JOUR201 Week 2 Topic 1 and 2

Week 2 JOUR 201:Topic 1 What's a "journalist"?
Used to be journalists covered news events as objectively as humanly possible. Now we have bloggers who write in real time and pundits who analyze the news and offer their opinions. One poll even found a quarter of all Americans 18-29 years said they turned to "The Daily Show" and "Saturday Night Live" to learn about and understand the news.

Are these shows informing, entertaining, or editorializing? Should news be entertaining?

Please review "The Journalist's Role" on pages 8-11 in the Handbook of Independent Journalism located in the Course Resources and Chapter 2 in The News Manual before tackling this discussion prompt.

In addressing the main questions of this discussion prompt, please also discuss some mix of the following questions in your response.

Are bloggers and pundits crossing the line to editorializing with their biased questions, interpretative news and public advocacy?

Topic2:Before you tackle this week's Try It, let's review some of the best practices for writing a summary news lead that you read about.

There are many different ways to write a lead (the first sentence) of a news story. But the most basic and direct is the straight or hard news lead – and it always reflects the same requirements. New reporters typically begin their training with this type of news lead. The straight news lead for this class should be:

Requirement

Parameters

1. short

No more than 20 words long.

2. arranged from the most important facts to the least important facts

The most common ordering of those facts is: (1) Who (2) What (3) Where (4) When.
All four of those facts the above-mentioned are required; however, your lead also may need the How? or Why? At the very least, you should begin to explain How? And Why? in the second or "nut" graf of your story.
Note: Where and When are almost never the most significant, so they should not be stated in the first word