CMSD 121: Intro to Reporting and News Writing

Syllabus

Course Description: 

An introduction to evaluating, gathering, and writing news across multiple platforms under newsroom conditions. Includes role of the journalist in a multimedia environment and the legal and ethical issues related to reporting. Writing experiences include: web-based and multi-media reporting, interviewing techniques, research methods, application of media law, writing under deadline and use of AP Style

Required Texts and Materials:  

• Inside Reporting, Harrower 2^nd Edition, McGraw Hill
• The Associated Press Stylebook 2016
• Daily scans of the following news websites; latimes.com; nytimes.com; washingtonpost.com; usatoday.com; ap.org
• Reporter’s notebook (or any notebook that comfortably fits in one hand)

Additional Course Information: 

Our course meets on Mondays and Wednesdays from 11 a.m. to 12:25 p.m. in room A-219 on the Santa Ana College Campus. You are required to attend all classes and turn in all assignments. There is no make-up for in-class work. If 4 unexcused absences are recorded, you may be dropped from the class. 

By the end of this course, students should be able to: 

• Define and execute newsgathering strategies.
• Develop interview questions and conduct interviews.
• Write simple leads.
• Write simple and complex/long form news articles using the inverted pyramid and other formats.
• Write articles under deadline.
• Apply Associated Press style to everything that is required writing, in or out of class.
• Edit own and others’ articles for proper spelling, grammar and AP Style.
• Define writing differences for different platforms.
• Understand media law, journalism ethics and reporting decorum.

Meet Your Instructor: 

Professor Sarah Bennett is an award-winning journalist, designer and editor with over a decade of experience in independent and mass media publishing. You can read some of her clips at thesarahbennett.com and follow her on Twitter at @thesarahbennett. 

Downloadable Syllabus:  

Click the image below to download a PDF of this semester's syllabus

Please ignore the assignments listed in "Course Summary" below!!!

Because this is the first semester that we are using Canvas, I will be tranferring much of the course content and assignments from Blackboard throughout this semester. THIS LIST IS NOT UP TO DATE.