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!