Notes 4/29 - By Veronica Yaron

● PRACTICE FOR THE FINAL NEXT WEEK
○ Final will be during class period next week 4/7
● This week's current event and next weeks count twice and they will replace your 2 lowest
grades
● How do you study for a final in a class like this?
○ Read over grammar rules and AP stylebook
○ Read over your stories
○ Bring your stories/press releases/broadcasts into your final
■ Can use the comments from those stories on the final
○ Can send in practice stuff until Wednesday to Professor Piacente
○ Read your work out loud
○ Go back from the beginning of the class blog and re-read it
● Finals Questions
○ Your final will be how Professor Piacente gages improvement
○ If you see anything in Blackboard that you think is incorrect let Professor
Piacente know before the end of the week
○ Professor Piacente will give us back the finals with comments
● Headlines
○ When you write a press release you need a headline
■ Make a headline not a label
● Bring in the reader
■ Active or action verb in the headline
■ Every word should be capitalized except for the preposition

● Headline Writing Practice
○ Don’t need the first name in the headline
○ Headlines need to be tight and quick
■ “Weist Named Ravens Assistant Special Teams Coach”
■ “La Break Bakery Introduces Line of New Breads”
■ “La Brea Bakery Celebrates 30th Anniversary with New Bread Line”
○ Keep refining until you get it where you want it!
○ Remember it’s a headline, not a lead
■ “USDA Says Number of Mid-sized Farms Decreasing”
■ “USDA Says Farmers are Getting Older, Farms, Smaller”
○ Think about the sequence of things, what are you announcing in this press
release? What do people really care about?
■ “New Costco to Bring Jobs to Idaho Falls”
● Can’t say brings because it isn’t there yet
■ “Apple Goes Greener, Expands Recycling Program”

● Not goes green because you don’t want people to think you’ve
been killing the environment this whole time

■ “Apple Goes Greener with Expansion on New Recycling Robot, Daisy”
○ The headline informs what you’re gonna write for the lead, so if the headline isn’t
right neither is your lead

● Continuing with Press Releases- Practice
○ When you’re finished, do 4 edits:
■ Edit for proper formatting
■ Edit for structure (is it easy to follow?)
■ Edit for spelling and grammar
■ Read aloud to catch simple errors
○ Leads can only be one sentence long!
○ When is very rarely important enough to start a press release or story
○ If your headline goes on to two lines its too long
○ Make sure to put in all of your contact information, including address (if given)
○ Don’t want to repeat information (from title to lead)
○ Start with the news
■ It’s not about college board releasing a study, have that at the end!
○ Keep tenses the same throughout the piece
● Switching to Broadcast!
○ Make sure to stress the unusual, what is newsworthy.
■ Dog bites man isn’t news but if a man bites a dog, that's news.
○ Present tense
● Stefanie AGAIN-AGAIN
○ Can’t gloss over and expect for us to know who she is
■ The mother of phony terrorist Stefanie Ferguson, is seeking a GoFundMe
campaign to raise $700,000 to appeal her daughter's conviction.
● The amount is eye-stopping so put that in there
● “Is seeking”- keep this in the present tense

● If we want to finish either the Stefanie story or the Clarinet story you have until
Wednesday at 5 PM to get feedback!

4.22.19 Class Blog

·       Don’t repeat information – if you tell what police department it is that you are talking about in the beginning, then just say police from there 

·       No quotes in broadcast

·       Final will be a Press Release and a Broadcast piece

o   There will be no updates during the period

·       Ideas for studying for the final: use fact sheets from the book, turn print journalism piece into broadcast

·       There will be a current event quiz the week of the final

·       First story of the night – Palomino

o   Press release first

o   Broadcast second

·       Headlines go on press releases, not broadcast

·       Review page 34

o   Subject agreement

o   Active and passive voice

o   Dangling participles

o   Appositive phrases and commas

o   That and which

o   Who and whom

o   Apostrophe used to form possessives

o   Commas

·       HOMEWORK: Reread pages 34-37 in the textbook

Aary Bhatia

We briefly discussed broadcast journalism and wrote a lead for practice. Next, we wrote a news story about a hate crime in georgetown. For next week we have to prepare for the current events quiz.

Class Blog 04/01

Broadcast Leads [Last week’s HW]

Takeaways:
1. Grammar Notes -
PRESENT TENSE (!!!): meant to feel like it is happening; draws people in
Verb-Noun Agreement
2. Attribution is unnecessary.
Start the paragraph after the lead with the attribution.
Example: United States Secretary of the Interior Grace Green says …
3. Broadcast leads need to be shorter than print leads
4. Feature/Throwaway lead
It catches the attention, then is followed immediately with an explanation.
Example: If you’re 19, you’ll be waiting a little longer for that first drink.


Writing for Broadcast [PPT]
Writing for the ear, not the eye → reading aloud is essential
Broadcast Writing Style:
- Use present tense
- Round off numbers and statistics
- Place titles before names
- Avoid abbreviations
- Paraphrase quotes
- Avoid extended description
- Avoid symbols
- Use phonetic spelling for difficult names
The Four C’s:
1. Clarity - the audience needs to understand what you are saying the first time you say it
2. Conciseness - central to broadcast writing more than any other kind of writing;
you are writing for time
3. Color - use words to paint pictures and transport people into stories;
look for telling details that convey meaning to viewers
4. Circle - the story begins with the climax, moves to a cause, and then has an effect at the end;
the climax is the point of the story, also known as the “so what?”


Class Activities: 1. Present Tense Worksheet
2. Practice Writing Assignment: Take one of the stories from the homework, make sure the lead is in the present tense, and continue to write the story
3. Practice Writing Assignment: Colonic Study


HW for 04/08: Pick any news, sports or feature story from the nightly news on ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, or CNN. Find the same story in the Post. Write 250 words on the differences you found, and which you liked better, and why. Be prepared to discuss next week in class. Print out a hard copy and turn in after discussion.