Spring 2011: Mondays 2-5 pm, Jackson Hall 304
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We experience mass media more often than we might like to admit. When we listen to music, watch films or television, hear the State of the Union address, or write papers using internet research, we seek guidance from mass media. When we get the news or weather updates, grab a magazine for a long flight, try to ignore an ad in Facebook or above your smartphone's Twitter feed, pick up the mail, or just walk across to Strawn's and pass several billboards, we are under the influence of mass media. Here we study and practice that mass media writing.
We will focus on integrated media writing skills this semester, aiming to hone all the compositional and editing tools you need to quickly create correct, concise, and clear messages for various media. We will think critically on media and contemplate journalistic ethics while we try the various genres under research and deadline pressures. The writing practice this course affords should diversify well the portfolios of students pursuing professional writing careers.
Purchase the following required book from the college bookstore:
Because this class aims to cover a wide range of genres and subjects, you will carry much of its responsibility by bringing current events and trends to our attention and applying your own outside reading to our common readings. You will also write for the mass media during almost every class period, and your final grade in the course will reflect your participation in and accomplishment of those exercises. Additionally, we will regularly enjoy quizzes on the Chicago Style as we aim to become expert editors. So come to class prepared and on time, always practicing good reading and writing and listening and speaking skills.
Plan to enjoy a regular diet of mass media in order to participate well in class. Follow apt Twitter feeds, subscribe to apt blogs, read and watch various media outlets online, watch television, listen to radio, read the newspaper and various magazines in print, listen to speeches, observe advertising and promotions; move outside your usual genres or formats often, and stay current with whatever seems most newsworthy at any given moment. Use your observations to enter class discussions, making connections between them and our class reading and writing.
Develop particular expertise in one area by acting like a beat reporter, experiencing your one chosen beat broadly (local, regional, national, international) across the media (print, online, radio, television, books, advertising, PR, etc). The goal: observe media trends in subject matter and manner of coverage. The tasks: regular beat rolls and one beat analysis.
We will practice various media genres, and you will need to make quick decisions about appropriate subjects. Make a habit of keeping brief notes on subjects that interest you so that you might mine them when a writing assignment comes your way. We will often write exercises during class, and we will workshop and revise together, but you will submit nine writing drafts for grades.
All drafts will receive grades that generally represent timeliness, correctness (form and grammar), stylistic sensitivity, creativity, thoroughness, and functionality or usefulness. The grade on each draft will represent 5% of the final grade. Submit all drafts via email, attached as Microsoft Word or iWork Pages documents, before class begins on the due date. Type the Honor Code into the body of the email itself if the work you are submitting is original and your own, as is everyone else's so far as you know.
We will workshop pieces often in class, but the work you submit for a grade must otherwise be your own: create your own drafts, and make your own decisions about what advice to take from classmates or me. Evidence of collusion (working with another student or tutor outside of class) or plagiarism (use of another's ideas, data, and statements without proper acknowledgment) violates the honor code and results in serious penalty. Additionally, all work you produce for this class must be original, produced by you for this class only; multiple submissions will not be tolerated.
Submit final revisions of all your writing drafts as a final portfolio. Begin this portfolio with a 3- to 5-page introduction discussing the craft of revision as it pertains to media writing. For at least one piece, your revision should include a larger consideration of placement: how might this piece fit into a real media outlet? Name that particular outlet, explain why your revision would fit its audience and genre expectations, and describe what companions it would need for presentation (ie multimedia package). Also discuss how you see the portfolio as a piece that could have a life past this class, perhaps in terms of publication or job/internship/graduate applications. Submit this portfolio electronically as a single document (Microsoft Word, iWork Pages, or .pdf format) no later than the end of our final exam period.
Your final grade (A = 100-90, B = 89-80, C = 79-70, D = 69-60, F = 59-0) divides into these categories:
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