Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Hello. Welcome to News Reporting I. My Name is Alyssa Lenhoff and I hope this will be
a great class for you. I have a confession to make.
I am not totally comfortable in front of a camera and I am trying to get over it and
by the end of the semester, I hope that I will have mastered the camera.
I hope this will be a great class for you. You may be a journalism major or you may just
be interested in learning about what I believe to be one of the most useful disciplines of
all time - journalism. This course is a skills-based immersion into
journalism or just about any profession, occupation or discipline where you need to be able to
find information, analyze information and present it coherently. But we're not going
to be stuck in yesterday's model of what news reporting and writing was. Yes. We have to
teach you the basics of who, what, when, where, why and how and the elements of newsworthiness.
But we're going to go so far beyond that. We're going to be telling stories in tweets.
And we're going to be reporting stories on your cell phones. And shooting pictures and
videos with them. It's a new world and there's no one better to be a reporter in that new
world than you. Actually, the skills that we teach journalists
are useful for almost any discipline or occupation out there. In fact, I can't think of any profession
that doesn't need people who can research, write, analyze and communicate clearly and
effectively. So, you've chosen a good class. What we're going to do in here is spend a
good deal of time exploring reporting and writing.
You will read and study online readings, activities and lecture notes. Additionally, you will
get to motor around online, work with interactive courses designed by the leading journalism
training organization -- The Poynter Institute. You'll watch some videos produced by TheNewseum
in Washington, D.C. and you'll even watch All the President's Men.
You will begin with a primer on grammar and then move to a study of what makes something
newsworthy and then to a hands-on application of basic reporting and writing skills for
print, video, radio and even mobile devices. I hope this course will be meaningful for
you. The best way to reach me is through e-mail.
ajlenhoff@ysu.edu.