Internship opportunities

Students interested in pursuing Summer 2006 internships in the media industries should contact Professor William Rainbolt, director of the university's journalism program.

On a related note, people interested in journalism tend to be interested in politics. With that in mind, I pass along the following heads-up:


Dear member of the Arts and Sciences faculty,
I want to bring to your attention this excellent opportunity for spring student internships at the State Legislature. I understand from Helen Desfosses that the chances of acceptance for good students are very high and that the connection made during these internships very frequently leads to permanent post-graduation jobs. Please note the impending deadline of October 10 and apprise your students quickly of this opportunity.

The Contact person: Dr. Ivan Edelson iedelson@uamail.albany.edu

The WEBSITE: http://assembly.state.ny.us/internship

Dr. J. Wick-Pelletier
Dean, College of Arts and Sciences
University at Albany - SUNY

Assigned reading for Tuesday, Oct. 3

On Tuesday, we will begin our discussion of beat reporting. Please read the section of the course packet titled "Beat Reporting 101," which is a series of short articles that appeared in Quill, the magazine of the Society of Professional Journalists. This reading is, of course, required in addition to the written assignment described in my previous blog post.

Also note that on Tuesday we will conduct the second part of Assignment 2, the details of which I am keeping secret for my own devious reasons. See you then.

Assignment 2: Assembling a hard news story

For this assignment, I am presenting you with a hypothetical situation: You are a general assignment reporter for The Daily Wizard, a small newspaper based in rural Hopalong, Kansas. A tornado has struck the town unexpectedly, and your editor has instructed you to write a story to be posted immediately on the paper's Web site.

Put together a story using only the following three sources of information (assume there's no time to do additional research), but make it as complete as possible. Report only the facts -- do not attempt to extrapolate, speculate or otherwise fill in the blanks. Use the inverted-pyramid style and a hard-news lead. This is a breaking news story, so keep in mind that your story may be alerting readers to the disaster for the first time. For the purposes of your story, assume all the events described below took place on the evening of Tuesday, Sept. 26, 2006, and your story will be posted online at 9:30 that night.

Include a headline, byline, creditline and dateline at the top of the story, which should be double-spaced and written in a 12-point standard font. Turn your story in at the start of class on Tuesday, Oct. 3.

Source #1: Phone call from an eye-witness

A witness contacted the newspaper by cell phone at 6:15 p.m. and provided the following information:

"My name is Leonard Berk. I live at 333 Sandstone Road in Hopalong. I just saw a tornado rip my neighbor's barn off the ground and slam it right down on top of his house. My neighbor's name is Mike Sullivan. He and his wife have three kids. I'm not sure if they're OK or not. That thing came out of nowhere. We just heard a loud 'whoosh' noise, and then, bam! It didn't touch my house at all, thank God. I'm heading over there now to see if they're alright. I'll call you back in a couple of minutes."

(He did not call back before your deadline.)

Source #2: Press release from the Tynman County Office of Emergency Management

The following text was sumitted to your newsroom via fax at 8 p.m. :

Local and state authorities are responding to extensive human casualties and property damage caused by a category-F4 tornado that struck the area without warning at 6:02 p.m. this evening.

Damage was heaviest in the area where Sandtone Road and Guild Roads intersect with State Route 35. One death has been confirmed; Mr. Lloyd Jenkins, 57, who owned and operated a poultry farm on Guild Road, was crushed to death when high winds flipped over the tractor he was riding. At least seven other people are missing and feared dead. Officials have received reports of at least 12 severe injuries, most of them being treated at St. Dorothy's Hospital in Hopalong. An ten-year-old boy who sustained injuries from flying glass and debris was airlifted to Lawrence Memorial Hospital in Lawrence. He is expected to recover.

At least four residential homes and numerous barns and silos were destroyed by the tornado, and dozens more sustained serious damage.

Tynman County Emergency Management Director Gladys Jones said emergency responders will be working through the night to locate any additional victims. More information will be made available to the media at a news conference at 9 a.m. tomorrow at City Hall.

"Our prayers are with the victims and there families," Jones said.

Source #3: NOAA Web page about tornadoes

You may use any information from the following Web page (don't follow any links -- use this page alone) to help put the Hopalong disaster into context:

http://www.noaa.gov/tornadoes.html

Assigned Reading for Tuesday, Sept. 26

Please read all of the materials in the course packet up to (but not including) the section titled "Beat Reporting 101." On Tuesday we'll talk about newswriting techniques and analyze some stories. We'll also delve into the question of what makes a subject newsworthy.

Course Packet is Ready

I've put together a packet of readings for the course, and it is available now at Shipmates. The cost is $3 plus tax.

Shipmates is located in Stuyvesant Plaza. Here's a map.

A Laundry List of Hackneyed Terms, Like 'Laundry List'

The website www.newswriting.com has put together a list of "Groaners," words and phrases that are overused or misused by lazy journalists and other writers. I don't endorse this as an definitive list of terms to avoid, as each one is debatable and context is critical, but it's worth browsing. Check it out here:

http://www.newswriting.com/groaners.htm

This is not assigned reading; I offer the link here as a resource for developing writers (we're all developing, or at least we should be).

No Class Tuesday

We won't be having class on Tuesday, Sept. 12, because I got a little banged up over the weekend and I need a few days to recover. We will meet on Thursday evening, Sept. 14, at which time the classmate profile assignment will be due.

Looking ahead, here is a link to your next piece of assigned reading for the course, George Orwell's famous 1946 essay, "Politics and the English Language." We will be discussing this essay on Tuesday, Sept. 19.

Assignment No. 1

Your first assignment for this course is to interview a classmate and write a short (1-2 pp.) profile story about the person.

We will conduct our interviews in class on Thursday, Sept. 7. Come prepared to take copious notes, including quotations. It is a mistake to try to write this kind of story (or any news story) purely from memory. You may use an audio recording device to supplement your note-taking, but not as a substitute for note-taking.

Before you start to write your profile piece, get a sense of what such a story looks like; read the following piece from today's Times Union:

http://timesunion.com/AspStories/storyprint.asp?StoryID=514396

Don't attempt to tell your subject's whole life story. Focus your profile on one thing about the person (a hobby, a significant achievement, an unusual characteristic, etc.) that is newsworthy or interesting.

Both the reading and the written assignment are due Tuesday, Sept. 12. Write your profile in the standard paper format: double spaced, with a 12-point font and 1" margins. Be sure to put an original headline at the top.

Questions? e-mail me at ackerink@aol.com.

Welcome to the course

Welcome to my online journal for the course JRL300z, Introduction to Journalism for Non-Majors. I'll be using this blog to keep students up to date on assigned readings and projects. I will post material (e.g., links to certain readings) here as the course goes on.

I'll be asking all my Fall '06 students to send me an e-mail as a way of introducing themselves and offering advance input about the course. Tell me your name, your major, why you're taking this course and what particular aspects of journalism interest you the most. My e-mail address is ackerink@aol.com.

Here are four things you'll need for the first week of the course (all but the Rooney podcast will be provided on the first day of class):

Course Syllabus
Course Calendar
"How to Read a Newspaper" by Walter Cronkite
Andy Rooney podcast essay on newspapers

Please note that all the previous posts on this blog are from the section of the course that I taught over the summer, and I've left them online only as a historical record. None of the instructions or assignments posted before now pertain to you, but feel free to read them if you're curious.