JRN 300: Your First Beat Visits

On the week of Jan. 23-25, we won't meet here, as a class. Instead, you and your beat group will make a field trip each class day to your beats to start checking them out and meeting with people. You may schedule and arrange meetings with newsmakers on your beats, like mayors or police chiefs or business leaders and such.

I ask that you make arrangements with your group and make sure everyone has a ride to and from their beat. Group together into as few cars as possible, please.

Each day, when you get to your beat I first need you to do something for attendance verification purposes: I need someone to take a group selfie in front of a town landmark (a "Welcome To ... " sign, City Hall, a police or fire station, etc.) and then have one person text it to me at 702-271-7983 before 10 a.m. each day. Everyone who shows up in the selfie will be counted as present; anyone who does not will be listed as absent.

Then, go about your business. There will be a few things each person will have to individually turn in after their trips.

First, due by 10 a.m. Wednesday, Jan. 24 will be ...

* A list of observations. Tell me five things you noticed about your community during your beat visits. 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.

Then, due by 10 a.m. Friday, Jan. 26 will be ... 

* A list of possible trend or issue story ideas, based on what you found from environmental observation and interviewing passers-by during your beat visits. Please list three 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 near future.

Finally, due by 10 a.m. Monday, Jan. 29 will be ...

* Questionnaire responses. During your beat visits want you each to interview three random people WHO CANNOT BE MSU STUDENTS OR EMPLOYEES 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 Spartan News Room, 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. 

Please do all these assignments in Word documents with the following in the upper left-hand corner (as we should with all assignments from here on out):

• Your name
• The deadline date
• The assignment slug (in this case, observations and story ideas and questionnaire responses)

Then, attach your Word doc to an email and send it to me at omars@msu.edu (that's omar with an "s" at the end; please make sure you get that right as there is a omar@msu.edu who does NOT forward misspent emails to me).

We will return to meeting in class as a class on Tuesday, Jan. 30 at 8 a.m.

Questions? Call or text me at 702-271-7983; email me at omars@msu.edu, or see me during my listed office hours at The State News Building, 435 E. Grand River Ave., 2nd floor/alley entrance.

Good luck, everyone!

JRN 300: Our Beats ...

... will be ...

* City of East Lansing: Jada F., Andy H., Sarah H., Jack K., Shannon M. News page link here.

* City of Mason: Ian K., Adelyn P. News page link here.

* Ingham County: Derrick N., Remington S., Jacob V. News page link here.

Please take a thorough look at your assigned news Web sites, which are hyperlinked above, and get a feel for the types of stories, mediums and issues offered by previous classes. That will give you an idea of the types of stories, mediums and issues going into this semester.

Plus, Google your city, township and county names and access the Wikipedia and Census pages for each. That will give you a sense of the background and history of each community that will now be your beat for the rest of this semester, and from which we will need to produce all of our stories.

You will be responsible for getting to and from your beat. Most people without cars have been assigned beats that are accessible by public transportation.  People who have cars are strongly urged to help out people on the same beat as you who lack cars, and offer ride-sharing and car-pooling as needed.

Now, I need you guys to get together in your beat teams and do a few things:

• Get to know each other! These are your team mates.
• Exchange contact information (phone numbers and email addresses)
• Go over beat background material together.
• Trade/share source contact and other beat background info as it's gathered.
• Coordinate with each other to make sure people aren't doing the same assignment, or other assignments that have already been done by your group or in recent months.
• Go through your news page link to see what kind of stories have been done on your beat over the past year or so; see what ideas are already taken and which ones could use a follow-up story.

So, let's group up!

JRN 300: A Reminder About Our Beats

 

Just to be clear on our beats: if you are on the East Lansing team, for example, your beat is specifically the city of East Lansing. It is NOT any of East Lansing's neighbors, like the city of Lansing or Bath Township. Our stories are to be about trends and issues in the city of East Lansing, and the (non-student) people in the city of East Lansing. Same with all other beats: it needs to be exactly your geographic area (and no MSU students!).

And there are reasons for that: we want you exploring areas that you don't already know, and where you don't know people. That way, we can work on our ability to find stories and develop sources, as opposed to leaning on  places and people we already know. In the real world of journalism, most of the time we'll have to go in blind to places and still develop sources and stories. That's what we'll practice here.

If you simply rely on covering areas you're more familiar with and people you already know, you won't develop your skills at finding story ideas and sources in unfamiliar places. You may do fine in this class, but then you'll get your ass kicked badly on your first internship and your first job, which wouldn't be good at all.

And that's why we're doing this class in the first place. You're worried about your grade this semester; I'm worried about how you'll do the day after your graduation.

JRN 300: We Must Discover What We Don't Already Know

In a past semester, I got this question from a student:

When you say "schedule meetings" with people this week for information, what exactly would I be asking them to meet for/what would the meeting be about if I have no story yet?

Good question. And this was my reply, which we all should carefully consider:

Everything we are doing this week is about identifying and building sources so we can pick their brains about what is happening in their communities. We're wanting to see if they can help us identify what trends and issues are happening in their communities; what questions and challenges face the communities they live and work in; and general info about what somebody covering the community needs to know about its history and priorities and challenges and desires. So, these meetings will be part meet-and-greet and part brain-picking. The whole point is for us to discover what we don't already know about a community. The root word of news is new, and that's no accident. We need to discover things. Hope this helps!

Really, this class isn't mostly about news writing (though that's a big part). It's about reporting, and more specifically, honing the art of being thrust into a community where we have to discover news and come up with story ideas that aren't just based on an event taking place or something already reported by other media or something obvious. 

We need to unearth news. We need to discover things. We need to find out what we don't know we don't know.

That's journalism.

JRN 300: Our Beats ...

... will be ...

* City of Lansing: Denise C-S., Andy C., Colin D., Lukas E., Maxwell E., Emily L., Zachary S., Taylor S. News page link.

* Lansing Township: Casey H., Hannah H., Madison J. News page link.

* Holt/Delhi Township: Clare B., Alexea H., Denise P., Stephen O. News page link.

* Old Town Lansing: Alexis D., Joshua C., Kaley F. News page link.

Please take a thorough look at your assigned news Web sites, which are hyperlinked above, and get a feel for the types of stories, mediums and issues offered by previous classes. That will give you an idea of the types of stories, mediums and issues we want to do this semester.

Plus, Google your city, township and county names and access the Wikipedia and Census pages for each. That will give you a sense of the background and history of each community that will now be your beat for the rest of this semester, and from which we will need to produce all of our stories.

You will be responsible for getting to and from your beat. Most people without cars have been assigned beats that are accessible by public transportation. All beats have at least two team mates with access to cars. People who have cars are strongly urged to help out people on the same beat as you who lack cars, and offer ride-sharing and car-pooling as needed.

Now, I need you guys to get together in your beat teams and do a few things:

• Get to know each other! These are your team mates.
• Exchange contact information (phone numbers and email addresses)
• Go over beat background material together.
• Trade/share source contact and other beat background info as it's gathered.
• Coordinate with each other to make sure people aren't doing the same assignment, or other assignments that have already been done by your group or in recent months.
• Go through your news page link to see what kind of stories have been done on your beat over the past year or so; see what ideas are already taken and which ones could use a follow-up story.

So, let's group up!

JRN 300: Our Beats ...

... for Sections 1 and 2 will be ...

Listen Up, Lansing: Tyler A., Alexis H., Kaliyah J., Sheryl L., Isaac C., Trevor D., Meg D., Haywood L. This covers the city of Lansing.

The Holt Journal: Catherine F., Ashley G., Aundreana J.-P., Carrie L., Courtney K. This covers the unincorporated town of Holt and Delhi Charter Township.

Living In The Ledge: Andrew M., Devinnia M., Peter N., Paige W. This covers the town of Grand Ledge.

Clinton County Chatter: Samuel M., Luke R., Salvatore S., Maddie S., Katie W., Meghan C., Anna S. This covers Clinton County and the city of St. Johns.

Old Town Lansing Times: Sergio M.-B., Cynthia L., Zach S. This covers Lansing's Old Town neighborhood.

The Bath-Dewitt Connection: Connor C., Skyler A., Diamond H., Kamen K. This covers Bath Township and the city of DeWitt.

Please take a thorough look at your assigned news Web site, which is hyperlinked through each news site title, and get a feel for the types of stories, mediums and issues offered by previous classes. That will give you an idea of the types of stories, mediums and issues we want to do this semester.

Plus, use the hyperlinks on the following city, township and county names to access the Wikipedia pages for each. That will give you a sense of the background and history of each community that will now be your beat for the rest of this semester, and from which we will need to produce all of our stories.

You will be responsible for getting to and from your beat. Most people without cars have been assigned beats that are accessible by public transportation. People who have cars are strongly urged to help out people on the same beat as you who lack cars, and offer ride-sharing and car-pooling as needed.