COMM 337: Midterm assignments, story idea CONFERENCES NEXT WEEK

Emailed today to my students in COMM 337 (advanced journ) ...


Thursday, October 14, 2010 10:07 AM
From: Pete Ellertsen
To: [names deleted]

Subject line: hi! remember me?

... I'm your instructor in COMM 337, our on-line advanced journalistic writing class, and I'm getting worried. We've still got plenty of time to finish the semester with the style and grace I know you're capable of, but we're past midterms now and time is getting short.

So here's a schedule I want us to follow for the next few days:

1. Please reply to this message ASAPest and set up an appointment with me next week at which we will discuss the topic for your 1,500-word publishable article.

Here's how to get started. Read Chapter 1 in the "Writer's Digest Handbook of Magazine Article Writing." Go to my faculty webpage and read my tipsheet on "Profiles for English 111 (and newswriting) students" (don't be insulted - I got a lot of it from a very good journalism textbook plus my own experience). Link here:

http://www1.ben.edu/springfield/faculty/ellertsen/profilewriting.html

A practical tip - you need to interview at least three people for this story, and interviews take FOREVER to line up, so when you're choosing a topic, start by thinking of who you know that you can interview. I'll post some more thoughts on this to The Mackerel Wrapper. In the meantime, be thinking of people you have access to.

In the meantime (I know, I just said it twice, but we're getting behind and we've got to get caught up), we'd better start churning out our analytical blogs. Let's get started like this ...

2. Here's what the syllabus says: "Students will create a web Log (blog) and write analyses [of] 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." I've already posted one assignment, a warm-up exercise on a newspaper news-feature story. Here's the link:

http://mackerelwrapper.blogspot.com/2010/10/comm-337-public-affairs-reporting-on.html

Please read the story, answer the questions and post your answers by MIDNIGHT SUNDAY, OCT. 17. No set length. Just get started! In the meantime, I will choose the four stories for the four analyses in the syllabus, email questions to you and post the emails to the blog.

And I'll post copies of the emails to the Mackerel Wrapper, too. You can find posts relating to our class by searching on "COMM 337" in the little internal search engine right after the Blogger logo in the upper left-hand corner of the blog.

As I said above, we still have enough time for all of us to get caught up and do a good job in COMM 337. Good? No, an *excellent* job. But we'd better get started now.

Otherwise, the last day to drop a class is Monday, Oct. 25.

Capice?

Do I make my meaning clear? So let me hear from you ASAPest*.

- Doc

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* You probably already know this: "ASAP" means as soon as possible. "ASAPer" is sooner. And "ASAPest" means even sooner than that!