JRN 102 - Fundamentals of News Reporting

 
Description
This course serves as an introduction to basic news writing as practiced by journalists and public relations professionals. It covers the basics of news and information gathering; identifying, characterizing and targeting an audience; interviewing; and crafting accurate and informative news stories and features. Students gain hands-on experience by writing a mix of news and feature stories publishable in print or electronic media form. Students also engage in peer review and editing as well as revision of their own work.

1. Generate story ideas that reflect an understanding of the elements of newsworthiness and audience.
2. Identify newsgathering methods such as interviews, documents and reference materials.
3. Identify the ethical principles associated with news reporting.
4. Apply newsgathering methods and ethical principles to report on story ideas.
5. Identify basic and common structures of news and feature stories.
6. Compose effective leads (summary and non-summary).
7. Create concise, well-organized stories that include accurate and meaningful quotations correctly attributed.
8. Identify Associated Press Stylebook principles for newswriting.
9. Apply Associated Press writing style principles to news and feature stories.
10. Evaluate your own work and that of others for clarity, accuracy, appropriate style, grammatical correctness and tone.

1. Newsworthiness
2. Audience
3. Newsgathering methods
4. Source attribution
5. Journalistic ethics and values
6. News stories vs. feature stories
7. Inverted pyramid
8. Lead
9. Body
10. Tail
11. News editing
12. Associated Press Stylebook principles

• Communication
• Critical Thinking & Problem Solving
• Information Literacy

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