Basic Newswriting & Reporting

Journalism 30

Course Description | Grading | Texts & Reading | Course Requirements | Links | Weekly Assignments | Profiles

Course Description

This is a beginning news reporting course, concentrating on the fundamentals of news gathering and news writing, through instruction and through practice. We will focus on reporting skills for all news media. However, emphasis is on the language and style used in print and online and in learning how to write news stories.

This course is intended to prepare you for courses and careers in publication relations, broadcast news, online news and any profession that requires interaction with the media.

We will focus on strategies for reporting, but make no mistake, good writing will be valued. You can expect, during this one semester, to develop a nose for news, an ear for writing, an eye for editing, a feel for reporting and a thirst for the truth. You will learn to be reporters -- fair, accurate reporters, ready to make a difference on paper, on air, or online.

On the road to our objective, you are expected to read at least one newspaper every day. If you don't, you won’t understand the text nor will you be able to practice this craft.

You can read as many newspapers online as you wish, but you must subscribe to the print edition of the Sacramento Bee. You can expect regular news quizzes to test the attention you are paying to current events (including geography). Note: Quizzes ordinarily will be given at the very beginning of class. If you are late to class, you will not be allowed to make up the quiz. Your grade for that quiz will be a zero.

You are expected to complete all other assigned readings before each class and to come to each class with at least two typed question -- handwritten questions will not be accepted -- drawn from the reading. These are to be thoughtful questions the readings raised in your mind and for which you are seeking answers. They should not be a recitation of the obvious.

You are expected, as you will see in other sections of this syllabus, to complete all work on time. It's called making deadline, which is what real reporters at real newspapers, real television stations and real online sites must do every day, often many times a day.

In the end, you are will be expected to improve each week to the point that by Week Eight you will be able to go out and find, report and write a story for publication -- a publication that the whole world can see and critique on the World Wide Web. You will have finely honed news judgment, and be able to apply that judgment is determining what news stories your campus audience needs and wants to know about.