COMM 209: A journalism students' survival kit

Since you're going to be writing stories almost immediately, you're going to learn how on the job. Nothing wrong with that. It's how professional journalists do it But you're going to need to learn the basics in a hurry. Here's a webpage that tells you how to write a story and gets it right in just a few words. It's by Lawrence Surtees, a Canadian telecommunications expert who was a reporter at the Toronto Globe and Mail for 17 years. (Here's a link to his bio.) It's called "How to Write a Great News Story," and it's written for a readership of Canadian high school students. But it's quite simply the best short explanation of the basics that I've ever seen. Read it.

Notes
The beginning of a news story is called the "lead." It's pronounced "lede" (I spell it that way).

Grizzled veterans of my other journalism classes will notice that Surtees quotes Donald Murray.