frustrations, especially early on. But these things I can
guarantee you: first, YOU CAN DO THIS! I'm not asking you to lift a
two-ton truck over your head; I'm asking you to master skills that have
been mastered before. And I know you can master them because you are a
student at a Big Ten school. That tells me all I need to know about
whether you have the talent. You do.
But that doesn't
mean that you'll come out firing on all cylinders on the first day.
Starting something new is hard, even when it's something you have the
talent in which to shine. I mean, the first time Michael Phelps ever
went swimming, he probably needed floaties and such. It didn't mean he
wouldn't eventually become the greatest swimmer of all time. It just
meant that he had to learn how to bring his skills out. That's what
we'll do here, too.
Second, I AM NOT ASKING YOU TO DO
THIS ALONE! I'm here to help. I'll offer you tricks and techniques on
how to avoid fatals and get assignments in on time and structure your
stories properly and do kick-ass reporting. We're in this together, and
I've shepherded plenty of people through this class before. I know we
can do this.
So if you have a day that's frustrating,
don't get frustrated. Don't punch a wall or drop the class. Just learn
the lessons on how to do better the next time, and then do just that.
Again, that's how
we learn in journalism. And that's how we'll learn this semester. Just
stick with it, and I'll be there for you.
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