T.R. Reid and Toyota Re-writes...

Hi all,

Sorry for the delay in getting this posted, but I wanted to follow-up with today's assignments.

First, make sure you re-write your Toyota stories for class on Thursday. Make sure you include a paragraph or two explaining what was the weakest part of your story and what you fixed.

Remember your top stories are due this Wednesday at 4 p.m.

Lastly, on Thursday we will be discussing T.R. Reid's appearance on campus on Monday, March 1. He will be speaking at 7:30 p.m. at the University Theater. More information can be found at the J-school Web site and at NPR and PBS.

The T.R. Reid story will be due at 7 p.m. on Tuesday night -- roughly 24 hours after the speech.

Also, start working on ideas for your feature story. We are a week or so away from digging into that, but it is coming up soon and you should be generating a decent pitch in the coming couple of days.

See you Thursday.

Beef Bullion and News Gathering

Sorry for having class run a bit long today... guess I was having too much fun.

Anyway, your assignments are as follows:

1) Re-write the lead on your story from last Friday. Re-write only the lead. You can email it to me by 5 p.m. on Wednesday.

2) News round-up, week two. Remember Michael and Allie are on news editor duty. Respond to this post by 4 p.m. on Thursday with your top local, national and international stories. Each story submission should have a link to the article and rewritten news lead about the story.

Your lead re-write will be combined with some in-class lead writing exercises for a final grade.

See you all on Thursday.

Story time

Your first story is due Friday, January 29, 2010 by midnight.

Stories should be emailed to me at lee.banville @ umontana.edu by the deadline. They should be written in Microsoft Word or another compatible word processing program.

Stories should be true. You should have reported this piece and found at least two sources to talk to about your story.

The story cannot be an opinion piece about what you think about Avatar or Wilco. It needs to be a factual, reported piece. (For example, don't report about Hillary Clinton adopting an adorable baby alien.)

The story cannot be about you -- unless you have adopted an adorable baby alien.

Length should be no more than 2 pages, double-spaced (about 500 words).