Blog inspirations

Example of blog post with infographic and GIF
New York Times multimedia story: Greenland is Melting Away 

Good article on how a word can get misused, overused and lose its meaning

"Has Diversity Lost Its Meaning," by Anna Holmes in the New York Times Magazine, Oct. 27, 2015

Excerpt:

‘‘Diversity,’’ Chang says, ‘‘has become a code word for ‘all those other folks.’ ’’ The problem with code words is that they’re lazy: They’re broad rather than specific, and can provide cover for inaction — the ‘‘I don’t know how to do this or what it means, so can someone else please do the work for me?’’ maneuver.

Deadline stories on students stress and ways to reduce it

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B81dpoYc38zwTzdNc21qejZjUUU/view?usp=sharing

Does the lead make an assertion? Does it synthesize information in the story? Is it thought-provoking? Is it a good lead-in to the main story/most important points?

Are assertions substantiated? Are they properly attributed? Does the reporter make unsubstantiated pronouncements?

Is it easy to read and clearly written with a logical flow?

Is there a lot of information? Are there memorable scenes or vivid "nuggets" of information?

Chapters 11 & 14 questions

Chapters 11 on Layered Reporting/Digging for Information and 14 on Sources

1) A reporter writes an advance story for a concert taking place on Saturday, using a press release from the  concert promoter. Is this Layer I, II or III reporting?

2) A reporter goes to an Amherst Zoning Board of Appeals meeting and hears that the Amherst Brewing Company has been granted a permit to move into a vacant building on University Drive. She calls one of the neighbors living next to the building to get a reaction to the news, which she incorporates into her story about the ZBA's decision. Is this Layer I, II or III, and why?

3) After reviewing a half-dozen ZBA decisions, the reporter realizes that the ZBA has been granting more permits recently than it usually does. Coincidentally, one of the board members was not recently re-appointed by the town manager, who was quoted as saying that the board member doesn't get along well with other people on the board. Wondering whether the increase in permits and the non-appointment of the board member are related, the reporter interviews a number of people on the board, neighbors and the town manager. The reporter writes a story saying the board is now granting many more permits BECAUSE the former board member was not reappointed. Level I, II,  III and why?

4) What is a "pseudo-event" and a famous example of one?

5) What are some ways in which officials "manage" the news? (page 237)

7) What are the two basic types of sources?

8) Are high-ranking officials and company managers better sources than their secretaries or lower-level employees?

9) What is a "pseudo source"? Give an example of one, either from a real or theoretical example.

10) Is a reporter who is best friends with the secretary of defense a better or worse choice to write a story about the war in Afghanistan than a reporter who doesn't know any governmental officials personally?

11) Would the secretary of defense be a good choice of a source for a story about the housing crisis?

12) How can a reporter tell if a source is reliable?

13) What are some specific ways in which a reporter can tell if a webpage is reliable?

14) Is it good to mix human and written sources in a news story? Give an example of how you could mix the two in a feature story.

15) Do direct quotations need to be in the speaker's words all the time? Explain.
__________

Lead and nutgraph examples

EXAMPLE 1:

The Lonely Death of George Bell

By N. R. KLEINFIELD

They found him in the living room, crumpled up on the mottled carpet. The police did. Sniffing a fetid odor, a neighbor had called 911. The apartment was in north-central Queens, in an unassertive building on 79th Street in Jackson Heights. EVOCATIVE  LEAD WITH CAREFULLY CHOSEN ADJECTIVES

The apartment belonged to a George Bell. He lived alone. Thus the presumption was that the corpse also belonged to George Bell. It was a plausible supposition, but it remained just that, for the puffy body on the floor was decomposed and unrecognizable. Clearly the man had not died on July 12, the Saturday last year when he was discovered, nor the day before nor the day before that. He had lain there for a while, nothing to announce his departure to the world, while the hyperkinetic city around him hurried on with its business. CINEMATIC DESCRIPTION FOCUSES ON THE SUBJECT THEN PANS TO THE CITY

Neighbors had last seen him six days earlier, a Sunday. On Thursday, there was a break in his routine. The car he always kept out front and moved from one side of the street to the other to obey parking rules sat on the wrong side. A ticket was wedged beneath the wiper. The woman next door called Mr. Bell. His phone rang and rang.

Then the smell of death and the police and the sobering reason that George Bell did not move his car. SENTENCE MIMICS THE CRASHING INTO CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE SOBERING REALITY

(NUTGRAPH comes next and sums up why this story is important and how it is representative of something that happens to some people and is sad):

Each year around 50,000 people die in New York, and each year the mortality rate seems to graze a new low, with people living healthier and longer. A great majority of the deceased have relatives and friends who soon learn of their passing and tearfully assemble at their funeral. A reverent death notice appears. Sympathy cards accumulate. When the celebrated die or there is some heart-rending killing of the innocent, the entire city might weep.

A much tinier number die alone in unwatched struggles. No one collects their bodies. No one mourns the conclusion of a life. They are just a name added to the death tables. In the year 2014, George Bell, age 72, was among those names.

EXAMPLE 2:

MassLive: Haymarket Cafe in Northampton makes bold move to end tipping, increase wages by Laura Newberry

NORTHAMPTON -- Sonia Perez does it all at Haymarket Cafe on Main Street.The 25-year-old mainly works in the kitchen, where she's paid $13 an hour, but helps out when needed as a server in the restaurant area or a barista at the cafe on the top floor.She's likely to make a considerable amount more as a server if tips are good, she said, but even so, her paycheck varies too much to be called stable."Some days you're tipped well and it's great," Perez said. "Other days you barely make enough to make ends meet."

NUTGRAPH COMES NEXT and explains how Perez is representative of wait people who will be paid more at a local restaurant that is eliminating tips, something that is being talked a lot about now:The unsteady financial reality and pay inequities between wait staff and back-of-the-house workers is recognized by Haymarket owner Peter Simpson, who has a kitchen background himself. That's why as of of Nov. 22, Haymarket Cafe will do away with tips and instead pay all employees $14 an hour, a rate that will increase by $1 each year until reaching $17 an hour in 2018.

EXAMPLE 3:Business boostersUMass homecoming football game draws crowds downtown, too

By CHRIS LINDAHL @cmlindahlAMHERST — When is a pre-game not a pre-game? When people leave a tailgate party at kickoff and head off in search of other amusements.And for many, that seemed the order of the day — to the delight of downtown Amherst restaurants, bars and shops.


NUTGRAPH comes next and puts this homecoming into perspective by pointing that homecoming, in general, is good for Amherst:

Homecoming weekend at the University of Massachusetts Amherst is typically a boon for business, when alumni and parents of current students camp out in town in search of a good time.And as proof, one needed to look no further than Antonio’s Pizza on North Pleasant Street. At 4 p.m., the scene was more akin to a weekend night than a pre-dinner lull, with crowds spilling out of the glass doors and onto the sidewalk.

Updated Schedule

OCT 8 Revised: Thursday, Oct. 8 @ 4 p.m.

Kathy Forde presents the Cole Lecture: The Role of Journalism in the Enduring Struggle for Racial Justice in Communication Hub, N301

After talk: Blog groups post on deadline a  short summary of event with 1) one or more photos 2) strong lead and 3) solid nutgraph. If you have time to finish a story, that would be ideal.  If not, follow nutgraph with some reader friendly points and direct quotations. This should be a polished blog post. ( 5 percent of final grade)

OCT 13 NO CLASS/ Monday class schedule

OCT 15 TOPIC: accidents, obituaries and courts Feature pitch. Discuss chapters on accidents, obituaries and courts. Hard copy of pre-first draft feature will be due for peer editing Thursday, Oct. 22

OCT 20 In-class deadline writing by blog groups (5 percent of total grade) Interview a minimum of four people on campus on subject to be determined and get photos with permission for 500-600 word blog piece on deadline.   Next: Read Chaps. 11 on layered reporting and 14 on sources.

OCT 22  TOPIC: "Layered" reporting FINAL DRAFT PROFILE DUE (1,000 words, INCLUDE WORD COUNT, 10 percent of total grade) Hard copy of pre-first draft feature due for peer editing.

 If time, discuss Chapters 11 and 14.

OCT 27 Review for MID-TERM QUIZ. Discuss potential Issue paper topics & interviews with 2-3 "experts." 

OCT 29  ***MID-TERM QUIZ *** If time, work on features and blogs

Attribution, quotations, summary

Attribution: It can be the difference between plagiarism and solid reporting.

Some good tips for attribution: http://writing2.richmond.edu/writing/wweb/journalism/quotes.html
What do the following attribution-related terms mean?

• On the record
• On Background
• On Deep Background
• Off the Record

Quotations

What is quote worthy? 

How to punctuate quotes. 

Tips: http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2011/08/punctuating-around-quotation-marks.html

Never quote anonymously.

NPR's ethical guidelines with respect to anonymous sources:
http://ethics.npr.org/tag/anonymity/

Good blog post by Jack Shafer on anonymous sources: http://blogs.reuters.com/jackshafer/2014/06/16/the-source-may-be-anonymous-but-the-shame-is-all-yours/

Quote from Shafer:

"Anonymity benefits sources by allowing them to feed their versions almost unimpeded to the press if they locate a gullible or corrupt reporter. Anonymity benefits reporters, too, by potentially increasing their byline counts, by giving them “scoops” (however spurious or short-lived), and by signaling their availability to other anonymous sources.

"The downsides of anonymity, of course, are too many to list in a column, but here are two: Anonymous sourcing reduces the pressure on official sources to take responsibility for their utterances. And it promotes the gaming of news outlets, with anonymous sources gravitating to the most pliant reporters and editors. Neither is good for the news."

Blog post on New York Times tag lines when reporters use anonymous sources:
http://aejmc.us/news/tag/anonymous-sources-reporting/

Summary: Cuts to the chase, touches on the most important points

How to write a summary tips: http://public.wsu.edu/~mejia/Summary.htm

Thought-provoking story on whether media coverage of mass murders inspires copy-cats

http://fair.org/home/media-coverage-is-a-sort-of-advertisement-to-mass-murder/

Class blog links

Isaac and Katie: https://greentheoryblog.wordpress.com/2015/10/01/kate-fagan-delivers-talk-to-umass-students/
Mike, Troy, Sarah:  https://umassjournal300.wordpress.com/

 https://umassjournal300.wordpress.com/2015/10/01/kate-fagan-split-image-and-personal-affair/

Brendan and Ryan: https://journalism3hunnasports.wordpress.com/sports-entertainment-and-more/

Noelle, Lucy and Megan https://3journos.wordpress.com/2015/10/01/to-notice-kate-fagans-guest-lecture-on-split-image/

Jacqui, Billy, Dani https://handydandynotebookblog.wordpress.com/
Sydney, Jen, TK https://umassgals.wordpress.com 

ESPN's Kate Fagan at UMass

ESPN reporter Kate Fagan often addresses issues of bias based on sexual orientation and race, but it wasn't until she wrote about  a promising athlete's suicide, she said,  that she realized "what a privilege mental health is."


Fagan discussed her widely-read story, "Split Image," about University of Pennsylvania track team member Madison Halloran's death with about 75 journalism students and community members at the University of Massachusetts, Thursday,  asking for feedback as she turns the article into a full-length book.

A columnist and feature writer for ESPN, Fagan was a University of Colorado basketball star, who played pro basketball in Ireland for a year before beginning a career in reporting. In 2012, she wrote an ESPN column and later a book about the life-changing experience of coming out as gay to her basketball team led by conservative Christians.

After she finally came out for good five years ago, her writing got better, Fagan said. She was no longer bitter and inside herself too much, she said. She could listen better and be more empathetic.

But it wasn't until writing about Halloran's death that she considered "the privilege of waking up every morning and at least being content to be alive," Fagan said.

Halloran was an apparently fun-loving person until she went to UPenn on a track scholarship. Although the photos she posted on Instagram gave the impression she was happy, she suffered from depression and jumped from a parking garage to her death after a few months at college.

In an ESPN video Fagan showed, Halloran's father acknowledged there was mental illness in his family, the most difficult aspect of the story to discuss with the family, because of the stigma attached to mental illness, Fagan said. In the book she is working on now, she plans to research the mental health treatment options available to college students, and she said she was eager to hear perspectives from the UMass students in the audience.

Another angle of the story that interests Fagan is the disparity between people's digital life, the snapshots from their life they post online -- and the gaps in between. After "Split Image" was published Halloran's family gave Fagan access to her computer, allowing Fagan to read Halloran's messages to friends. Halloran didn't tell her friends how depressed she was, often adding "lol," "ha, ha, ha" or an  emoji of a monkey covering its eyes to her messages.

Fagan asked students whether the gap in Halloran's digital and her real life is as significant as she thinks it is to the story.

In her own life, Fagan said, she's "kind of having an existential crisis about being online so much. Sometimes you need to give your brain time to think."

After her talk, a long line formed of students eager to talk to Fagan.