The Mackerel Wrapper

A weblog for Pete Ellertsen's mass communications students at Benedictine University Springfield.

Monday, February 01, 2010

COMM 209: Tuesday's assignment

Tuesday is election day. Yep. Illinois has a primary election. Your assignment: Do a "soft news" feature on election day. Oh, about 500 to 750 words (two to three pages typed in 12pt Times New Roman). Choose any angle you want, and develop it.

At this point, I'm less interested in what you say than in how you say it. Talk to at least three people, and use direct quotes. The more quotes, the better, right? Organize as a "quote-kebab" story:
lede
+
your best quote
+
a 'graf (see below) or two of transition
+
another quote
+
transition
+
another quote
(and so on).

______________

* "graf" is short for paragraph.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Blog Archive

About Me

Springfield (Ill.), United States
I'm a retired English, journalism and cultural studies teacher at Springfield College in Illinois (acquired by Benedictine University and subsequently closed). I coordinate jam sessions for the "Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music" at Clayville Historic Site and the Prairieland Strings dulcimer club, and I sing in the choir and the contemporary praise team at Peace Lutheran Church in Springfield. On Hogfiddle I post links and video clips for our sessions and workshops on the mountain dulcimer (a.k.a. "hog fiddle"), as well as research notes on folklore and cultural studies, hymnody and traditional Anglo-Celtic and Scandinavian music. I also posted assignments and readings in my interdisciplinary humanities classes. The Mackerel Wrapper (now on hiatus), carried assignments and readings for my mass comm. students. I started teaching b/log when I chaired SCI-Benedictine's assessment committee, and reopened it as the privatization of public schools grew increasingly troubling and closer to home.