COMM 337: Assignment(s) for last week of classes - ** UPDATED 2x ** and fair warning about link to final exam question(s)

** UPDATE ** UPDATED AGAIN 9:15 p.m. WEDNESDAY ** - Here are some thoughts on the final exam, which I will post before class Thursday. I don't have the final wording yet - can we call it the "final final" when I do? - but I've got a general idea of what I want you to do. It'll be a take-home essay test, due at our final exam period - 1:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 15. Two One questions, 50 100 points each. Email it to me, bring me a hard copy or do both.

I'm kind of making things up as I go along, and I've been sharing some of my thoughts with students who have emailed me with questions. So in order to level the playing field, I will post the parts about the final here.

The email messages were about Question 1. In one I said:

... I think I'm going to lay another question on you for the final, and talk about it in class Thursday. It'll be to find a viable market - that's "viable" as in market that you feel like you really have a shot at getting a story published in - and doing a little research on it. Check Writer's Market, the "About Us" or "Submissions" pages on their website, etc., and plot out in detail how you'd go about contacting them and shlepping them a story.

And this ...

... So why don't you prowl around the website ... you wrote about at the beginning of the semester and see if they have any guest columns, reader blogs, etc., ways for you to break into print. Look in the "About Us" and "Submissions" pages (whatever they call them), and see if they have writer's guidelines. ... I'm thinking of having that be one of the questions on the final, along with the usual reflective essay. So it won't be time wasted.

The other question will be the usual reflective essay. Here's the exam I gave in 2008. This year's will be an updated version of that. Link here to the exam or scroll up to Wednesday, Dec. 7. I am deleting the question here, since it's posted in full above.


For Tuesday's class discussion -

Since this is an advanced journalistic writing course: Find some websites that you might be able to use as a market or an outlet for journalistic writing ... it can either be a website that might take free-lance stories on a subject you're interested in (either now of later), or one that might have career prospects for you later.

Copy and paste the website's address into a comment to this post, along with the name of the website and a very brief description, just a couple of keywords to let us know what it's about ...

For example, on down the road you might be interested in applying for work at Patch Communications at http://www.patch.com/. They are a chain of "hyperlocal" web-based publications that encourage amateurs - readers - to submit blogs and hire professionals to coordinate newsgathering as well as cover stories themselves. They want at least two years' experience, and they don't seem to hire many pros. But they are interested in communities up to 100,000 that are under-served by traditional media. Sound like anyplace you know? In the meantime, watch for it. They're mostly around Chicago now, but if they expand downstate they might come to Springfield. And they might be looking for bloggers if you're temporarily stuck in a "day job" that has nothing to do with your career goals.