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

Thursday, October 28, 2010

COMM 337: 4th blog post - opinion piece - ASSIGNMENT

From our syllabus -

Students will create a web Log (blog) and write analyses professional writing of 1,000 words each of: (a) a newspaper feature story, (b) a magazine feature, (c) a piece of public affairs reporting and (d) an opinion or op-ed piece on the blog.


This is our opinion piece ... it's not at all like your standard editorial, that harumphs around about some political issue and comes to some kind of conclusion. For that, you can go to the State Journal-Register, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Trib, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch or any other newspaper in the land. I like this one much better. It's by Julia O'Malley, who writes a general interest column in the Anchorage Daily News. (We're reading another column of hers, a feature story.) And it follows a different model.

When I started newspapering, somebody told me the perfect editorial would go kind of like this: "Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. The conclusion is obvious." O'Malley's is kind of like that, except she doesn't come right out and state a conclusion.

Even so, her conclusion is obvious.

Well, maybe.

O'Malley's column describes a time she got thrown out of a political rally. Read it and tell me what you think. In 1,000 well-chosen words on your blog. Analyze it in the same terms you did her feature story. Be thinking about Donald Murry's "little green book that won't go away" and ask yourself these questions:
  • What does Murray mean by "craft?" What do you mean by it? How does "craft" differ from "art?" How does O'Malley's column show art? And craftsmanship?

  • What is the relationship between the craft of reporting and of writing? To Murray? What might O'Malley say about it? How well reported is her column? What does she gain from being on the scene?

  • Does O'Malley state a conclusion? What would you say is the overall conclusion you get from reading her story? Would it strengthen or weaken the column if she came right out and said it?

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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.