4/12/17 Class Notes

Hi everyone!

We started the class with a comparison example between past and present tense:

Present - Gail Baker works at Wendy's

Past - Gail Baker worked at Wendy's

After our pop quiz on the present tense, we moved on to discuss the recent incident with United Airlines. I have a feeling some PR jobs will be available soon so look out for postings. We continued by analysing the CEO's comments, published below:

"As you will read, this situation was unfortunately compounded when one of the passengers we politely asked to deplane refused and it became necessary to contact Chicago Aviation Security Officers to help. Our employees followed established procedures for dealing with situations like this. While I deeply regret this situation arose, I also emphatically stand behind all of you, and I want to commend you for continuing to go above and beyond to ensure we fly right."

Professor Piacente then instructed us on how to handle a situation similar to this: 

1) Make a statement immediately after the incident 

2) Apologize for the situation

3) Offer proposals to change

4) Improve the situation and then make sure it never happens again.

We discussed some problems we had with broadcast. It is important to keep the lead in present tense and try to use present as much as possible. Using phrases like "officials say" helps maintain the present tense. When it comes to introducing quotes, paraphrase the quotes and remember to stress the unusual. When using the conversational tone, do not include your opinion and use easy words people use in everyday conversations.

We then analysed leads on the Busdicker story, a 89-year-old jazz musician who passed away playing his clarinet.

After the break we returned to looking at press releases and researched reasons for the Skimm's increased popularity. Examples included, how it's free and conversational.

For Friday's HW (4/14/17) due at 5pm is the press release announcing the Skimm in the correct format.

Also remember next week's current events quiz with from the Skimm not the Washington Post!

Have a good weekend everyone! 

4/5/17 Class

Happy Friday!

We started off class with our quiz on the Skimm. We discussed whether or not we liked reading the Skimm rather than the Post. Overall, the class agreed that it is a good publication, but seems to try too hard, at times, to be too hip with millennials. It is extremely conversational. 

We talked about our homework assignment from last week, rewriting print leads as broadcast. Familiarity with the stories seemed to help, but some were still hard. When writing broadcast leads, is is important to remember to establish a time element. Be sure to meet tense requirements. If a lead is in past tense, it is no good. 

Be appropriate with tone. Professor Piacente said, “If it is appropriate to smile, smile. If it is a funeral, we won’t, even if it is a bear’s funeral”

Be sure that leads are complete sentences. Do not write "22-year-old woman..." Instead write, "A 22-year-old woman."

We began our writing assignment for the night. This was our broadcast story that we had to turn in by the end of class.


We read the story, then we each went around and said our opinion of the woman in the story. We got our opinions out so we wouldn't incorporate them later. 

on a big, long fact sheet like this. this is tangled up, tightly drawn knot. untangle it. it might seem intimidating. Untangle it. 

• write the 5 W’s
• refer to her as full name for first reference, then just last name in all subsequent references

After our break, there was a new development in the story, and we had to adjust the lead.




There was a third and final development that we had to adjust the story for. 


Professor Piacente gave us some tips on how to approach the final exam. For the final, we will be writing one press release and one broadcast story, just like we have been doing in class. We will be given fact sheets and the entire two and a half hours to work on it. We may not need that much time, but we will be given the opportunity. Make sure broadcast is in present tense. Do not show your opinion in a broadcast story.


Have a great weekend,  everybody!

Oakey Daskas

3/29 Class

At the beginning of class, we started by reviewing some of the fundamentals of writing for Broadcast, as people seemed to have trouble with the Broadcast story due last Friday.

These are the most important points Professor Piacente went over:

•         Go back to the basics of Print writing (Five W’s, being objective-- no opinions)
•         REMEMBER! Use Present Tense

o   Can start second or third paragraph with “Officials say…” to prolong the use of present tense  

•        Conversational, less formal
•        Don’t confuse leads with headlines or teases

o   Correct: A Bethesda fire captain has landed in hot water after…

o   Incorrect: Bethesda fire captain lands in hot water.

•         The weight of certain information is more important than others! The death of a child is not of the same importance as damaged houses or someone who broke a leg.

For the rest of the first half of class, we worked on a broadcast story about a new study that shows that the urban legend that women use 3 times as many words as men each day is untrue.

For the second half of class, he went over the homework, which is written below, and wrote our second graded Broadcast story that was due by the end of class (the Joy Baker story).

HW  

• Current Events Quizzes for next 2 weeks will be based on theSkimm!!!!! (daily email to your inbox)

• Take any 3 print stories we have done this semester and in single sheet (same usual format, heading, arial, size 12, double space) convert the 3 leads into broadcast leads.

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.