By George Gerardi 

Professor Piacente was a little late to class, so in the meantime, we wrote a press release of a man being glued to a Best-Mart toilet seat and a news story of a man arrested for driving while intoxicated and eating his breathalyzer papers. When Professor Piacente arrived at class, he asked for some of us to type our release and story leads into his computer.

            We went over the leads as a class and pointed out their flaws like forgetting to put in when the incident happened in a story release. Everyone had misinterpreted the instructions for writing a release lead as it needed to use words from a speaker rather than recount the incident.

            Next, we shared our takeaways from the broadcast chapter in our textbook Writing For The Mass Media. We also took turns reading pg. 234 in the textbook for an extra insight into the chapter.

            We then looked at a powerpoint about writing for broadcast. We learned that we have to use present tense in a broadcast story whenever possible, we have to put the attribution before quotes, not after, we have to use an active, not passive voice, and we have to avoid numbers whenever possible. We also learned the key differences between a print story and a broadcast story like broadcasts using present tense and an oval format and print using past tense and the format of an inverted pyramid. A broadcast report must be easily understandable, brief, and full of active verbs. Professor Piacente also gave us a great resource for learning about past and present tense: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/601/01/

            After the powerpoint, we watched a YouTube video called Charlie Brooker’s How to Report News that poked fun at the format of a news report by describing its visual process in extensive detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHun58mz3vI. This was used to display the “Lighter Side of Broadcast News”.

            After the video and a short break, Professor Piacente handed out 2 sheets. One was a blank sheet that was filled out with names of students who had not met with him outside of class yet. The other sheet had 3 stories on them. Professor Piacente told us to write out a broadcast lead for the first story and assigned the last story for HW due by Friday at 5 pm. The homework is to turn the last story about a 30-second tornado in D.C. into a broadcast story. He also discussed the contents of the final exam on May 3rd as it would have a press release and a broadcast story to complete.

            After constructing leads based on a story about the real dangers of “colon cleansing”, we typed the leads into the professor’s computer. As the final assessment of the day, we pointed out flaws of the leads as a class and got a clear understanding of how to write a broadcast story lead.      

            

3/8 Class

                  At the start of class, Professor Piacente asked us all to join the Skimm, which provides daily summaries of important news events. Everyone should have received an email invite to join, but it can also be found here.

                  He recommended anyone who has not already read the broadcast chapter, do so before next class. He also reminded us that broadcast journalism is in the present tense, while news articles are past tense.

                  Professor Piacente suggested that we all go back and read over blog posts from previous classes. These posts could contain useful information about the class, but this is not a mandatory assignment.

                  He also reviewed the section of the syllabus relating to missed assignments and said that he wanted to meet with everyone in the class, but that it was our responsibility to set up a meeting.

                 

Then the class discussed the news articles we found for homework, that we felt violated the Journalist’s Code of Ethics . Our other homework was collected at the end of class.

                  We were then split into groups of 2-3. Case studies dealing with real ethical dilemmas in journalism were assigned to each group. After the groups had fifteen minutes to examine and discuss their study, each presented their case study and their decision to publish the story or not. The class debated the merits of each decision, and pointed out additional ethical concerns. Professor Piacente told us the outcome of each case a the end of class.

                 

Homework according to the syllabus

                  Bring in a powerful feature/be prepared to discuss it

posted by Laila Rosenthal

Monday Blues Remedy

Got the Monday blues? Bogged down under the weight of midterms stress on top of everything else? Check out this excellent article that is sure to make you laugh a little at least.

I came across this excellent piece of journalism that relates to our assignment from last week, and it certainly made my Monday better. Apparently "White House Easter Bunny" is a new bonus qualification for Press Secretary.

https://www.rt.com/viral/379529-spicer-easter-bunny-costume/ 

I hope you all enjoy, and have a great rest of your Monday! See you all Wednesday!

Kendall

March 1, 2017 Class Blog Post

Friday Morning Post

We started class by going over the homework. First, we talked about wordiness. From this, we learned that tense and titles should never be cut because they are very important pieces of information. Additionally, Professor Piacente pointed out that the errors involved in wordiness are much easier to see in examples than our own work. The next assignment was an Op-Ed about Sean Spicer in which most of the class expressed very negative opinions. 

The next activity was writing a PR lead for a story about the passing of Little Mikey, the National Zoo’s oldest giraffe. 

Key learnings from this:

1. PR should address the way the organization is handling the issue

i.e. “The National Zoo mourns…”

2. Empathy is key. PR professionals should look to create empathy

3. We all need to remember that “when” should be placed within the sentence

To see an example of poorly done PR, we looked at the Exxon Valdez oil spill that occurred off the coast of Alaska in 1989. This further reinforced the value of getting empathy from the audience. In an interview following the incident, the president of Exxon did not even apologize for what he did, nor did he understand the plan that was recently published to deal with the issue. His body language gave the impression he did not care and he spoke with a condescending tone. Overall, this was a disaster that should be looked to for what not to do in an emergency situation.

Before he came in to talk with us, David Culver of NBC4 asked Professor Piacente to show the work he had done Wednesday throughout the day on the Metro. 

Professor Piacente then began a discussion of our favorite speakers. For those who enjoyed Krista’s talk, they said they liked that she traveled some and had a connection to the non-profit world. Some students even have meetings coming up with her. For those who liked Dan’s talk, they said his career was something they could see themselves doing in the future. A few students were just excited for David Culver.

David Culver came in for the second half of class and told us about his experience

Lessons from Culver

1. “if you see something, you’ve got to say it” This referenced the importance of pairing voiceovers with video. Broadcast news 

            should be engaging and make use of airspace.

2. While networking often gives each party a colder feel, Culver recommended that we look at it rather as relationship building.     

            He cited many stories of how his connections allowed him to get a leg up over his colleagues. 

3. When talking about how to work with a microphone on camera and use your voice effectively, he referenced tips he got from a 

            voice coach he saw a few times in New York. First, breathe. Take a minute to calm down and organize your thoughts. Second, 

            trust the mic. Even in loud situations, you do not need to yell into the mic. This distorts your voice and makes it harder to 

            understand. 

4. He has had to report on rather dull topics and has to appeal to a very broad audience, so he recommends focusing on the 

            characters of a story as much as possible. Getting the human piece of a story and how people feel will make the audience 

            care more.

5. NBC4 is rather unique as a new station because it does not look to its peers for a standard of comparison. When covering 

            each story, Culver first looks to his connections and then to his own creativity to cover all aspects of the story. If he does not 

            have the same sources as another network, he works with what he has. Additionally, he has found that reporters will generally 

            help each other with getting interviews.

6. Finally, he gave us one last bit of advice: “Surround yourself with decent and good people. It will serve you well.

Homework due Friday at 5 pm: 

Write a PR press release for the information in section 1 of the worksheet we got in class

(Remember what we learned about leads from the Giraffe story)

Homework for next week:

Exercise 10.15 on the Bank Robbery

Do number three from the information sheet. The directions say to fix the issues with the press release.

Read the Journalism Code of Ethics and find a current story that possibly violates it

(Optional) Use number two from the homework sheet to write a news story. (This will not be in the grade book but can be sent to our professor for feedback.)

That’s all for this week!

Posted by: Meghan Howie