Write a first-person reaction to the news of the closing of The Rocky Mountain News. How do you feel about it as a student taking a course in newspaper journalism? What does it tell you about the economy? About the future of the mass communications industry? About your own career choices?Length = 500 to 750 words. Due in class Monday. Short sentences. Short grafs. Try to make it sound like a newspaper column.
If you missed class, you can make it up by watching the video and writing the reaction piece (sometime known as a "reax" in the trade). Due Monday.
If you want to see a good example of a column to pattern your story after (whether you were in class or not), here's one by business editor Rob Reuteman
And one by opinion columnist Mike Littwin
And one by ...
Oh, hell, just read them all. I've been clicking through the "Columns & Blogs" at the upper right corner of The Rocky's home page, and they're all well written. Several reflect back over their career and tell how they feel about being a reporter. "All I have ever wanted from this life is to tell its stories," said feature writer Bill Johnson:
The Rocky gave me that. It gave me this year's inauguration, stories too many to mention here. I have, though, always tried to write commensurate with the gift of those opportunities.Johnson and Littwin have been hired by The Denver Post, until today The Rocky's broadsheet competition and now the only daily newspaper in Denver.
And since we are here, just talking, let me tell you that I have derived my utmost joy from talking to and writing about the stories of everyday people who otherwise would never make the paper.
They are the desperately poor and homeless, little kids whose lives were irreparably marred by their being placed in police handcuffs, everyday people whose stories otherwise would not be told.
It is what I do. ...
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