As a group, we didn't do well on this one.
Where I saw overall improvement in the second out-of-classer, I saw too much regression on this one. Some people who normally do well were off on this one (rushing it? Taking things for granted?). Some others who were showing improvement before took a step back on this one. No one did great on this one, and that's the first time that's happened on any assignment.
Either way, it's not what we want now. This is when we need you to peak, after learning lessons through practice stories and earlier out-of-classers. Now is when your final grade will really take shape. This is where we need to be avoiding mistakes by using solutions we learned by making earlier mistakes.
Let's go over the major issues, in hopes we can at least stabilize where we're at and avoid a late-semester free-fall:
First, many of the problems we had with narrow sourcing in earlier out-of-classers we are still having now. We should have seen these issues ebb away by the third time around.
In one case, we did a story about international students and interviewed exactly one such student to be representative of nearly 8,000 such students here. We needed to interview many such students, since the story is about them.
In another story about on-campus dining options, we talked to students and low-level cafeteria employees, but not higher-level employees who actually make decisions regarding dining or a neutral expert who could help determine what is reasonable and what is not.
In a story about student employees, we talk to a neutral expert and various student employees, but not the people who student employees report to: student employers.
It's not just people we're missing out on. In a story about the benefits of study abroad, we have lots of people who tout the benefits, but we don't offer any studies or data to back up the anecdotal claims.
It's not one side or the other side or neutral experts or data as evidence that we need; we need all of it.
Second, we are often using ledes that go beyond what the story actually has, fact-wise. In the aforementioned international student story, we said such students may feel uncomfortable at first, but thanks to the large body of such students here that's not the case.
When we talked to just one such student, it's hard for us to credibly make that claim. Even if we talked to a bunch of such students, unless we talked to all of them and got affirmative answers we can't say it's not the case, period. We could say some students say it's not the case or that students say they don't see that or it's not often the case, but we cannot be 100 percent conclusive unless we have 100 percent sampling and 100 percent consistent responses.
Likewise, in another story we led with this:
Students and faculty at Michigan State University all agreed that the lift on the ban of same-sex marriage in Michigan was bound to happen.
Let's consider it literally: all of us agree. All 50,000 students and thousands of faculty members. Which, unless we talked to each and every one of 'em simply isn't true. We are going way beyond the evidence we offer in the story, which is more along the lines of, some students and faculty said they thought so. (We talked to a whopping total of three folks, way too few on a story based on personal opinions.)
Third, fatals are still cropping up, and it's the usual bunch of sloppy mistakes: spelling businesses as businessed in a quote (and yes, the "S" key is right next to the "D" key.). Spelling batter when we meant to say better (and no, spell check won't catch that because batter is an actual word, too).
Plus, in a quote we spelled apart when we mean a part. And that misspelling changes the meaning of the quote, since apart means, separate from, independent, and a part means, an attached component of, together.
Also, in one instance we referred to the Centers for Disease Control (plural) as the Center for Disease Control (singular). First, this one's in the AP Stylebook. Second, this is a fatal, as noted in the syllabus:
Inaccurate information, misspelling of a proper name, a misquotation or an error that changes the meaning of a story ... (such as) President Barack Obamma or Department of Transport (when President Barack Obama or Department of Transportation was intended).
Plus, we referred to a charge as a Minor in Possession in one instance, and then as Minor in Consumption in another instance. In the same way one person can't have two different names, the same charge can't, either.
Also, we misinterpreted data: we said there were 5.5 per 100,000 murders (we never said 5.5 what) when in fact there were 5.5 murders per 100,000 people living in the U.S.
And here was a new one: we had a quote in which a person referred to herself as her and she, instead of me and I. My guess is we intended for this to be a paraphrase, but since we put quote marks around it we claim it's her literal words, when obviously it's not.
Another new one: we put attribution inside of quote marks, implying that the attribution was part of what was being quoted. Any error that changes the meaning of a quote is a fatal.
Overall, SIX people fataled this one, and that's six too many for the third out-of-classer. Again, this is where we should be showing the ability to execute what we learned. Here, it's the most basic lesson there is: we MUST take time to go over material and make sure we understand it entirely before we write.
After we finish, we must run spell check. And after that, we must go through our stories and highlight every noun (a person, place or thing), every number, every date, every title and every word of every quote, and then make sure what we wrote is exactly what the information is supposed to be, and conforms with AP Style, and that there are no inconsistencies.
If we did all that, then we'd have no fatals. It's as simple as that.
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