Texts:  AP Stylebook; (J253). Other readings as assigned -- by handout, online, or on reserve in the Green Room.

Read regularly:

The Washington Post (front page stories only)

The Roanoke Times (or another major Virginia daily), http://www.roanoketimes.com/;

The News-Gazette and The Rockbridge Weekly (weeklies)
http://www.thenews-gazette.com/
http://www.rockbridgeweekly.com/ 

IT’S CRITICAL THAT YOU READ THE NEWS-GAZETTE TO STAY ON TOP OF LOCAL NEWS FOR YOUR BEATS!!!
Students can log into the online version of The News-Gazette.
email address is: coxm@wlu.edu
password: cityeditor

The Rockbridge Advocate (monthly)

Al's Morning Meeting (a daily website from Poynter Institute, with fresh story ideas; go to link down left column to subscribe as email newsletter http://www.poynter.org )

Purpose: (from the University Catalog):
            J253: Simulated daily newsroom laboratory stressing news judgment, information gathering and journalistic writing under deadline pressure. Using the community as the laboratory, students develop competence in the principles and techniques of print, broadcast and Internet communications in a democratic society. All work is produced in the computerized laboratory newsroom.
            J263: Continuing development of news judgment, information gathering and news presentation for the electronic media. Students develop competence in the principles and techniques of beat reporting for print, television and the Internet.  

Learning objectives:
·        To be able to apply the principles and laws of free press through the experience of covering a beat in real time.
·        To understand the importance of ethnic, class and global diversity in practicing journalism for a general public.
·        To understand concepts and apply theories behind images and information by producing the content of a weekly online news site and weekly news broadcast.
·        To use this same experience to apply ethics and work ethically in pursuing truth, fairness and diversity.
·        To think creatively, critically and independently as a working journalist.
·        To know how to conduct research and evaluate information in reporting the news.
·        To significantly improve your skills at writing correctly and clearly for a given audience.
·        To learn about information technology and how to apply it in daily news coverage.

 Introduction:

Working out of a newsroom is the best way to learn reporting. This class will capitalize on that, but with the advantage of classroom presentations and discussions, a few exercises and supplemental readings. You will cover a piece of Lexington, Buena Vista or Rockbridge County as your beat. Your beat is a territory and a topic – as “cops and courts” entails the jurisdictions of Lexington and Rockbridge and the subject of “crime & society.” The territory you cover is within the county boundaries, but outside the W&L community. There will be some obvious exceptions to the no-W&L rule, such as when W&L becomes newsworthy. But in general, the course is designed to push you out of the naturally familiar into the world of other people. We also take seriously our responsibility to provide news to an underserved local community. Your stories and video packages will run in the weekly multimedia Rockbridge Report.  

You will be assigned a beat, develop your sources on that beat, and become an expert-generalist on the issues. You will learn to work on deadline, to sweat the details of facts and clarity. With J351 students as your editors in J253, and your instructors as your editors in J263, you will learn the give-and-take of the reporting and editing process. You will learn to approach your work product as a professional collaboration that results in a better story. The right attitude is critical.

Possible beats:

1. Cops and courts;
2. Lexington;
3. Rockbridge County;
4. Buena Vista;
5. K-12
6. higher education;
7. social welfare and religion (including nonprofits);
8. business/economic development;
9. general assignment

It is possible that we will rotate beats halfway through the term so that you can get experience covering more than one beat.

Expectations:

We will adhere to the expectations of a news operation as much as possible. We are your city editors. You will meet deadlines as would a professional; the work of others  and the information needs of your audience depend on it. Students in J202, J351 and J362 will work with you on producing the Rockbridge Report web and TV broadcast. You must not miss a deadline. A missed deadline is a zero; not an F, a zero. The good news is you won’t be fired.

The first threshold for any story, once you have met your deadline, is accuracy. Fact errors will earn you an F for the assignment. The second is mechanical fluency – you will be expected to know grammar, spelling, punctuation and AP Style. Mechanical errors will earn you a deduction of half a letter grade each. We will work together to improve your news judgment, reporting, writing and packaging skills. But we expect you to know accuracy, mechanics, style and meeting deadlines from day one.

This course will take a good chunk of your time – making phone calls, getting fresh video, attending meetings, running off to interviews, keeping up with news, reading what is assigned for classroom work, submitting your weekahead note. At a minimum, you will be expected to know regularly scheduled meetings and events on your beat. You will need to develop good time management skills, to work efficiently and independently, and to take proprietary control of your work. You will not master the work if you see stories as assignments you are doing for your professors. Class time is also an important part of keeping up with this routine and is the key to getting better at your reporting and writing.

How it works:

Mondays: Lecture and discussion on techniques needed to improve your reporting skills.
Tuesdays:  Print students submit their stories in the morning, and that afternoon they will meet with J351 students for copy editing. By 4 p.m., Week-ahead (two story ideas) are due.
Wednesdays: On Wednesday we will hold our weekly news meeting, with students from J362, who will conduct the meeting.  You will be expected to keep up with local news, not only on your beat but in general. That way you can contribute to our effective coverage of this community by making suggestions to other reporters on other beats. They will be doing the same for you. At the news meeting, we will discuss story ideas from your weekahead note (see below) and select one for you to complete. If there are two stories on your beat that must be covered that week, we will discuss having someone else take up the slack.  At least one reporter will be covering her story idea in a broadcast format.  Later that day broadcast students meet individually with the professor to review scripts and look at raw footage. 
Thursdays:  Thursday labs are for producing Rockbridge Report on deadline. Lab meets from 1:25-4:30 p.m. By 10am, final video packages are due for Rockbridge Report. 
Fridays: Lecture and discussion on techniques needed to improve your reporting skills. We will reserve the flexibility to be responsive to learning opportunities (you might see them as problems, challenges or frustrations) that arise from your reporting. So we will cover the topics you need the most help on, when you need it most, based on your performance.

Lab:  

J253: You will spend from 2:15pm to 3:00 p.m. each Tuesday working with students from J351 to edit your latest story.

J263: You will work with Prof. Somani to devise a similar – but more individualized -- schedule for reviewing your packages.

J253 and J263: You will rotate during the term as you are assigned to assist J362 students in producing either the Channel 18 newscast or the rockbridgereport.wlu.edu Web site. Two reporters will be working for the RR each week. Your commitment on those days is for the full FGH lab period. Students who are not assigned to the Rockbridge Report should keep their cell phones on and monitor their email during the Thursday FGH lab period in case there are last-minute questions about their stories (and there always are).

When you do not have a specific commitment during lab, you may use the time to work on your stories. Your instructors will be available to help you then, unless we are on deadline with The Rockbridge Report.   

Deadlines:

Tuesday, 10 a.m.: J253: Story deadline. Prof. Richardson will move the stories to the editing class.
 
Tuesday, 2:15 p.m.: J253: Editing session with J351.

Tuesday, 4 p.m.:  J253/J263: Weekahead note due, with two story ideas. Your instructors will merge all weekahead notes into a news budget for distribution at the Wednesday morning news meeting.

Wednesday 10:10 a.m.: Hard copies of broadcast scripts are due in the News Meeting.  (All video should be ingested by now.)

5 p.m.: J253: Story rewrite due to your J351 editor.  The J351 students will move your story to Prof. Andrews, who will move it to Prof. Richardson, but you might be required to work on further revisions to the story before deadline.

Thursday, 10am: J263: Final package due for that day’s Rockbridge Report.

Thursday, 1:30-4:30 p.m.: J253/J263: Rockbridge Report produced on deadline. Newscast airs live on Channel 18 at 4:30. Web site is posted at 5 p.m.

Weekly Story Production:

• Print students: After the budget meeting on Wednesday, your story will typically be due the following Tuesday by 10 a.m.  This is the version that will be graded.
• Broadcast students: After the budget meeting on Wednesday, your script, interviews, and b-roll will be due the following Wednesday in the budget meeting. Script review process will be done individually Wednesday afternoon by appointment.  Some scripts may need to be completely reworked and returned on that same day for another review before editing begins.  This will be on a case by case basis. Broadcast students will be graded on the first draft of their script turned in Wednesday and will receive another grade for their final package due Thursdays.  
• Final package due Thursday at 10am for Rockbridge Report.
• During Tuesday and Thursday lab time, you will generally be free to report on your stories or edit your packages, unless you are working for the Rockbridge Report.. 

Style, Spelling and Sources:

Factual errors in a story earn you an F.
Misspelled names, titles, or names of organizations count as factual errors, which equals an F.
Watch your grammar, punctuation and sentence structure.  Include story slug and your byline at top of the file.
All assignments must follow Associated Press (AP) style.
All assignments must be submitted with a source sheet. This source sheet should include names, phone numbers, and email addresses.

Print:

Week-aheads (story ideas) and stories must be turned in as Word file attachments in e-mail to both professors.

Broadcast:

Scripts must be turned in as hard copies in the I-news format to the primary professor and Word file attachments to both professors.

Newsmaker interview:

• There is no mid-term exam. Instead, you will select a newsmaker on your beat and record a 12-minute broadcast interview with him or her, in the TV studio on the third floor.  
  
  
• Choose interviewees who are from your beat.  These must be scheduled throughout the term, starting by the third week.
  

• You will need to make arrangements for students and a couple of staffers to work the cameras and control room. 
  
  
• You will need to work ahead to select your subject, prepare questions, etc.
  
  
• You will need to schedule interview time in the studio.
  
  
• You will be assessed based primarily on your questions, your mastery of the interview topic and your ability to draw meaningful information from your source.
  
  
• You are not expected to be an on-air star; the on-camera experience is worth whatever brief nervousness it might cause some of you. 
  
  
• You must send your questions in advance to Prof. Richardson and Prof. Somani.  Also—NEVER GIVE YOUR QUESTIONS TO THE INTERVIEWEE.

News Quizzes:

Each Friday morning you will have a news quiz. Questions will come from the News Gazette, The Washington Post, The Roanoke Times, The Rockbridge Weekly, The Rockbridge Advocate, The Rockbridge Report and the W & L home page.

Other requirements (subject to change):

• Updating part of the department's online Community Contact List.
  

• A take-home AP Style exam.

• A public records search.
  
  
• Your own personalized "Beat Directory." [Your Beat Directory lists contacts that you develop in your weekly reporting, from experts and officials to ordinary or activist citizens. The list must be diverse in terms of gender, ethnicity, and age, even if that means finding residents who are not like the officials who dominate your beat. Also, include useful Websites, national experts, and descriptions of how useful each contact has been. Find your own way to organize it, but another reporter or editor ought to be able to use your Beat Directory when news breaks on your day off.
  
  
• In addition, J253 students will be rotating throughout the term to do their stories as a broadcast package. We'd like these broadcast stories to be spread out evenly over the term, for use in The Rockbridge Report newscast. But we would also like for print students to think about when a story would work better in video, so we will let you choose as we go, to some extent.
  

Grading:

• Each story gets a letter grade, based on overall work and final product.
  Your newsmaker interview will also get a letter grade on the same basis.
• The news quizzes will be averaged into your final grade. The lowest news quiz grade is dropped.
• Again, a missed deadline is a zero; a fact error an F.
• Your work updating the contact list and on exercises such as the AP Style quiz will also be factored into your final grade.
• So will attitude and professionalism.
• Your participation in class, especially in the news meeting discussions, will also get a grade that will count at least one fourth of your overall grade for the course. 
  

Broadcast grading criteria:
You will be given one grade, but it will be an average of two. Here's how it works:
The first grade is for submitting a completed script -- that is, a script submitted by deadline, formatted properly, with all the correct cues. In addtition, all the video must be ingested into your bin. NO EXCUSES. To meet this deadline, a hard copy of the script must be submiitted to me at the beginning of the Wednesday story meeting. If you miss this deadline -- it's a zero for your first grade. The second grade is from the Broadcast Grade Sheet, which is an evaluation of your final package. The criteria are below. Then both grades will be averaged together for one final grade.

Note to J253 students: Send everything by email with Word file attachments -- Weekaheads, drafts, rewrites. This gives Prof. Richardson a dependable record of exactly what you sent and when.

Note to J263 students (and J253): Hard copies of all scripts should be pinned to the bulletin board outside Prof. Somani’s office — Anchor Intro, pkg script and tag (or given to her in the Wednesday news story meeting).

Breakdown of Grading:

Stories (which includes the newsmaker interview) — 70%
News Quizzes -- 15%
Week-aheads, update of Community Contact list and Beat Directory, Attendance, Class Participation — 15%

Grading Scale:

A	93-100
A-	90-92
B+	86-89
B	83-85
B-	80-82
C+	75-79
C	72-74
C-	70-71
D	69-61
F	60 or below

Extra Credit:
Create a new 30 sec. PSA promoting the Journalism Program!!!

Rockbridge Report:

You will be assigned to work on the Rockbridge Report cable TV broadcast or Web during the Thursday lab slot.  You will report to the lab promptly at 1:25 p.m. When your time comes, plan to be there from 1:25 to 4:30 p.m.  Do not schedule any other interviews during your Rockbridge Report time.  You may be doing a deadline story. Broadcast students will be anchoring and/or reporting for the broadcast programs.  This reporting would be “general assignment” duty on the Rockbridge Report on several Thursdays during the term. Note that these assignments are IN ADDITION  to your regular weekly story. You will need to plan and pace yourself especially well during your Rockbridge Report weeks.  

Broadcast students must do one print story for the term. 

Attendance:

Attendance is mandatory for all classes.  If you can't be in class or on time to class, please let us know why  ahead of time. You are expected to do the assigned readings and to participate in class discussions.  Do not schedule interviews during class.

Class Schedule:

Pay close attention to the class schedule, under a separate link. Come to class prepared. 

J253/263 – Grade Sheet, Broadcast Package
                                                                    

USE OF NATURAL SOUND (1-10)

INTERVIEWS  (1-10)

OVERALL QUALITY OF VO (1-10)

QUALITY OF STAND-UP SHOT (1-10)

AUDIO LEVELS (1-10)

EXPLAIN THE STORY WELL (1-10)

WRITING (1-10)

PROPER INTRO AND TAG (1-10)

DEADLINE (0 OR 10)

OVERALL EDITING OF PACKAGE (1-10)