Newswriting Assignments
Assignment 1: “Tear Down This Wall”
Description of Assignment: It is June 12, 1987, and you are struggling to get by as a stringer in Bonn, West Germany, for English language newspapers. The phone rings: It’s the Associated Press! Can you hustle across the inner German borders and get to Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin? Like, now? U.S. President Ronald Reagan is expected to make some comments about United States–Soviet relations. Could be interesting.
Listen to the speech and take good notes. Then write a six-paragraph story that answers the 5 Ws and 1 H, using a summary lead and the best quote you can find.
Public Domain Source Material:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSHGXVBA17A&feature=related
Assignment 2: Scientific breakthrough
Description of Assignment: Find a recent paper in a scholarly journal that you find interesting. It could be anything from criminology to physics, but it should be a piece you can understand. Notice how academic writers do not adhere to the principles of concise writing--and they certainly don’t use the inverted pyramid!
Here’s where you come in. Take the paper and give it a good “writethru.” Put the conclusion in the lead--instead of at the end.
Most importantly, write for a general audience.
Write a 400-word story for a general-interest newspaper or online news site.
Public Domain Source Material:
Two Sage articles you could choose:
Playing Some Video Games but Not Others Is Related to Cognitive Abilities: A Critique of Unsworth et al. (2015) https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797616644837
Effectively Maintained Inequality in Education: An Introduction https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764216682992
Assignment 3: Around the Bend
Description of Assignment: You are a reporter for the Bend Beacon, an online-only news website, in Bend, Oregon. You have been assigned to cover the city council, but you have broken your leg and can’t get out of bed. The good news is, the city website publishes live video of all city council meetings, so you can work from the comfort of your bedroom.
Visit the city website and find an archived agenda with something interesting. Watch the council meeting, then file a brief story using the inverted pyramid writing format. Remember you are writing for people who live in Bend. Make sure to get at least one good direct quote from the video.
If you want to research the background for the story, feel free to search for coverage in your competitor, Bend’s daily newspaper, The Bulletin. But remember, you can’t use any material published in it for your own story.
Public Domain Source Material:
http://www.bendoregon.gov/government/city-council/city-council-meeting-agendas-video
Assignment 4: At the courthouse
Description of Assignment: You are a criminal justice reporter in St. Louis. One of the courthouses on your beat is the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, which covers federal crimes over half of the state. Because you also cover state and municipal courts, you can’t always be in the federal courthouse, so you depend somewhat on news releases.
However, news releases only tell one side of the story--the government’s. To cover the courts well, you have to be able to talk to defendants, defense lawyers, and other court officials.
Visit the website for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District and look for any cases that look interesting, and start to write a story. But also make a list of sources you need to complete the story, as well as what questions you plan to ask. Make sure you come up with at least one source to reach and at least two or three questions.
Public Domain Source Material:
https://www.justice.gov/usao-edmo
Assignment 5: The smell of the crowd
Description of Assignment:
The author Henry James once said: “Be one on whom nothing is lost.”
Be like Henry James. See, hear, feel, smell, taste your environment.
Standard newswriting and reporting tend to rely on two primary senses: seeing and hearing. But one of journalism’s oldest adages is to show, not tell. It’s important to give people the full sense of a place, a situation or a time.
Either in class or outside, cover an event such as a concert or festival, and paint a picture with words. Make sure that you include details culled from all of your senses.
Below is an example of a profile of Block Island, Rhode Island, written for the Los Angeles Times, entirely built from a reporter’s reflections on a beautiful place.
Public Domain Source Material:
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/07/travel/la-tr-blockisland-20110807