Overall, we had some hits and misses with our first drafts. That's not surprising; you're new to your beats and still trying to calibrate what you're supposed to be doing and what it's supposed to look like when you're done.
Still, let's try to learn from what e've done, so we can do better next time. Areas where I think e need to work on include:
* Stories that weren't very developed. Really, your draft should read like a finished story, with the idea that before the draft deadline we do the vast majority of our reporting and between the draft and final deadlines we're simply tweaking things. Too many people turned in work that ended substantial reporting still to be done.
The reality is, we simply don't have enough time between the draft and final deadlines to do substantial reporting and expect to have a solid final story. We need to start reporting on our stories as soon as our pitches are approved, and your reporting has to be substantially completed by the time you file your draft if you are not to really scramble to get your final version done adequately.
We don't have a word minimum, but for a story to be substantially-enough reported I can't imagine you'd ever have reason to turn in a text story that's less than 700 words, or a video story that's under 2 minutes.
* Not enough sourcing. Too many people were taking one side of a story; maybe two. There was a lack of examination of other perspectives. There was a lack of neutral experts. And a lack of data to support your conclusions. Please look at the earlier blog posts regarding sourcing and make sure you're getting a broad array.
* Not enough sourcing from within your beat. Too many people were citing people from MSU or East Lansing for their stories, even though they are writing for a publication that doesn't cover East Lansing or MSU, that's read by people who don't live in East Lansing or go to MSU. That's like writing a story about Detroit for the Detroit Free Press and quoting everyone from Cleveland.
We need to talk to people who live and work in our beats. That means we have to get out to our beats and find such people. We're not going to find them in East Lansing or at MSU. Really, the only people we should be quoting from outside our beats are our neutral experts. Pretty much everyone else needs to come from within our physical beats.
* We're writing before we're reporting. Too many stories have a main point and supporting points even though no or very few interviews had yet been done in those subject areas!
This isn;'t a term paper, where you start with the point your teacher wants you to support and then you find info that conforms to that point. This is a news story, where we don't know how we want to lay out a story until after we have talked to a wide range of sources and we see what kind of story we discovered.
It's not about presuming what the news is; if that's all we did, then the audience doesn't need us. We report, and then we write; not the other way around. We write based on the facts we discover by interviewing; not based on presumptions before interviewing.
* A lack of attention to detail. Like town names. It's not Saint Johns or St. John's, for example, it's St. Johns. That's what the city's own Web site says. We need to play attention to detail and get our basics exactly right. Getting basics wrong will quickly make you appear as unknowing impostors to our audience, which consists of people who live there and know the basics by heart.
If we are to be credible to them, then we have to get the basics right, every time.
* A lack of attribution. Too many stories offered information, but didn't say where the info was from. We need to be sure that if we get data or facts or history, we list from where we learned what we learned.
* Borrowing from other media. That's a no-no. Don't cite another newspaper or TV station or news Web site; see where they got the info from, and then contact those sources directly, yourself. Media can't just cannibalize from other media; at some point, someone has to get the info first-hand.
* Not conforming to AP Style. We were very sloppy overall in this regard. Please proof your work and make sure you are conforming to AP Style rules.
The solutions? Actually, there's one, and it shouldn't be hard:
* We need to think back to what we did in JRN 200, and do it here. All the good traits and habits we learned in JRN 200 regarding story structure and sourcing and attribution and fact-checking weren't meant to be left behind in JRN 200. Rather, those skills -- especially those developed doing out-of-class stories -- were supposed to be brought here and used as a foundation that we build upon in JRN 300 with beat reporting.
Everything we learn in one class is expected to be something you'll know and use for the rest of your career, both academic and professional.
We simply don't have time to redo JRN 200 here. That's what JRN 200 was for. I can help people on particular points, but starting from scratch and reviewing EVERYTHING from the start simply isn't realistic.
So, look back at your JRN 200 semester. Think about the rules and principles and techniques you worked on there. And start doing it here. Then, when this semester is done, take what you did in JRN 200 and JRN 300, and use those skills as the foundation in other classes.
Right now, I'm teaching JRN 400, and I can tell you that you will be thrown into the deep end of the pool from the start. What we learn here you will need there, and you'll need to be ready to act on what you learned in JRN 300 on your first day of JRN 400.
You know how to do this. You did it in JRN 200. Now, let's do it here.
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