Teaching Journalism

Or Rogers. ...

 

Like his .358 batting average and 541 doubles give him any clout.

 

SportsChick: I taught high school journalism for a couple of years, and I have done a lot of reporter-in-the-classroom gigs.

A couple of things from my bag of tricks.

1. Collect five or six daily papers from the day before (or at least recent). Put them on the board and ask the kids to point out similarities and differences. You can do the same with sports pages, if the audience is right.

2. Bring in a budget from your paper and have the kids discuss the stories. See what they think is most important. Get a consensus. Then pull out the paper from that day and see what was the same and what was different.

3. There are ethics case studies on the web. You could nose around for those (I will if I can). These bring out good discussions. Same for the old ombudsman standby -- they list a bunch of stories and ask if people would run them. They usually ask readers, then editors. There is usually a decent difference.

 

Personally, I think all journalism schools should be shut down for about the next 15-20 years.

 

Don't forget to have a couple of the TV cameramen smack the print journalists in the head with their cameras.

I almost got knocked out by one of those bastards this year and he never even knew he hit me.

 

buck and fish, it was an actual degree requirement for me when I was a journalism student to take copy editing as a course. Only at the end of last year, did they change the class from required to an elective.
However, now advisors are strongly advising students to take it because many newsrooms especially print ones, want students to have that background.

Jones, I second maberger. That is nice ;D A good idea. One I should consider in my lesson plan.

 

It's and its, too. And, shit, if the class is anything like some of the characters in my journalism classes, you might as well throw in a lesson on there, their and they're, while you're at it.

 

Don't forget affect and effect.

 

Then and than is a Moddy favorite.

 

your and you're
their and its

 

We did this in my foreign reporting class. Called them "simulated press conferences."

As for the class I TA, I don't lecture. I'm not into it, they're not into it. I either walk them through exercises, or (and this is frequently more effective) I make them walk ME through the exercise. Making them say it all out loud, making them make decisions and talk through them, is an excellent way of going about it. Makes them stay involved, gets them thinking critically.