Essential Rules for Journalists

1. Essential Rules for Journalists • Do No Harm • Turn Your Brain On! • Develop -- and Listen To -- that Little Voice in Your Head

2. Also: • Get it Right • When you Mess up, ‘Fess up

3. Good reporters must be … • Engaged in the world around them • Articulate

4. Engaged reporters are … • Curious • Empathetic

5. Articulate reporters … • Use words effectively and correctly. • He only punched his brother. • He punched only his brother. • Organize elements of a story in a logical and dramatic manner.

6. Chapter One • Journalism Today

7. Media convergence Taking advantage of the Internet TV, Newspapers partnering to gather news Sharing resources: pros and cons

8. Convergence is ... • Media outlets sharing facilities, resources, • personnel and content.

9. Digital journalism • 330 million Internet users worldwide • 60 million newspaper Web users • Newspaper Web audiences are growing at nearly twice the rate of all online audiences.

10. Old and new • Emerging technologies create new ways of producing news. (Multi-media) • Technology is driving news outlets back to their roots -- covering local news.

11. Citizen journalism • What is citizen journalism and what’s good about it? Citizens contributing content – photos, text On News sites or own sites

12. Citizen journalism • Supplements the work of traditional reporters and photographers. • Helps the audience feel more connected to the news outlet and the community. • Pushes media outlets to cover local news better.

13. Training journalists today Traditional writing/reporting and/or digital skills • Chip Scanlan from Poynter: “The most essential tools for journalists aren’t dependent on a computer chip, but a reporter’s mind and heart…the tools of curiosity, integrity and empathy, plus the storyteller’s tools – scene, metaphor, and imagery.”

14. This class should ... • Help you learn and employ • Journalistic critical thinking • Sound news judgment • Strong newsgathering and writing skills.

15. Rules for this class • The Basics: Format, Copy Editing & AP Style

16. News story format • You will submit an electronic version of all your writing assignments, either as an email attachment or as a blog.

17. When emailing an electronic attachment... • Double-space and leave a 1-inch margin on either side and on the top and bottom of every page. • Put your NAME, the DATE the story is DUE and a SLUG in the • Upper-LEFT-hand corner of the first page.

18. What’s a slug? • A one- or two-word name for your story. • Unique and specific. • Helps editors track the story through the publishing process. • Most news outlets use additional “naming conventions” so that a common slug can be re-used from day to day: • IraqMain0808r • For this class: storyname.yourname.docx

19. When printing ... • Begin your story about a third of the way down the page. • Indent each paragraph a half-inch. • Use left justification and do not hyphenate words at the end of a line. • If a story is more than one page long, type or write “more” at the bottom of the page, center it and put dashes around it.

20. Electronic versions... • At the top of each successive page, type your last name, the slug and the page number in the upper-RIGHT-hand corner of the page. • At the end of the story, use one of these symbols: -30- OR ###

21. News jargon • graf = paragraph • lede = lead • copy = a story or the text in it • cutline = caption

22. AP Style, Accuracy • Summary of AP Style in Appendix B – abbreviations, spellings, capitalization etc • Always check people’s name spellings during interview, Use Appendix A in book for class exercises