JRN 200: Your Friday 5/29 Homework

Yes, you have weekend homework. Sorry, folks. but in a summer class we have to move fast.

Below are summaries of the latest readings in RFTM, plus a writing exercise that will be due by 9 a.m. Monday via email. Please follow the directions exactly as listed.

A few things about writing exercises:

1. They should be timed. That's the way we do it when it's an in-person class. It's hard for me to enforce it in an online class, but we are working on your ability to write on deadline, so I ask that you adhere to recommended time frames in which you are expected to read background material, write your writing and proofread your work. For today's assignment you should complete your work within 1 hour, 15 minutes of starting.

2. We strictly enforce deadlines. News is a deadline business, so when we say due no later than 9 a.m. Monday I mean it's received by me no later than exactly 9 a.m. Monday. Not 9:01 on Monday. Not that you sent it at 9 a.m. Monday. Missing a deadline -- even by just one second -- will result in an automatic 0.0 on all assignments.

Missing deadlines -- even by seconds -- is unacceptable in journalism. Is there a journalistic value reason for that? You bet. An editor can work with a piece o' crap story, no matter how bad it is. They can fix it and clean it up sufficiently as long as they have it. But they can't work with nothing. Nor can you fill up a newspaper page or a TV script with nothing.

Think about it: have you ever watched the 11 o'clock news, when they've started the show by saying, "Our scripts aren't ready yet; come back in 10 minutes"? Me neither. That's because it simply isn't allowed to happen. And those who may be tardy with the occasional deadline are soon asked to find something else to do for a living.

It's a lesson I'd rather have you appreciate the severity of in this class, than on your first internship or job. Here, it's a shitty grade on one assignment. Out there, it's a derailment of your professional career.

It's your responsibility to make sure you don't forget an assignment, as it is in the real world. It's your responsibility that you're not even one second late on your deadline, as it is in the real world. And as in the real world, it's your responsibility to make sure your assignment is routed to the right place, which in this case is omars@msu.edu.

Them's the breaks, folks. It sucks, but let's at least learn from these errors so we don't repeat 'em.

3. We strictly enforce accuracy. Journalism isn't about writing; it's about getting it right. Getting things right is key to credibility, and there's no such thing as a small error. (After all, if you can't get the little things right, why would readers believe we're correct with the big stuff?)

To motivate you to make fact-checking routines a standard part of what you do, in this class on any assignment any fact error (which we call fatals) will automatically result in a 1.0 on the assignment.

Harsh? Kinda. But it's to get you to embrace good fact-checking habits as part of your routines. And it's not as harsh as what you may face professionally. When I was still a professional journalist, one newspaper I worked at had this rule: in any one year a first "fatal" would result in a verbal reprimand; a second a written reprimand; a third meant I needed to write up an action plan to avoid fatals; a fourth fatal meant an unpaid suspension; and a fifth fatal meant I could be fired.

And that was on writing between 200 and 250 stories a year!

So, the margin of error is tiny. And the problem is, in a natural state speed and accuracy do not go well together. Yet that's what we have to reconcile in doing journalism. We have to get used to writing fast AND correctly. I'd rather have you learn a harsh lesson (and improve from there) when the consequence is a bad grade on one assignment, rather than getting fired from your job.

Please take the fact-checking habits we've blogged about earlier and work them into your routines. And try to dedicate as much time to fact-checking as you do writing.

For example, let's say you have one hour to do an assignment. Ideally, I'd like you to spend the first 15 minutes going over the story information and making sure you understand what you are about to write about. Then, spend the next 30 minutes writing. After that, spend the last 15 minutes proofreading your work.

That way, in the end you spend one minute doing quality control for every minute spent writing. And if it means your story seems short, so be it. I'd rather have you write short than wrong.

This will be the last update prior to Monday. There will be no new posts Saturday or Sunday. Just be sure to finish your weekend homework by the prescribed deadline, and check back in with the blog Monday morning.

Otherwise, have a nice weekend, folks!