Course Syllabus, quarter 1

Journalism
Ms. Lannin
Quarter 1 2010

Welcome to Journalism! This quarter you will be learning a lot about newswriting, as well as gaining some exposure to some of the changes happening in journalism.

Your final grade will be derived from a portfolio of your work. The portfolio will include five pieces of writing either generated from in-class assignments or on your own. They will be graded on completeness and the effort you put into the revision process. A more detailed rubric will be provided to you in the weeks to come. The kinds of stories you'll be practicing writing this quarter include:

1. A feature-length profile of a classmate or other interesting person

2. An opinion piece on a topic of your choice.

3. A news story

4. A speech story

5. A game story

6. A trend story

7. An obituary

8. A survey-based story

9. A "Q and A" with a teacher/other adult

10. A follow-up to or a localizing of an already-published story


You will also be asked to contribute on a regular basis to this class blog by:

a. Posting the link to one story every five weeks that you liked, telling the class why you think it’s a good story, journalistically

b. Responding to classmates’ blog entries once a week by leaving comments on the blog.

The URL of the class blog is www.etclass.blogspot.com. I’ve done the first post and written a model of how I’d like you to respond to it. I also left a comment that should give you an idea of how to comment on someone else’s article.

You’ll have a significant amount of class time to work on your stories and on your blog posts. But you should expect to have homework at least a couple of nights a week -- particularly in the first half of the quarter, as we lay the foundation for how to interview, how to take notes, how to write news stories, etc. etc.

Meeting deadlines is important to being successful in this class (and as a journalist). If you can’t meet a deadline you and I have come up with, you need to let me know via email or the day before. If you don’t make this effort, you will lose points. If you let me know in advance, you won’t. My email address is: jolannin@gmail.com