Author: EJohnson

http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/ote/evals/

Workshop pitches

Homework assignment: Find a feature story that is roughly between 1,500 and 3,000 words (@longreads is a great place to look) and write a blog post that breaks down how the piece is structured. You can sum it up or write it as an outline, but these are the kinds of things I want to see you paying attention to:

How does it open? Is it in a scene? Introducing us to a character? How often do we return to that character in that same timeframe?

Is it written in past or present tense?

How does the writer organize the narrative? Are there sections? What defines each section? Where does the nut graph appear?

At what point and in what way does the writer provide background, expert quotes, statistics?

Does the narrative come full circle in the end? Does the kicker echo certain themes that have appeared throughout the story?

Final assignment: Write a deeply reported, long form (1,500 to 2,000-word) magazine story.

What is “long form” and why is it all the rage?

Pick a favorite magazine or news site and read several of their longform stories to get a sense of their style and their audience. Then pitch a story aimed at that specific publication.

Some examples:

The Atlantic

Outside

Mother Jones

The New Yorker

GQ

Cosmopolitan

Buzzfeed

VICE

Rolling Stone

Medium

For next class: write a short blog post about one or two dream publications you’d like to write for. Tell me about the kind of longform stories they run and how you would assess their intended audience. Feel free to brainstorm some general ideas for a pitch, but it doesn’t have to be a fully realized pitch yet.

Full pitches will be due on Monday. Good, strong pitches that show evidence that you’ve begun the reporting process.

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For the rest of class, you’ll be workshopping each other’s op-eds. If you finish early, you can begin researching your publication of choice for the homework assignment.

Copy Editing 101

Making sure your word choice is specific:

Confusing: Andy annoyed Juan, but that didn’t stop him from asking for a meeting.
Clear: Bob annoyed Larry, but that didn’t stop Juan from asking for a meeting.

Frequently Disparaged: Everyone withdrew their money.
Uncontroversial: Everyone withdrew his or her money.
Uncontroversial: People withdrew their money.

Missing or Unnecessary Capitalization

Capitalize proper nouns: The names of things, such as the Golden Gate Bridge.
Lowercase common nouns: Descriptions, such as that famous bridge.

Shift in Verb Tense

Wrong: John Wilkes Booth barricaded the door while Lincoln is watching the play.
Right: John Wilkes Booth barricaded the door while Lincoln watched the play.

Sentence Fragments

These aren’t always wrong, and can sometimes be used to great effect. But don’t use them accidentally.

Fragments: Because she was late. And I held the door.

Errors in Parallel Structure

Not Parallel: Kids like singing, chatting, and check their phones.
Parallel: Kids like singing, chatting, and checking their phones.

Passive Voice

Passive voice isn’t technically wrong, but active sentences are often better.

Passive: The bell was rung by zombies.
Active: Zombies rang the bell.

Commas in Compound Sentences

Wrong: All my friends came over for my birthday Tuesday and Bobby visited me the next day.
Right: All my friends came over for my birthday Tuesday, and Bobby visited me the next day.

Quotations – THIS IS A BIG ONE

In the U.S., periods and commas go inside the closing quotation mark. Semicolons, colons, and dashes go outside the closing quotation mark. The position of question marks and exclamation points varies: They stay with their question or exclamation.

Use period (inside quotation mark) if the sentence ends at the end of the quote with no attribution to follow. If attribution follows, the period becomes a comma. Exclamation points and question marks stay the same whether or not an attribution follows.

Some occasional exceptions to the punctuation inside quotes rule” as seen below:

Correct: She yelled, “Help!”

I won a copy of “The Hunger Games”!

She asked, “Are you hungry?”

Did he just ask, “Are we in Hungary?”

Attribution near the beginning or in the middle of a very long quote.

“I’ve been working three jobs for the past eight years. It’s been hard, but it’s worth it to be able to provide for my kids better than my parents provided for me. I remember going without breakfast most days when I was little. That was really hard. I’m so thankful that’s never happened to my kids,” she said.

Removing unnecessary words.

Keep things concise. “He barely knew the guy. He was an acquaintance at best. He’d never really spoken with the man.”

Using the same word multiple times in the same sentence or in nearby sentences.

His brows furrowed in anger. “I can’t believe she said that,” he said angrily.

Check-ins on profiles.

In-class exercise: Op-Eds

1. Divide into groups of four.

2. Pick one of the following topics:

The Second Avenue subway (first stretch set to open in December)
De Blasio admits that the Build It Back program won’t meet its goal
Cuomo signs bill that penalizes hosts of home-sharing (like AirBnb)
New York City Council considers doubling number of food vendor permits
Police crackdown on journalists and/or protesters at Standing Rock

3. Together, find some background material and read up on the issue.

4. Pick a stance and formulate an argument.

5. Write a short op-ed and post it on the class blog.

What Makes a New York Kid?

Op-ed pitch due.

Pick a topic that has been in the news, either local or national
800 words
Must include at least one interviewed “expert” source (someone with personal experience, researcher, scholar, official)

 

Check in on progress of profile stories.

Discussion: Intro to op-ed/editorial feature writing

An op-ed is an opinion piece written by the reader of a newspaper, magazine, or other source, on a topic relevant to the publication’s audience. The term comes from “opposite editorial”—“the page of a newspaper facing the editorial page, typically devoted to personal comment and feature articles.”

An editorial “is an article that presents the newspaper’s opinion on an issue. It reflects the majority vote of the editorial board, the governing body of the newspaper made up of editors and business managers. It is usually unsigned. Much in the same manner of a lawyer, editorial writers build on an argument and try to persuade readers to think the same way they do. Editorials are meant to influence public opinion, promote critical thinking, and sometimes cause people to take action on an issue. In essence, an editorial is an opinionated news story.”

Consider your audience: Who are they? Are they readers of a small-town newspaper, a national newspaper, or mostly millenial readers of online news sources?

What do they already know about the issue, and what do you need to tell them?

Why is your issue important?  What action would you like your readers (or Congress, or City Council, or the dean, or…) to take?

Why should readers trust your opinion? That is, why should they find your particular perspective, expertise, or experience worth thinking about?

Have an opinion. Take a stance.

Make your point early on. The very first sentence should give readers a sense of what your topic will be. How will that sentence grab your readers’ attention? How will the first paragraph make readers stay with you to the end?

Acknowledge—but be respectful of—opposing viewpoints. By acknowledging them, you can also pre-but them.

Reading:

Hillary Clinton says Bill won’t be picking out the White House china. He should.

Editorial: Gaga Concert is Too Hot For Indonesia

In-class assignment: Look for an editorial on a topic that interests you. Write a few sentences on the blog about whether it was effective and/or how it could have been better, and why.

Updated syllabus: feature-writing-syllabus-johnson

The important dates, broken down:

Wednesday October 19 – Profile draft due

Wednesday October 26 – Final profile due, pitch opinion/analysis feature

Monday November 7 – Opinion/analysis draft due

Monday November 14 – Opinion/analysis feature due, pitch feature magazine story (final assignment)

Monday December 5 – Final assignment draft due

Monday December 12 – Last day of class: Final feature story due

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Check in about profiles

Workshop any additional pitches

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Discussion: How to reach out to sources

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Basic guidelines for the profile reporting process:

1. Spend time with them. Get to know them. Get to the point where they trust you and give you real answers that get to the heart of what makes them tick, not just surface-level answers.
2. Watch them in action. Whatever it is they do, make sure you’re there for some of it. You’ll learn a lot about them that way.
3. Talk to other people who know them. The perspectives of others can be very insightful and useful, whether they are in line with how the subject sees him/herself or portray them in a different way.
4. Don’t write it like a resume. Avoid just listing facts about the person in chronological order. Fill it with scenes, moments, good strong quotes, descriptions of the person. Start with the most compelling stuff, and then you can go back to provide some context for how the person got there. A very good thing to look out for is a telling detail or a telling anecdote.
5. Have an angle. Same as with your news profiles, there should be some kind of takeaway. Draw a conclusion about your subject.

Things to consider when writing a profile: Poynter

How Many Stephen Colberts Are There?

For tomorrow: Find a profile story, read it, and post a short paragraph on the class blog with a link to the story, saying what parts of it you thought were effective. And one more thing: Identify the story’s angle. Come to class prepared to talk about it.

Discussion: Your first drafts, common issues/mistakes, suggestions.

• Lack of a clear newsy angle
  • How do you know if something is news?
    • Timeliness
    • Proximity
    • Conflict
    • Novelty
    • Prominence
    • Impact/consequence
    • Human interest
• Lack of clear nut graphs
  • A nut graph puts the story in context and tells readers why the story matters
    • It tells readers why they should care about the story
    • It provides a transition from the lede and explains the lede and its connection to the rest of the story
    • It often tells readers why the story is timely
    • It contains the story’s angle
• Make sure you orient the reader with who/what/when/where/why. Don’t assume they’re all New Yorkers and know what you’re talking about when you refer to a neighborhood or the acronym of a city department or agency (spell out Metropolitan Transportation Authority on first reference, for example)
• more than/less than/fewer than vs. under/over
• Past tense vs. present tense: “says” vs. “said”
• United States as a noun, U.S. as an adjective
• Opinionated writing: “unfortunately…” “the best hope for progress on this issue…” Let your sources express these kinds of thoughts. It’s your job to present the facts.
• Attribution of facts and statistics
  •  “Kindred was found to be submitting Medicare claims for hospice care for beneficiaries who were ineligible for hospice services, according to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General.”
  • “The unlicensed casino was found at 10 p.m. Sept. 11 behind a mirrored entrance at 5801 N. Lincoln Avenue, police said.”
  • “Michigan’s estimated median household income was $51,084 in 2015, up 2.4 percent from 2014 and, factoring inflation, the state’s biggest increase since 1999, according to U.S. Census data released yesterday.
• Mechanics of quotes:
  • “It will ruin this community,” he said.
  • “It will ruin this community!” he said.
  • “Won’t it ruin this community?” he said.
• How to use quotes effectively
  • Use full direct quotes, not fragments
  • Use quotes that are colorful, funny, poignant, impactful, and emotional, or that articulate the main arguments and opinions at play in your story. Don’t waste a quote on relaying facts and figures – you can paraphrase those yourself.
  • Write into and out of your quotes by actively setting them up and segueing out of them
  • Sometimes you can include the attribution in the middle of the quote.
  • More tips on using quotes effectively here
  • Show, don’t tell: “They’re only in it for greed,” he said with visible frustration. “They’re only in it for greed,” he said, pounding the table with his fist.

Assignment:

Your next story will be an 800- to 1000-word profile of an individual whose work or life is relevant to the election in some way. You can choose to go about this in a number of different ways. You might decide to focus on someone who is campaigning directly for one of the candidates (maybe a parent who has daughters and wants them to witness the election of the first female president, maybe the Trump supporter who built a 12-foot sign in his yard) or on someone whose race, religion, job, or immigration status makes the results of the election feel extra consequential for them personally (a Muslim woman who fears wearing her hijab on the subway, perhaps, because she has experienced harassment that she thinks has gotten worse because of Trump’s rhetoric; an NYC resident who has family members overseas who are refugees; a homeless veteran). You could profile someone who serves as a poll worker every election, or an activist or organizer working on one of the many hot-button issues that surround this campaign season (minimum wage, the wall on the border with Mexico, Black Lives Matter, Planned Parenthood funding).

Pitches will be due on Wednesday, September 28.

This deadline is two days later than currently listed on the syllabus for a couple of reasons: I’m combining the profile story and your spot election coverage into one story, and I want you to have a little more time to work on your pitches because I want stronger, more fully-formed pitches this time. Now that you’ve all gone through the pitching, reporting, and writing process for your first story, hopefully you fully realize now the importance of starting off with a good, workable idea.

For the purposes of this story, that means I want your pitches to contain the name of the person you want to profile, not just a description of the type of person you want to profile. This will require you to do a little bit of pre-reporting so that you can confirm you have access to this person and tell me a little bit about them, why they’re worthy of being profiled, and how the story will relate to the election.

Discussion: Bias in election coverage. What does objectivity look like in election coverage? What is false equivalence? How have different media organizations been covering the candidates so far? How have they adjusted to account for the unprecedented nature of Trump’s candidacy? Huffington Post has an editor’s note that runs at the bottom of every article about him, CNN called him out for lying in achyron at the bottom of the screen. Even the New York Times is culpable for failing to fact-check and immediately address some of his claims.

Readings for next class: Profiles written by journalism students

http://www.startribune.com/he-knows-when-to-hold-em-and-cashes-in/12986707/

http://cubreporters.org/gilde

Agenda: Workshop story drafts

Pair off and take turns reading and editing each other’s stories. Then swap with another group and look at someone else’s story. These are some of the things you should be looking for and questions you should be asking each other.

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Are there any spelling or grammatical errors? Pay close attention to how the dialogue is written and whether the mechanics are correct.

Are there any AP style errors? (For this first story, I’m just looking for the basics to be correct—don’t sweat the really obscure stuff.) Consult this site for some of the most commonly used rules.

Are all the proper names (people, streets, neighborhoods, companies, etc.) accurate and spelled correctly?

Is there a clear, identifiable lede and nut graph?

Does the story make sense? Is there anything that needs to be clarified, or are there any obvious inaccuracies or holes in the narrative?

Is the story generally readable? Does it flow in a natural, logical way?

Is it, in fact, written like a feature story and not a straightforward, hard news story? In other words, are there scenes? Color? Strong characters?

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A few common things to look out for:

Don’t overuse synonyms for the word “said” in an effort to be more descriptive. They can be clunky (“They’re ruining this neighborhood,” she screeched) and at worst, redundant (“I’m sorry,” he apologized.) In feature writing, there’s more wiggle room on this than in hard news writing, but be mindful not to go overboard. “Said” is a nearly invisible word that gets the job done and it’s fine to use it a lot.

Same goes for exclamation points! Most of the time they’re unnecessary and distracting!

Full names on first reference and last names on second reference.

Overly long paragraphs are a visual turnoff for the reader. Keep the story moving by breaking them down.

By the end of class, you may re-file the story having incorporated any small, mechanical edits if you so choose. If you’ve been given any feedback/suggestions for large, structural changes, you can make a note of it but please hold off on changing it until I send you my edits.

Discussion: Any issues arising as you work on getting your first drafts to me by class time on Monday.

In-class writing exercise

Feature lede and nut graph based on these reporter’s notes:

The Parks Department recorded 35 separate incidents in which animal heads and decapitated corpses were found in city parks from 2010 – 2014.
Practitioners of various religions (Voodoo, Santeria, certain sects of Hinduism) sometimes leave sacrificial chickens on the edge of Jamaica Bay in Howard Beach, Queens.
Homeless man living under North Channel Bridge in Howard Beach has been rescuing abandoned chickens
Ahmed Yasin, 42, raised Muslim in Guyana but is a practicing Christian
The most he’s had at one time was about 2 dozen, mostly roosters (20)
Feeds them scraps of stale bagels found in a nearby trash can, soaks them in water to make them soft enough to eat
“I don’t know who brings them. They leave them in boxes to die.” – Yasin
The dominant rooster, Anthony, is black and white and fat. One hen named Blue often jumps onto Yasin’s shoulder and nuzzles his neck. One of the first roosters Yasin ever found is named Gimpy because his talons had been cut off.
State Assemblyman Phil Goldbaum (his district includes Howard Beach): “I think it’s a slippery slope once you start regulating religion.”
Chickens accounted for 189 of the 415 complaints about non-domesticated animals filed through the city’s 311 system from 2014 through 2015 -city Health Department.

Guest speaker: Danielle Tcholakian, reporter covering Greenwich Village and Soho for DNAinfo. Read this feature story she reported and start thinking about questions for her. How does she find stories as a local beat reporter, etc.?