COMM 252 - News Writing

Develops writing skills for news and news-feature stories. Students will work on all elements of writing news and feature stories for print and online delivery. Students will learn writing, reporting, interviewing and copyediting techniques for accuracy and readability in stories. Students will also study non-text elements, such as photos, videos, and other graphics related to news and news-feature stories both print and online. PREREQUISITE(S): A grade of C or better in ENGL 101 or COMM 108, or consent of department. Three hours each week.

3 semester hours

Course Outcomes:
Upon completion of this course, a student will be able to:

Write news and news-feature stories of various lengths.
Write various types of leads including summary leads, anecdotal leads, descriptive leads, or delayed identification leads.
Organize stories under traditional news story formats including the Inverted Pyramid, the Hour-glass Structure, or Chronological formats; where appropriate, the students will learn how to focus the story around a ‘nut ‘graph’.
Develop complete stories incorporating quotations and paraphrases from interviews as well as from print and electronic materials.
Develop factually accurate stories that are legal and ethically fair to the parties involved.
Interview experts, witnesses or other people relating to news and news-feature stories, and collect those interviews in usable notes.
Find official documents and take appropriate notes to use as background material or for inclusion in a story.
Collect accurate notes of events the student covers for stories.
Evaluate the qualities of a news story and be able to express those qualities to other people in a workshop setting.
Describe the legal and ethical decisions concerning any news story.

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