Final drafts

Please either email me your final drafts of all section articles/investigative features or just place them in the appropriate folder on the newspaper shared drive

Layout will start next week, so all finished work must go in the folders. Please make sure all final drafts are saved in microsoft word 97-2003. Make sure to really proofread and spell check your work before dropping them into the shared folder...

Thanks

No Current Events due Monday

Make sure you are making up all articles -

Sports Articles are due finished on Wednesday

We have a town hall meeting on Wednesday as well- would anyone like to write a news brief on it and have it to me by Thursday so that we can post it on the website?

If you are interested in covering the town hall meetings briefly, contact me in class or via email.
I will give you the details?

JCamp at Virginia Tech - Summer Opportunity

JCAMP at Virginia Tech: July 19-23, 2009

It's a four-day workshop like nothing else in the state. Join otherstudent journalists July 19 - July 23 on Virginia Tech's campus to-

• Plan for the upcoming school year.-
• Brush up on your writing, design, editing and production skills.-
• Learn techniques from leading media advisers and journalists.-
• Get motivated to produce an award winning newspaper.

With tracks in newspaper design, photojournalism, editorialleadership, news and feature writing, newspaper 101 and advising,there is instruction available for everyone regardless of yourexperience level.

Visit www.collegemedia.com/jcamp or call Kelly Furnas 540-231-3645 for more information. Sponsored by Educational Media Company at Virginia Tech and the Virginia Association of Journalism Teachers and Advisers. Students/advisers from other states are welcome!

Reminders - due tomorrow

• Independent reading assignment #5 due tomorrow
• Final drafts of section articles are due tomorrow
• Sports finals are due on Wed. 3/4
• Layout begins next week
• All make up articles (particularly feature, investigative feature) should come in

There is NO current events articles and analysis due on Monday

Week's work

Please remember this week must be a week of strong production...

Come prepared tomorrow with your notebooks, drafts and interview questions and/or pics.

Every person in the class must have at least 2 articles in the 3rd issue set to come out on March 20. This means the pages must be laid out no later than March 16.

All master pages should have been done in class today which means some pages can start being laid out...
Investigative feature can start laying out
there are some news articles ready to be put on the page...

finished section articles are due on Friday
2nd drafts of sports articles are due on Wed.

Investigative feature and feature articles are past due...
check teacherease and if you don't have a grade next to your name, it was never finished.

Independent Reading Assignment #5 reminder

IR #5 is due on Friday, 2/27

IR#6 will be due Tuesday, 3/31

Sports articles for you consideration

Have a read on these articles? How well do they work? What can you use in your own writing?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/sports/baseball/22niekro.html?_r=1&ref=sports

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/sports/ncaabasketball/22binghamton.html?ref=sports

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/sports/ncaabasketball/22friars.html?ref=sports

Different sports, different kinds of articles... there is so much variety in Sports!

Make up work

Good afternoon all:

I was just going over teacherease and many of you are missing many assignments. Please login to teacherease and try to make up some of the work you owe.

Particularly the midterm reflection which should be emailed to me.

Thanks,
Ms. S

1st drafts - a commentary

Now, I understand that a first draft is largely just a beginning...

HOWEVER, when you turn in a first draft it is NOT just an outline. It implies that you have done some research and may even know where you need to do more. It shows that you have attempted to get the story and aren't waiting for me or Ms. Cea to give you the story. It is developed enough so there is something to comment on.

We have been doing this a while now, and more and more of you are turning things in later and later if at all and the first drafts are showing less and less thought. Start off strong and then the revisions will be strong too.

Break assignment

Work on your second drafts of section articles

Make up any and all missing work

Do 1 current events in either sports and/or your section due when you return...

Have a great break. We will be busy beginning layout when you get back.

25 Non-Random Things About Writing Short

Posted, February 10, 2009
25 Non-Random Things About Writing Short
By Roy Clark (More articles by this author) Senior Scholar, Poynter Institute


Inspired by 25 Random Things on Facebook, here are 25 steps to writing short:1. Keep a journal where you practice short writing.2. Practice short writing on small surfaces: post-it notes, index cards, the palm of your hand. 3. A list of 25 is NOT an example of short writing: It's long writing with 25 short parts -– which is cool.4. The short bits make a long list more readable, in part because they generate white space, which pleases the eye.5. Obey Strunk & White: "Omit needless words."6. Beware: The infinite space on the Internet creates aerated prose.7. The shorter the passage, the greater the value of each word. 8. Obey Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch: "Murder your darlings."9. That said, every short passage should contain one gold coin, a reward for the reader. 10. Obey Donald Murray: "Brevity comes from selection, not compression."11. Obey Chip Scanlan: "Focus, focus, focus."12. Imagine a short piece from the get-go. Conceive a sonnet, not an epic.13. Cut the weaker elements: adverbs, passive constructions, strings of prepositional phrases, puffy Latinate words.14. The more powerful the message, the shorter the sentence: "Jesus wept."15. Don't just "dump" short messages: revise, polish, proof-read everything.16. Try your hand at short literary forms: the haiku or the couplet.17. Read, study, and collect great examples of short writing, everything from the diaries of Samuel Pepys to the Tweets of your favorite Twits.18. The best place for an important word in a short passage is at the END.19. Begin the story as close to the end as possible.20. Food for thought: Study the prose in fortune cookies and on Valentine candy hearts.21. Cut big, then small. Prune the dead branches before you shake out the dead leaves.22. Obey Mark Twain: You may need more time, not less, to write something good and short.23. Study and discuss this editorial: "They say only the good die young. Spanish dictator Francisco Franco died last night at the age of 83. Seems about right."24. Write a mission statement for your short writing. Keep it short.25. Treat all short forms of journalism –- headline, caption, blurb, blog post –- as literary genres.
http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=158294

Midterm reflections

I was contemplating how I wanted to do this since the 6 week mark has already passed for the second trimester...

Here is what I decided:

I'd like each of you to email me the answer to the following questions:

1. How do you honestly feel you are doing in the class specifically using evidence from your work to support your thoughts? (Reference specific assignments and/or activities to show your understanding of specific skills and/or standards)
2. What are you doing to contribute to the classroom community? (again be specific - you help your classmates or you are always prepared, etc)
3. What do you need to continue working on? Be specific -
4. How can I help you work on your perceived weaknesses on your standards?
5. What have you learned so far this year? Be specific...
6. What have you improved? (be specific)
7. What are some goals you have for this class by the end of this trimester? the end of the year?
8. Have you made an attempt to come for extra help if needed?
9. Do you check the blog every day? how often?
10. What do you use the blog for? is it useful? explain

Email your answers to me at msackstein@yahoo.com - put midterm reflection as your subject

Sports coverage - A-Rod from many angles

So we are talking about Sports and one of the most beloved players in NY has recently been in the news -

Here is a link to many different ways of covering the same story:

From the Daily News:
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2009/02/10/2009-02-10_a_hero_sullied_arod_the_steroid_abuser_i.html

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/yankees/2009/02/07/2009-02-07_star_yankee_slugger_alex_rodriguez_teste.html

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/yankees/2009/02/07/2009-02-07_star_yankee_slugger_alex_rodriguez_teste.html

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/index.html

NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/sports/baseball/10rodriguez.html?ref=sports

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/sports/baseball/10orza.html?ref=sports

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/sports/index.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/09/opinion/09glanville.html

Battle Plan for Newspapers - opinion

http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/battle-plans-for-newspapers/
What does this mean for us?

You Can’t Sell News by the Slice - editorial - just to read.

February 10, 2009
Op-Ed Contributor
You Can’t Sell News by the Slice
By MICHAEL KINSLEY
SOMEWHERE at Microsoft, there is a closet packed with leftover Slate umbrellas — a monument to the folly of asking people to pay for what they read on the Internet. These umbrellas — a $20 value! — were the premium we offered to people who would pay $19 for a year’s subscription to Slate, the Microsoft-owned online magazine (later purchased by The Washington Post). We were quite self-righteous about the alleged principle that “content” should not be free. The word itself was an insult — as if we were just making Jell-O salad in order to sell Tupperware.
The experiment lasted about a year. Still, every so often the dream of getting people to pay recurs. It’s recurring now because of the newspaper crisis: they have been hemorrhaging subscribers and advertisers for their paper editions, even as they give away their contents online. In the current Time, its former managing editor, Walter Isaacson, urges a solution: “micropayments.”
Micropayments are systems that make it easy to pay small amounts of money. (Your subway card is an example.) You could pay a nickel to read an article, or a dime for a whole day’s newspaper.
Well, maybe. But it would be a first. Newspaper readers have never paid for the content (words and photos). What they have paid for is the paper that content is printed on. A week of The Washington Post weighs about eight pounds and costs $1.81 for new subscribers, home-delivered. With newsprint (that’s the paper, not the ink) costing around $750 a metric ton, or 34 cents a pound, Post subscribers are getting almost a dollar’s worth of paper free every week — not to mention the ink, the delivery, etc. The Times is more svelte and more expensive. It might even have a viable business model if it could sell the paper with nothing written on it. A more promising idea is the opposite: give away the content without the paper. In theory, a reader who stops paying for the physical paper but continues to read the content online is doing the publisher a favor.
If the only effect of the Internet on newspapers was a drastic reduction in their distribution costs, publishers could probably keep a bit of that savings, rather than passing all of it and more on to the readers. But the Internet has also increased competition — not just from new media but among newspapers as well. Or rather, it has introduced competition into an industry legendary for its monopoly power.
Just a few years ago, there was no sweeter perch in American capitalism than ownership of the only newspaper in town. Now, every English-language newspaper is in direct competition with every other. Millions of Americans get their news online from The Guardian, which is published in London. This competition, and not some kind of petulance or laziness or addled philosophy, is what keeps readers from shelling out for news.
Micropayment advocates imagine extracting as much as $2 a month from readers. The Times sells just over a million daily papers. If every one of those million buyers went online and paid $2 a month, that would be $24 million a year. Even with the economic crisis, paper and digital advertising in The Times brought in about $1 billion last year. Circulation brought in $668 million. Two bucks per reader per month is not going to save newspapers.
And the harsh truth is that the typical American newspaper is an anachronism. It is an artifact from a time when chopping down trees was essential to telling the news, and when you couldn’t get The New York Times or The Washington Post closer to your bed than the front door, where the local paper lies, sopping wet.
The Times, The Post and a few others probably will survive. When the recession ends, advertising will come back, with fewer places to go. There will be a couple of surprises — local papers that execute their transfer to the Web so brilliantly that they will earn a national readership (like the old Manchester Guardian in England). Or some Web site might mutate into a real Web newspaper.
With even half a dozen papers, the American newspaper industry will be more competitive than it was when there were hundreds. Competition will keep the Baghdad bureaus open and the investigative units stoked with dudgeon. Competition is growing as well among Web sites that think there is money to be made performing the local paper’s local functions. One or two of these will turn out to be right. And then, who will pay even a nickel for the hometown rag?
Michael Kinsley is the founding editor of Slate magazine.

First Drafts of Section articles

Are due in class tomorrow.

You will be turning them in for feedback.

In class tomorrow, you will be working on beginning research on your sports articles - your first drafts are due on Friday.

The second drafts of your section articles will be due when you return...

You will also have to do another current events article due for after break.

Independent Reading Assignment #5

Due on 2/27.

Sports Articles - your writing

Please comment on this post about what you'd like to write your own sports article about...

It can be school related (i.e. Francis Lewis Sports), student athlete features, or it can be about professional sports...

Please avoid topics that have been done already.

Section leaders/editors - please post what your sections are covering and who is responsible for each article...
Everyone should have 1 article for the section and 1 sports article...
Your first drafts are going to be due on Tuesday, Feb. 10.

Sports Articles given out in class....

Please read all materials given out in class today...

Annotate AND take notes on what you read about in your sourcebook and on the paper.

Comment to this post about some tips you've learned about sports writing...

How is it the same as some of the other writing we've done?
How is it different than the writing we've done?
What kinds of material can you cover?
How can you cover it?

Town Hall meeting

Please post topic ideas from today's town hall meeting to this post.

We will be sending a representative to the middle school town halls to further gather information to include middle school news in the Blazer.

We need greater coverage. We want to keep the Blazer relevant to all that are a part of it.

More pictures are necessary too.... Remember... NO, Absolutely NO web images.

Covering the Ski trip

Anyone going on the ski trip? Do you know someone who is?

We are going to need pictures and coverage of this fun school event. It is happening tomorrow, Thursday, 2/5.

Someone will need to cover it... even if they aren't there.

The Homework Debate: Kids, Parents and Teachers Disagree On How Much Is Too Much

Tuesday, January 27, 2009; C12Backpack bulging, worksheets galore, read this, study that . . . all after seven hours in school already.

HOMEWORK.If you think kids are the only ones who disagree with teachers about the need for homework, you may be surprised to learn that many parents don't like homework any more than their kids do.

A new survey shows that parents and teachers don't always agree on why homework is assigned -- or how involved parents should be in helping their kids get it done.Ask kids about the dreaded "H" word and you'll hear something similar to what Sabrina Martin, a third-grader at Wood Acres Elementary School in Bethesda, told us.

"I'd rather not do it, but I know I have to," said Sabrina, 8.

Teachers say homework is important in the learning process and can help kids develop study and organizational skills. They say kids need to practice what they've learned in school so that the material sticks in their brain.

Some teachers say they give homework to get parents involved in the learning process. "My hope is that they will have a conversation with their kids about the homework so it is not just a drill," said Sue Ann Gleason, a first-grade teacher at Cedar Lane Elementary School in Loudoun County.What Homework Works?

There is a big debate among educators about how much homework, and what kind of homework, really helps kids learn.

Harris Cooper is a professor of education and psychology at Duke University who is an expert on homework. He said there is very little evidence that most homework in elementary school helps kids learn.

Reading is important, he said. There are some studies showing that kids in grades 2 through 5 do better on tests when they complete short assignments that practice basic skills that will be on the test, he said.

Those skills can be in any subject, he said, including math and spelling. But young kids should not get homework in areas that haven't been completely explained in school.But a survey of parents and teachers showed that many parents believe teachers give homework to kids on subjects they haven't learned well in school.

In fact, 68 percent of the parents surveyed said that teachers use homework to cover material they haven't had time to teach in class. Only 17 percent of teachers said that is why they assign homework.

The survey also showed that a lot of parents wish they were less involved in homework. But most teachers don't think parents are involved enough.

Sabrina said that now that she is in third grade she doesn't ask her parents to help her much at all -- and that's the way her teacher wants it.

"We are not allowed to ask our parents" for help, Sabrina said, "unless it is a challenge. She wants to see what we can do by ourselves."Does Homework Help?

One of the big homework issues is exactly how much makes sense to help kids learn.Sabrina said she usually gets two assignments each night in different subjects, and she is supposed to spend no more than 20 minutes on each. In addition, she said, she is supposed to read a book 20 minutes a day, which she loves to do.

Her father, Dan Martin, said he thinks that an hour of homework in third grade may be too much but that the assignments seem to help Sabrina learn.
So how much homework is too much?

Researcher Cooper says studies show that up until fifth grade, homework should be very limited. Kids in middle school shouldn't be spending more than 90 minutes a night on homework. In high school, the limit is two hours, Cooper says.

Cooper also has a little advice for elementary school teachers doling out homework to kids: Make the assignments fun. Teacher Gleason agrees.

"The best homework is when I choose a piece of literature for a particular child because it will tickle his or her funny bone," she said. "Learning should be fun."
-- Valerie Strauss© 2009 The Washington Post Company

Reoganization

Editors for the 3rd issue:



Anastasia P - editor-in-chief

Erin O - editor in chief

Melissa I- news

Sarah B - sports

Shazia - Feature

Georgina - Entertainment

Livianette -Investigative Feature

Adriana - layout



Sections:

News:

Vinny

Chris

Andrew

Pria

Jamie

Gigi



Feature:

Eric

Max

Tanya

Kaity

Christian



Entertainment:

Omar

Vicgtor

Eirene

Ariana

Adriana (layout editor)

2nd issue of the paper

Please post your response to the 2nd issue here...

What do you think? How does it compare to the first?

Our next issue is going to come out on March 20th with is also the last day of the second trimester.

We must have this issue done by March 16th.

I am hoping to start laying out investigave feature pages ASAP since they are due today. I was thinking this 3rd issue would only be 12 pages, but I'm now thinking with the help of the foundations class, we can probably do 16 if not 20.

The foundations class is working on editorial and our class will be working on Sports. More to follow on this in class today.

current events #6

Because your investigative features are due tomorrow, I'm going to give you a break on the current events.

I would recommend you read some investigative features, but you don't have to do a write up for one.

Your next current events (#6) is due on Monday, 2/9 - please do it for whatever section you are reassigned to.