JRN 300: Your Homework For The Week of 5/31

A reminder: you will be doing visits to your assigned beats this week. Beat assignments are as follows:

Listen Up Lansing staff reporters:
Alana Easterling
Zachary Mitchell
Jack Ritchey
Jasmine Seales
Tyriq Thompson

Spartan Dispatches staff reporters:
Grant Cislo
Rachel Fradette
Gabrielle Johnson
Danielle Rodgers

This summer, what you will be doing is working as a staff reporter for your listed public news Web site run by MSU's School of Journalism. One is Listen Up Lansing is a site that's been open for a few years now, and regularly reports on trends and issues in the City of Lansing.

The other site is new. It's called Spartan Dispatches. Because it's new there are no stories on the site yet. Our job this summer will veto populate the site with trend and issue stories from the area in which you are living this summer.

This week, we will have a number of in-person exercises designed to help us get accustomed to our beats, which in journalism is what we call our coverage territories or topics. For Listen Up Lansing, our beat is the actual City of Lansing (since you are students who are here in the Lansing area this summer). For Spartan Dispatches, it's the area in and around where you are living this summer.

What I need for you to do is to make on-site visits to your beats on Tuesday, May 31; Wednesday, June 1; and Thursday, June 2. This will be our work for the week. The Listen Up Lansing team may go as a group if you'd like. Spend some time walking around your community and doing interviews -- at least 1-2 hours per day.

Then, there are three things I'd like you to submit to me via a Word document with the following heading:

Your name
Date
JRN 300
Your beat

In the document, include:

1. A list of observations. Tell me five things you noticed about your community. For example, was its downtown busy or dead or booming or kind of sad? Why or why not? Great story ideas can come from simple environmental observation, so look for things that stand out and are crying out for an explanation.

2. Questionnaire responses. I want you each to interview five random people on the street and get answers to the following questions from each: what drives you crazy about living or working here, and why? What excites you about living or working here, and why? What would you like to see changed here, and why? What do you want to never see changed and why? And what question or questions do you have about living or working here that you'd like to see answered, and why?

You may tell people you are MSU journalist students doing research for a public news Web site run by the school.

3. A list of possible trend or issue story ideas, based on what you found from environmental observation and interviewing passers-by. Please list five ideas. I will not hold you to doing any of these story ideas (though you absolutely may do them), but I want to get a sense of what you're seeing and how your observations are helping you develop things we can actually report on in the heart future.

Then, email me your submissions to omars@msu.edu. Your deadline will be Friday, June 3 at 9 a.m.

I also need you to make contact with your other group members; please see last week's blog post on your group assignments for details on why and how to do that.

Questions? Call or text me at 702-271-7983; email me at omars@msu.edu, or schedule ban appointment to see me at my office in CAS 360.

Good luck, everyone!

JRN 300: A Few Things To Keep In Mind ...

... before we start working on any stories. For example:


A few things about writing exercises:

1. You will be held to professional standards regarding deadlines and accuracy. That means ...

2. We strictly enforce deadlines. News is a deadline business, so when we say due no later than 9 a.m. Tuesday 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.

We can't just turn on good habits like a light switch when we turn pro. We need to start building good habits now. That's why these rules are in place, and that's why this class exists: so that on the day after graduation, you are immediately ready and experienced in what you need to do for the rest of your career.

JRN 300: Your Groups And First Assignments

This summer, what you will be doing is working as a staff reporter for one of two public news Web sites run by MSU's School of Journalism. One is Listen Up Lansing, which has been a site that's been open for a few years now, and regularly reports on trends and issues in the City of Lansing.

I'd like everyone to take a look at the site here. Please take a deep look at the types of stories and issues the site has covered in the past. The ones that involve trends and issues are the types of stories we want to do this summer.

The other site is new. It's called Spartan Dispatches, and you can see it here. Because it's new there are no stories on the site yet. Our job this summer will veto populate the site with trend and issue stories from the area in which you are living this summer.

You will be assigned to be a staff reporter for one site or the other; not both. Assignments are as follows:

Listen Up Lansing staff reporters (covering the City of Lansing ONLY):
Alana Easterling, easterl8@msu.edu
Zachary Mitchell, mitch710@msu.edu
Jack Ritchey, ritchey1@msu.edu
Jasmine Seales, sealesja@msu.edu
Tyriq Thompson, thom1295@msu.edu

Spartan Dispatches staff reporters:
Grant Cislo, cislogra@msu.edu (Fenton and Flint area)
Rachel Fradette, fradette4@msu.edu (Livonia and Detroit area)
Gabrielle Johnson, john3857@msu.edu (Southfield and Detroit area)
Danielle Rogers, roger271@msu.edu (West Bloomfield and Detroit area)

Next week, we will have a number of in-person exercises designed to help us get accustomed to our beats, which in journalism is what we call our coverage territories or topics. For Listen Up Lansing, our beat is the actual City of Lansing (since you are students who are here in the Lansing area this summer). For Spartan Dispatches, it's the area in and around where you are living this summer.

Before then, we have one online exercise for you to do: I want you to use Google and the U.S. Census Bureau Web site at www.census.gov to explore your beat, and come up with 10 interesting facts, figures and footnotes about your beat. It could be random facts or statistics or historical matters.   But do see what you can find, and don't just rely on the Census, Wikipedia and the City Hall Web sites; do some exploring and see what you can find. 

Don't use news articles from news sites to act as a cue; we need to find our own stories, and not ones that have already been reported on.

Then, I want you to write your answers in a Word document with the following heading:

Your name
Date
JRN 300
Your beat

... and then email it to me at omars@msu.edu. Your deadline will be Tuesday, May 31 by 9 a.m.

Next, I want your beat to meet together in-person or video conference via Google Groups or some other remote conferencing system. Please share what you discover and start helping each other out as needed regarding story ideas and sources and sharing resources like rides and such (there is one person in the Lansing group who does not have a car, so ride-sharing would certainly be helpful, though that beat can also be covered by using CATA to get around).

Also, going forward you will be responsible with knowing what story ideas your group is working on at any given time to ensure two people aren't working on the same story idea.

Then, on the week of May 31 I want you to make on-site visits to your beats on Tuesday, May 31; Wednesday, June 1; and Thursday, June 2. This will be our work for the week. The Listen Up Lansing team may go as a group or groups if you'd like. Spend some time walking around your community and doing interviews -- at least 1-2 hours per day. You may also schedule and arrange meetings with newsmakers on your beats, like mayors or police chiefs or business leaders and such.

Then, there are three things I'd like you to submit to me, using the same format as the previously-disclosed assignment. (These have to be submitted individually with your own work and answers, separate from those of others, even if you go as a group).

They are:

1. A list of observations. Tell me five things you noticed about your community. For example, was its downtown busy or dead or booming or kind of sad? Why or why not? Great story ideas can come from simple environmental observation, so look for things that stand out and are crying out for an explanation.

2. Questionnaire responses. I want you each to interview five random people on the street and get answers to the following questions from each: what drives you crazy about living or working here, and why? What excites you about living or working here, and why? What would you like to see changed here, and why? What do you want to never see changed and why? And what question or questions do you have about living or working here that you'd like to see answered, and why?

You may tell people you are MSU journalist students doing research for possible stories for a public news Web site run by the school. And that should be your standard identification throughout the semester; you're not just doing stories for a class; the stories we do will be posted to a news sites read by the public. This isn't pretend-we're-doing-news; we are doing real news stories that real people will really see. 

3. A list of possible trend or issue story ideas, based on what you found from environmental observation and interviewing passers-by. Please list five ideas. I will not hold you to doing any of these story ideas (though you absolutely may do them), but I want to get a sense of what you're seeing and how your observations are helping you develop things we can actually report on in the heart future.

Then, email me your submissions to omars@msu.edu. Your deadline will be Friday, June 3 at 9 a.m.

There will be blog updates next week where we get more into what we'll be doing through the semester, and resources that will help you do that. So please do keep checkingteh blog every weekday for updates (but not Monday, due to the holiday).

Questions? Call or text me at 702-271-7983; email me at omars@msu.edu, or schedule an appointment to see me at my office in CAS 360.

Good luck, everyone!

JRN 300: What, Exactly, Is A Trend/Issue Story?

In this class, what we want to do is produce trend or issue stories, and not event or happenings stories.

An event or happening story is about something taking place: a public event, a press conference, a business opening, etc. It's focused on who-what-when-where.

And that type of journalism isn't of much value these days, when groups and organizations can put out such basic news on their own Web sites and/or social media pages. People can easily Google on their own to get those basic facts about an event upcoming or just-occurred. People really don't need journalism for that anymore.

What people need is to discover patterns happening in their midst, and making sense of events and happenings in terms of what they mean beyond the simple event. It's getting more into the whys and hows, and more into general topics and how they broadly influence everyone as opposed to a limited event with limited impact.

For example, looking at past JRN 300 stories one trend identified was the lack of diversity in Meridian Township. Click here for the story.

Another false from Meridian Township is the growing trend of students utilizing the "schools of choice" program. Here's that story.

A trend and issue story can be based on a happening, but we need to build way beyond just the simple fact that something is happening and get the pros and cons and why does this matter? answered, like with this story about a proposed express bus system through the Lansing area.

Or here, where we're not just noting that road repairs are planned for Lansing; we are examine what exactly they are -- are are NOT doing -- and why.

Sources: We Need A Range

Journalism isn't about just getting one side and the other side. That's just enabling an argument. What we're trying to do is get a range of dies and perspectives, in hopes of capturing all the degrees of complexity of a story and discovering a larger truth as a result.

There are various types of sides we should get. For JRN 400, the instructors came up with some category terms to help illustrate a basic range of sides. Those include:

• Affected subjects: These are people affected by whatever action is central to the story. For example, for a story about East Lansing banning alcohol sales to students, an affected person would be a student. Are they ticked by this? Also affected are those who sell alcohol; what does this do to their livelihoods?
• Subject users: These would be people who take advantage or are disadvantaged by the action taking place. In addition to students and East Lansing liquor stores, this could include Lansing liquor stories: do they expect a surge in business as a result of the ban in E.L.?
• Subject drivers: Who is making the action happen? In this case, it would be the people making the decisions (the City Council, which sets city laws) and those enforcing the decisions (the police department).
• Subject experts: This would be a neutral expert, who is expert in the subject area but doesn't have a stake in this particular fight, or any particular interest in the outcome. They help the audience make sense of the various sides and their positions. For example, perhaps a political science prof could talk about local alcohol enforcement, since he or she is an expert on government. Or a history prof could talk about the history of prohibition in America and how well it's worked in general. Or a sociologist could talk about alcohol culture and how this impacts that. Please see the blog posts on neutral experts for more on these subjects.
• Subject observers: People who are part of the environment and not directly affected, but may have an interest in the outcome. Like East Lansing residents in general; are they happy that those damn kids can't get their drink on any longer?
• Subject examples: Could be any of the above, that you think best illustrates the impact of the story.

Your stories should have AT LEAST three of these categories covered.

Neutral Experts: WTF Is That?

Today, I'm going to introduce a new concept that you'll need for completing your self-reported out-of-class stories. And that concept is that of neutral experts.

Neutral experts are people who have a great deal of knowledge and/or expertise regarding the subject you're writing about, but importantly they don't have an interest in the outcome. It's someone who can offer analysis that helps readers decide which side of an issue is more credible. In a one-sided story, it helps readers evaluate whether the people you're writing about are on the up and up.

Think of it in terms of a game: you normally have one side and the other side, right? How you view the game depends on which side you're on. Unless you have a referee, that is. A neutral expert is sort of a referee, helping point on when one side is telling the truth and the other side is stretching it a bit -- or a lot.

Let's say you're doing a story on a new business coming to East Lansing. You'd certainly talk to the business owner, but he or she has an interest in telling you positive stuff, since they own the biz. You can talk to rival businesses, but they have an interest in making themselves look better than the new guy. You can talk to shoppers who do have a valid viewpoint, but they are not expert at economic development.

That's where a neutral expert like, say, a business school prof  at MSU, can come in handy. That person doesn't have a stake in whether a business succeeds or fails, but they are expert at business, and can comment on the pros and cons not based on self-interest but rather on expertise. And that expertise helps a reader sort out all the competing perspectives, and decide which ones are credible and carry the most weight and relevance.


Most news stories at least attempt to include at least one neutral expert. And you can find a neutral expert about almost anything, no matter how obscure.

Let's look at this example: during the run-up to the 2008 presidential election, a lot was made about how the Obamas would fist-bump each other. The New York Times Sunday Magazine even did a story about it.

Here's how the story started:

Is this the end of high-five? On the night in June that Barack Obamaclinched the Democratic nomination, he and his wife, Michelle, exchanged what was variously described as a “closed-fist high five,” a “fist pound,” a “knuckle buckle” and a “fist jab.” Jonathan Tilove in The New Orleans Times-Picayune called the gesture “the dap heard ’round the world,” which he felt encapsulated “the new cultural trajectory of American politics.”

Believe it or not, they found an expert on fist-bumping. And that expert was right here. Let's continue the story:

Prof. Geneva Smitherman, director of African-American language study at Michigan State University, says: “Pound is when knuckles touch in a horizontal position. That’s the gesture that Michelle and Barack used.Dap is when the knuckles touch in a vertical position. Both gestures can be used as a greeting, to signal respect, agreement, bonding.” 

Dap started among black soldiers during the Vietnam War; to give “some dap” (not usually “a” dap) means “to offer kudos, congratulations”; Prof. James Peterson of Bucknell, a hip-hop historian, says he thinks it is rooted in dapper, “neat, fashionably smart.” Pound came out of hip-hop in the late 1980s. Fist bump came later: a 1996 note in the Sports Network wire service reported that Eddie Murray of the Baltimore Orioles was accepting congratulations from baseball teammates with “high-fives, handshakes or fist bumps.” Peterson says the new phrase robs the gesture of its cultural significance, which includes the Obamas’ “quiet but pronounced in-group affiliation with all of black America.”

Hand signals have a checkered history in politics, from Prime MinisterWinston Churchill’s V-for-victory sign to the famed photo of Gov. Nelson Rockefeller “giving the finger” to hecklers to the clenched-fist salute of “black power” to Lyndon Johnson’s fondness for “pressing the flesh.”

When Michelle Obama visited Barbara Walters on “The View” on ABC, the candidate’s wife sought to soften her image with “I have to be greeted properly. Fist bump, please. It is now my signature bump. . . . I got it from the young staff. That’s the new high-five.” 

Colleges are notorious for being loaded with neutral experts (think of all your profs doing research, and all the TA's working on their thesis papers!) So really, there's no excuse for you NOT to find a neutral expert, especially here or at other schools.

Like many other schools, MSU -- in hopes of getting free publicity -- even makes it easy to find experts. The MSU News Office's Web site has an experts list, which you can link to here: http://news.msu.edu/experts/Results/?

Just looking at the first page, these are just some of the topics for which MSU can find you a neutral expert: wind power, renewable energy, water preservation, breast cancer, breast cancer education, medical education, microfinance, filmmaking, documentary production, sensors and nano-bisensor devices for biodefense, health diagnostics and theraputics, child welfare, biblical references and history, Samartian population, meteorology and climatology, Isreali-Palestinian conflict, Israeli politics, society and culture, international relations, U.S. foreign policy, school funding, school choice, school district building projects, the effects of mass communications, health communications, communications campaigns, international relations, the Middle East, Muslim issues, the early formation of galaxies, tax and expenditure policies, state and local public finance, poverty and income distribution, campus sustainability, Internet governance, new wireless technologies, telecommunications regulation and policy, bone and tissue engineering, labor markets, chaos theory, alternative dispute resolution, primitive stars, galaxy formation, labor unions and collective bargaining, international and domestic labor policy, work and family policy, flexible scheduling policy, tropical diseases, malaria, AIDS/HIV . . .

. . . and those are just a FEW of the subject areas!

You can also search by typing in a topic here: http://news.msu.edu/experts/

I took some general topics and looked for experts. Like Google, sometimes you have to try the same general term in different ways (like if you're searching for an expert in campus safety, you try that term, then campus, then safety, then police, and so on).

Under "campus living" I found one expert. For "transportation" I found two. There were three each for "housing" and "discrimination" and "elections." I found four each for "police" and "campus" and "drug." For "safety" I found 14! And "health" produced 35!

And you can filter by these general topic areas: agriculture and environment; arts and humanities; athletics; board and administration; business, economy, law and communications; education; family and social issues; health, medicine and veterinary medicine; international; science and technology; staff and faculty; students and campus life; tuition, costs and enrollment.Plus, there's always Google, right? And other schools as well. And think tanks. And private research institutions.

Wherever you find a good one, it's critical that you do. Journalism isn't about just getting both sides of the story. Getting one side and the other side and nothing else is just enabling a fight.

We're about trying to arrive at a verifiable version of the truth based on facts and checking out what people have to say, right? That's the role a neutral expert helps accomplish.

To paraphrase legendary baseball announcer and willful drunk Harry Caray -- and this might be the only smart thing he ever said in his life, God rest his soul -- there are three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth.

We need to get more than two out of three. We need all of 'em. And we need our out-of-class stories to cite AT LEAST one neutral expert!

So go find some neutral experts!

Neutral Experts: Imagine If ...

. . . if this story didn't have a neutral expert. Or two. A reader would just get two people arguing. And that's not journalism.

Journalism isn't about simply getting one side and the other side; it's about fact-testing the sides that are presented through the use of empirical evidence and expert testimony that helps make sense of what was said, and helps the reader determine what is true -- and what is not.

In this instance, the reporter didn't simply stop at reporting an argument over the Constitution between two politicians during a debate; rather the reporter went and found an expert in constitutional law who did NOT participate in the debate, to help answer what was right and wrong from the various positions claimed by the candidates.

And that completes journalism's true mission, which isn't simply to report the facts. Today, it's about helping the audience make sense of the facts, without partisan bias. 


Here's a link, and here's the text (with the neutral expert's passage highlighted. See the difference it makes?):

O'Donnell questions separation of church, state

By BEN EVANS, Associated Press Writer 

WILMINGTON, Del. – Republican Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell of Delaware on Tuesday questioned whether the U.S. Constitution calls for a separation of church and state, appearing to disagree or not know that the First Amendment bars the government from establishing religion.

The exchange came in a debate before an audience of legal scholars and law students at Widener University Law School, as O'Donnell criticized Democratic nominee Chris Coons' position that teaching creationism in public school would violate the First Amendment by promoting religious doctrine.

Coons said private and parochial schools are free to teach creationism but that "religious doctrine doesn't belong in our public schools."

"Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?" O'Donnell asked him.

When Coons responded that the First Amendment bars Congress from making laws respecting the establishment of religion, O'Donnell asked: "You're telling me that's in the First Amendment?"

Her comments, in a debate aired on radio station WDEL, generated a buzz in the audience.

"You actually audibly heard the crowd gasp," Widener University political scientist Wesley Leckrone said after the debate, adding that it raised questions about O'Donnell's grasp of the Constitution.

Erin Daly, a Widener professor who specializes in constitutional law, said that while there are questions about what counts as government promotion of religion, there is little debate over whether the First Amendment prohibits the federal government from making laws establishing religion.

"She seemed genuinely surprised that the principle of separation of church and state derives from the First Amendment, and I think to many of us in the law school that was a surprise," Daly said. "It's one thing to not know the 17th Amendment or some of the others, but most Americans do know the basics of the First Amendment."

O'Donnell didn't respond to reporters who asked her to clarify her views after the debate.

During the exchange, she said Coons' views on creationism showed that he believes in big-government mandates.

"Talk about imposing your beliefs on the local schools," she said. "You've just proved how little you know not just about constitutional law but about the theory of evolution."

Coons said her comments show a "fundamental misunderstanding" of the Constitution.

The debate, their third in the past week, was more testy than earlier ones.

O'Donnell began by defending herself for not being able to name a recent Supreme Court decision with which she disagrees at a debate last week. She said she was stumped because she largely agrees with the court's recent decisions under conservative chief justices John Roberts and William Rehnquist.

"I would say this court is on the right track," she said.

The two candidates repeatedly talked over each other, with O'Donnell accusing Coons of caving at one point when he asked the moderator to move on to a new question after a lengthy argument.

"I guess he can't handle it," she said.

O'Donnell, a tea party favorite who stunned the state by winning the GOP primary last month in her third Senate bid in five years, called Coons a liberal "addicted to a culture of waste, fraud and abuse." 

Coons, who has held a double-digit lead in recent polls, urged voters to support him as the candidate of substance, with a track record over six years as executive of the state's most populous county. He said O'Donnell's only experience is in "sharpening the partisan divide but not at bridging it."

Copyright © 2010 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

AP Style: A Cheat Sheet

ADDRESSES

Use the abbreviations Ave., Blvd., and St. only with a numbered addressed. Spell them out and capitalize when part of a formal street name without a number. Lowercase and spell out when used alone or with more than one street name.

1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Pennsylvania Avenue

Massachusetts and Pennsylvania avenues.

AGES

Always use figures. Use hyphens for ages expressed as adjectives before a noun or as substitutes for a noun.

The boy is 5 years old. 

The 5-year-old house.

DIRECTIONS AND REGIONS

Lowercase north, south, northeast, etc. when they indicate compass direction. Capitalize when they designate regions.

He drove west.

Northwestern is in the Midwest.

MONTHS

When a month is used with a specific date, abbreviate only Jan., Feb., Aug., Sept., Oct., Nov. and Dec. Sepll out when using alone, or with a year alone.

January 2012

Feb. 2, 2012

STATE NAMES

Spell out the names of the 50 states when they stand alone. Abbreviate when used with the name of a city, town, villega or military bass. Remember that postal code abbreviations are NOT state abbreviations. The names of eight states are never abbreviated in datelines or text: Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Ohio, Texas and Utah.

TIMES

Use figures except for noon and midnight. Use a colon to separate hours from minutes. Avoid redundancies such as 10 a.m. this morning.

9-11 a.m.

3:30 p.m.

TITLES

In general, confine capitalization to formal titles used directly before an individual’s name.

Professor Roger Boye

The professor gave the lecture.

Job Shadows: A How-To Reminder

The job shadow assignment in JRN 300 is unique from our other work in that it is not intended for publication.

It is intended to help students explore career options.

To do this, choose a person who is doing a job that you might like to do and plan to spend half a day with them as they work. This is one of the last things due, but set it up early so you are not in a tight spot late in the semester. It might take several tries to set this up. Some people, we have found, are not responsive.

Your are to shadow a journalism professional, not another student. We do not shadow people at The State News, WKAR or places where we have interned.

The person may work in any form of news media. They can work in any city.

THE QUESTIONS

Learn largely by observing what they do, and use your own questions. Here are a few you can use:

* What is a really fun day on this job?

* What happens on a terrible day?

* What are the best parts of the job?

* What are the worst parts?

* How is the job changing -- and how fast?

* How did you get this job?

* What are its basic requirements?

* What do you like/dislike about it?

* Is job security an issue? How do you cope with that.

THE REPORT

You will not write a news article about this, as it is not a news story. You will be writing a 300-word report. About two thirds should describe what you saw and heard. About a third should describe how well this job -- or parts of it -- would fit you. Include any lessons you learned about your career path or getting a job someday.

Story Ideas: A Starting Point For Discovery

HOW TO FIND GOOD STORY IDEAS

We can make finding good story ideas so much harder than it really should be. So often, we are looking for the spectacular and the obvious, when many great stories are hidden in plain sight, if only we would be curious and then act upon that curiosity.

Case in point: not long ago a documentary filmmaker found a sensational topic that led to an award-winning movie: seven immigrant brothers,essentially living and growing up locked into a small New York City apartment.

The documentarian didn’t find the topic by Googling it or from having super-secret sources leak their whereabouts to her. It was much simpler than that: she wandered NYC’s streets looking for something interesting, and then when she found something she got nosy. From The New York Times:

Ms. Moselle said she first met the brothers in 2010 as they walked “in a pack” down First Avenue. All of them were wearing black Ray-Ban sunglasses inspired by “Reservoir Dogs,” and their long hair was blowing in the wind. “I just started running after them to find out more and was instantly obsessed,” she said.

That form of story-finding doesn’t have a formal name, but what I call it is …

>>> ENVIRONMENTAL OBSERVATION. What do you notice when going around 

your community? What things do you come across that makes you stop and stare or wonder or ask a question? What makes you go “wow!” or “WTF?” or “huh?”

For example, some time back a reporter from The State News was at a basketball game as a fan, and noticed there was some odd-looking guy mimicking the band director as the band played during breaks in play.  Instead of just moving on, the reporter decided to try and find out what this person’s deal was.

The reporter ended up getting a great story about this person with Down syndrome who became an unofficial leader of the Spartan brassband, which empowered the audience in two ways: if you never noticed him, you had someone to look for. And if you did notice him, now you knew the back story.

Environmental observation is a great way to come up with story ideas that are original and organic, and to which the audience can actually relate. It takes things in the day-to-day world they actually inhabit and puts a spotlight on it.

>>> WHAT ARE PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT? When you are having lunch with friends or when you are on the bus or when you are at a party, what are people talking about? Complaining about? Worrying about? What do they look forward to, or dread? Often, these are great trends and issues to further explore.

To cite another piece of student journalist work, a few years back everyone seemed to be talking about “friends with benefits.” Is it a good thing or not? How did it go for people who tried this? One State News reporter turned that talk into a trend story, further investigating the issueand combing anecdotal examples with scholarly research on the subject.

This technique allows us to identify which trends and issues are relevant in people’s lives, and that’s no small thing. Journalism needs to connect with the audience to be successful, and while we can’t always necessarily be interesting, we can always be relevant and useful to our audience by reporting on things that matter in how their lives actually play out.

We can stimulate this process by quizzing people around us. It can help to ask leading questions. You ask an MSU student the simple question of what’s going on around campus or what news they want to read about, they may look at you and simply shrug. You ask one what ticks them off, and they’re far more likely to give you a laundry list of topics – parking! MIPs! Textbook prices! – that can give you good direction.

>>> WHAT ARE PEOPLE ACTING UPON? Based on looking at the day-to-day lives of people around you – friends, acquaintances, coworkers, peers, grown-ups, everybody – what are people needing to do? And can anticipating what is ahead of their life paths help us identify story ideas on trends and issue they will soon be facing, or need to be aware of ahead of time?

Let’s say your target audience consists of college students. Thinking of topics they will be acting upon includes looking for internships for the summer and jobs after graduation; paying back student loans; getting used to post-graduate lives without much free time, and so forth. 

>>> WHAT DO THE EXPERTS KNOW? Every field has an endless amount of professionals that spend their whole careers delving into topics at which we are novice. Tapping into their insights can help us discover trends and issues from a more researched perspective.

For example, of you’re a police reporter you may regularly check in with the police chief to ask what’s new. You may keep several beat cops as sources to see if they’re noticing anything new on the street level. A university criminology professor may be someone you visit every now and then to see what trends they are picking up on. You may make a habit of checking the Web for articles from news organizations and think tanks and universities on crime to see what’s new.

>>> WHAT DOES DATA TELL US? Data can help us visualize trends that we can then start asking people about to get explanations as to why a trend or issue is happening. Numbers create questions that then lead us to look for answers, which with we populate a story.

For example, let’s consider a very basic document – our debit card statements. Looking at it could tell me a lot about what you’re going through these days and what your immediate priorities are and how they’ve shifted simply by looking at what you’re spending your money on. (Why so much on booze lately? You’re spending a lot less on books this year than last; why is that? What was that urgent care charge last month about?)

Finding and looking at budgets and studies and surveys and spending patterns and such can help us not only make sense of issues we know about, but discover issues we didn’t even know existed.

Plus, the U.S. Census is a treasure trove of facts about a community -- how many people work out-of-town? What is the average commute? How many people have cable TV? -- in addition to the questions about race and wealth and such that can lead to trend stories.

>>> ALL OF THESE APPROACHES SHARE ONE COMMONALITY: we find and develop story ideas by tapping into the eyes, ears and brains of various perspectives onto the world: everyday people and expert personalities; looking at numbers and looking down the road, etc. It’s looking at our target community from various perspectives, and trying to put ourselves in the shoes of as many others as possible to see what they see.

Being a reporter looking for story ideas is like being a sports scout looking for the next superstar: the more eyes and ears you have helping you, the more you’ll find and the better you’ll do. This is no different. In journalism, we write or shoot or blog or whatever based on what we find, so we need to cast a wide net at ground level.

>>> DON’T JUST GOOGLE FOR IDEAS. While Googling is a good way to find experts and data, for example, it’s a terrible way to find story ideas in general. That’s because if we can Google for a story idea, so can our audience. And if the topic is something they can already find out about on their own, then why would they need us?

The role of a journalist has always been to discover and share what people can’t discover for themselves, and to make sense of what people already know. The age of the search engine has raised the bar for us as journalists, so we need to concentrate on finding what our audience has neither the time nor ability to do themselves.

And quite often, that simply means we need to be curious, and then act on our curiosity.

Finding Story Ideas: Step Away From The Google

Reporters: Get offline and visit one of these 24 places to find your next story

TOPIC: 

• BASIC JOURNALISM

By David Brewer

Journalists working in a modern newsroom benefit from a steady stream of wires stories, social media feeds, and messaging tools enabling instant collaboration with sources - all delivering information to the desktop.

But before the Internet, reporters had to rely on other means for finding stories and verifying facts. And it often meant getting out and about, making contacts, following leads, reaching dead ends, turning round, and starting again. A lot of the skills involved in so-called shoe–leather reporting still hold good today.

Shoe-leather reporting

If you turn up for the daily news meeting without a story idea, you're in the wrong job.

News releases, diary events and the wires play their part in the daily news diet - and, sadly, a large part for some media organizations - but the journalism resulting from such sources will always be stimulated and prompted by others.

A journalist should be living and breathing stories 24 hours a day, seven days a week and 365 days a year. This means that there is no excuse for turning up in the newsroom with a blank mind and no ideas. Real journalism knows no shift patterns – they are there only to ensure that the newsroom works well. Journalism is a vocation, not a job.

So, what were the sources of stories in the days before the web? Here are 24 tips for potential story sources to ensure that you will always have ideas and will never turn up at the morning news meeting looking for a place to hide.

All these suggestions come from the days I was a local newspaper reporter and was judged on what stories I found, rather than the stories I was given.

Real journalism knows no shift patterns - it's a vocation, not a job.

Your foot soldiers and spies

These are the people who, on your behalf, will spot changes and notice the unusual. They include those who are delivering mail, newspapers, milk and groceries. They are particularly useful contacts. But you have to invest time to get to know them - preferably on first name terms. Security staff at clubs, delivery drivers, post-room staff, and local bar staff are all useful contacts. Build a network of these contacts.

Make friends with anyone who drives or walks around your patch every day.

Window shopping

Local meetings, lost and found items; in fact all the standard hand-written adverts that appear in shop window could turn into a story. Many are rich pickings, but you will probably have to jot down the numbers and make a few calls before that becomes apparent.

Always look carefully at all the adverts posted in local shops.

Everyone has a story to tell

Start with public figures, but expand to include everyone. Artists, retired academics, shopkeepers, business leaders, union leaders, a cleaner, a road sweeper. Draw up a list. Create a diary. Do at least one interview a week. Some may be rubbish and may never be used. Others could be explosive. Interview people - anyone: Everyone has a story.

Daily calls

It used to be called "doing the calls" on my first newspaper. Every day, one of us would be sent to call at the front desk of the local police, fire and ambulance station. We could have done it on the phone, but we wouldn’t have got half the tip-offs had we not knocked on doors and chatted about events over a cup of tea. This personal touch could also mean that you get an early heads-up when a big story is about to break. Visit the emergency services regularly.

What’s on at the local court?

You have to be careful here in terms of legal issues, but if you know your patch you will know some of the names listed. This source of stories is more about being aware and alert. Always ensure that you have the court listings. Once you have the listing you can do some background digging. You won't be able to publish your background research as a story until the case is over and the verdict delivered, but once it is you will be ahead of the rest with a background piece.

Court listings are great sources for upcoming stories.

Planning and development

The local planning office is often a source of great stories. It's there where you will be able to find out what’s been approved, rejected, and what is subject to appeal. Check the names of the developers. Look through the records. Jot down the areas where an appeal is under way. Go to the site and talk to residents about what they think about the decision. Keep digging; you will find some great stories in the local planning department. Look out for new building work and then go through the records to track the planning process. Look for the unusual.

Look closely at appeals, there is usually a good story.

Original surveys

Buy a cheap clipboard and write down 10 questions on a burning local issue. Then go out to shopping areas, railway stations etc and invite people to take part. Try to interview 100 people. Read it all back and think through what the survey is telling you. Think about who you should talk to next to turn your research into a story. Make sure you ask those you question whether you can quote them. Some will want to remain anonymous; that's fine as long as the quote is real and you can stand by it.

Don't be afraid to carry out your own survey on a local issue.

Local concerns

Again, get out in the street and ask people what concerns them most, what they would like to see changed, what annoys them the most, what they would like to see happen in the town. What they like, what they don’t like. Categorize the topics raised into issues. So, for example, if someone is concerned about the time it takes to see a doctor or get an appointment for an operation, list that under 'Health'. If someone is angry that the last bus home is at 10pm, list that under 'Transport'. Try to find 10 local issues with 10 local topics under each. Then work through them producing original journalism addressing local concerns.

Listen to your audience to find out what they want you to cover.

A year ago today

Recording recent history: Keep your own news diary each year and jot down all the stories you covered along with relevant contact details. Then always look back at what you were covering six months and a year ago. Check with the contacts you spoke to in the past. Ask them whether anything has changed. A responsible journalist will always follow-up on important stories. Your follow up will probably present you with a new exclusive – and you will have some great archive material to support the news update.

Create your own, unique, forward planning diary.

Local statistics and trends

Turn numbers into stories. Think through how the town you are working in compares with neighboring towns, such as whether it is growing, shrinking, has more or fewer people in work, has a younger or older average age, has more expensive or cheaper property etc. Talk to local politicians. Don’t just take the statistics at face value. Ask questions. Keep pressing until those with the information give you what you want.

Statistics are stories, not just numbers.

Trends can also be a great source of news. Talk to academics, business leaders, the man and woman in the street. Get to know about how things are changing and find out why they are changing. What do the old think of the young and what do the young think of the old? What are the benefits, what are the risks, where are the opportunities, where are the threats? Keep gnawing away at the bone to ensure that you get all the meat off it.

Comparisons can be odious, but can make good stories.

Garden maintenance workers

Talk to the garden maintenance workers. They often have a van and a trailer stacked with rakes, spades, bits of trees and shrubs etc, and they usually take lots of tea breaks. Catch them at the right time and they will often be happy to chat. They have some great stories; treasures found, most unusual shrubs, biggest snakes, decline of one species and the flourishing of another. Dig through the weeds for human interest stories.

Pest-control officers

There will be companies in your town specialising in pest control. The biggest wasp nest in the most unusual place, the fattest rats, the worst cockroach infestation - all are the makings of great stories. And those dealing with pests are usually well-informed and keen to talk about what they have found. Talk to those who know how to smell a rat.

Rubbish and recycling

What are the trends? What is being reused? What is being thrown away? What are the door-to-door recycling teams looking for? What happens to the material? Who buys it? In what ways could people recycle more? Look for the extremes – the biggest, the most valuable, the strangest etc. Recycling centres are a rich source of stories.

A day in the life

This can provide a rich source of local-interest stories. Everyone has a story to tell. Ask permission to follow someone around for their working day. Ask them questions all the time. Watch what they do. Look for the unusual. Their lives will touch on the lives of others, too, so bring them into the story. News is about daily life; don't be afraid to investigate it.

Who goes where

Which airlines use the local airports? Where do they fly? Is travel on the increase or decrease? Who is travelling? Are they leisure or business travellers? What are the business links? The same with railway and bus stations. Who is going where to do what? Sounds simple, but this, too, can uncover some interesting leads that may be worth expanding on a slow news day. It's amazing how much people will talk in the arrivals hall of an airport if they have had a) a great trip b) an eventful trip c) a bad journey.

Arrivals, departures and international connections can be newsworthy.

Local infrastructure

Is the town expanding? If it is, how will it cope? Roads, schools, policing, hospitals, doctors, utilities etc. Good news for the politicians, the businesses and the banks may not always be great news for the community. Don't get carried away with all the hype. Is the infrastructure sufficient? Are there enough schools, roads, hospitals? Is the water supply adequate? You will get a steady stream of PR (public relations) press releases. Don't take what you are given on face value. Dig deeper. Is your community coping or creaking? It's your job to find out.

Charity shops

Junk and jewels: Is trade up or down? What is most in demand? What is the most common donation? Have they found anything unusual? Money in pockets, rare stamps, expensive heirlooms. Charity shops are often a useful barometer of the local economic climate and can reveal stories of hardship and social struggles - as well as generosity.

Are local charities struggling and, if so, what are the implications?

DIY stores

What is selling most? You can then check out how that is affecting local tradespeople. Get permission from the manager to talk to staff about DIY disasters – these always make great stories. Talk to customers, too. They may be prepared to let you go round to their homes and take pictures. You are looking for the unusual. I once came across a man who had a fully plumbed bathroom suite at the bottom of the garden because he liked to wash in the open air. Strange man, but he was happy to talk about it and it gave me a front page lead.

DIY nightmares. A great source of human interest stories.

The marginalized

You should be representing the whole community. Find out if anyone is getting a rough deal. Are some shunned and avoided? If so, why? Who are they? What is being done for them? Visit them and get their side of the story. Then seek out any other side. Talk to people at the job centres or those hanging around during the day.

Talk to those who others ignore, and take on to tell their story.

Local petitions

The usual stuff: speeding, accident black spots, dog mess, litter, bonfires, noise pollution, immigration, travellers etc. Find out who is campaigning, ask why, and then look for all sides of the story. Every town has local pressure groups. You need to know who they are, what they are campaigning about, and what their diaries look like.

Always talk to petitioners because they all have stories you should be covering.

Health and safety

Keep in touch with the watchdogs for alerts and ailments. Food standards agents carrying out restaurant checks, building regulations officers monitoring so-called cowboy builders, the trading standards officers who are keeping an eye on dodgy goods etc. Don’t wait for the news release. Make contact with those who carry out the checks and talk to them regularly. It can take such departments a couple of days to agree and write a news release, but they may tell you what they are investigating earlier in the process and you can get the exclusive.

Food warnings, dodgy appliances, cowboy builders - all make good stories.

Lost and found offices

There will probably be one at the local airport, the main railway terminal and bus station; the lost and found office is often a treasure trove of great stories. Ask for permission to be taken round, interview one of the staff and take pictures. If you get too many stories, keep some for a thin news day.Check out your lost property offices for unusual items.

Hospitals and A & E

Many people visiting your hospital's accident and emergency waiting room could be a potential story. People with their hands stuck in jars, children who have swallowed coins. Not all will talk, but it's amazing how readily some people will tell you how they came to grief.

Follow the flashing blue lights.

Farmers, food and famine

Always find time to talk to farmers. This is a tip recommended by Jonathan Marks. Those working the land will always have a story to tell. It could be about a new pest that's destroying crops, it could be about the benefits/unfairness of government policy. It could be about cheap imports destroying their livelihoods. Make time to talk to them to find out what is the story behind local food production.

Harvest some great stories by talking to those who work the land.

And if you fail...

If you try all these leads and still end up without a story idea, you are probably not cut out to be a journalist. You might find a career in processing information prepared by others, but you are probably not the sort of person who is going to produce original journalism that digs where others don't, shines a light in dark places, and reflects the real issues facing your audience. Please consider another career.

David Brewer is a journalist and media strategy consultant who set up and runs Media Helping Media. He delivers media strategy training and consultancy services worldwide. His business details are at Media Ideas International Ltd. He tweets @helpingmedia.

This post first appeared on Media Helping Media and is published on IJNet with permission.

Media Helping Media is a training information site that provides free media resources for journalists working in transition states, post-conflict countries and areas where freedom of expression and media freedom is under threat.