Department of English, Foreign Languages, and Journalism

Journalism 202-01: Basic News Reporting

Monday/Wednesday/Friday 11:00 – 11:50 a.m. • MH 119

Instructor: Susan Garrison

Home phone: (1-816-324-6272)

Office Hours: By appointment

E-mail: garrison@missouriwestern.edu

Required Texts/Materials:

The Missouri Group. News Reporting and Writing, Ninth Edition. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008.

Jump drive or other means to save papers.

Course Description & Objectives:

This course is designed to help you:

- Learn, apply, and hone journalistic writing skills

- Give you hands-on experience writing various types of articles

- Increase your portfolio size, diversity and quality

- Develop time management skills to meet deadlines

- Actively seek and discuss current news events

- Look for news and see newsworthiness from a variety of sources

- Understand that news affects people’s lives

- Gain an insight of the connection between the news media, public relations and other fields.

Attendance Policy:

In order to improve student learning and to achieve compliance with federal financial aid policies, MWSU has a mandatory attendance policy for all 100- and 200-level courses. Because of that, this course has a very strict attendance policy. If you miss five class periods for a Monday/Wednesday/Friday class before the October 10 midterm, you will receive an F in the class. Thus, when you have six absences, you will be reported to the Registrar’s Office, who will automatically withdraw you from this class. The Financial Aid Office will reduce financial aid as appropriate.

For each unexcused absence after the fifth one (after midterm), you will lose one-half of a letter grade of your final grade (or five points). For example, if you have an 84% “B” in the class and miss six classes, your final grade will be a 79% or “C.”

A student will be given an excused absence when acting as an official representative of the university, provided the student gives prior written verification for the faculty/staff supervisor of the event; however, there are no other excused absences, exceptions or “make-ups” for this attendance requirement. If you miss a class session, you are responsible for material covered or assignments given which you missed because of absence, so ask another student to inform you of what happened while you were gone. Quizzes or other graded assignments done in class the day you miss cannot be made up. All out-of-class assignments are due at the beginning of the class period. No late assignments will be accepted.

Participation:

This is important. Come to class prepared to participate.

Students with Disabilities Policy:

Any student in this course who has a disability that requires any special consideration needs to meet with me as soon as possible to discuss class requirements.

Academic Honesty:

Do your own work. In the event that you do turn in an assignment using someone else’s work, you will receive zero points for that assignment. A second offense means that you will fail the course.

Civility and Cooperation:

MWSU requires all students to help us maintain good conditions for teaching and learning. All students will treat their classmates, teachers, and student assistants with civility and respect, both inside and outside the classroom. Students who violate this policy may, among other penalties, be counted absent and asked to leave. You should review your Missouri Western student handbook for further information.

Please turn off all cell phones, pagers, etc., before class. Text messaging and other cell phone activities are not allowed during class time.

E-mail:

You must have e-mail and an active account that you check regularly at MWSU. The majority of your assignments will be turned in electronically and on time, e-mailed to my address above and cc’d to yourself (to prove you sent it if the system fails). Turn in with storynameyourname (example: sportsjones.doc) in MICROSOFT WORD format. Deadlines are crucial in journalism, public relations and technical writing. Assignments turned in up to one day late will have their scored reduced by 50 percent. After 24 hours, there is 0 credit. As in the workplace, there will be no “rewrites” for a high grade.

Policies:

For any story project that requires the entire class attend an event outside class time, you are expected to attend or to inform me well in advance in case of conflict so that an alternate assignment may be made. Missing an event will be counted as one of your five absences.

2. When you are interviewing someone for a story, tell the interviewee that you are NOT a Griffin News or Griffin Yearbook reporter but that you may submit the story to the newspaper or yearbook for consideration. Confirm with your sources that it is OK to submit your story for publication beforehand.

3. I am always willing to help you improve any story. Please take the time to see me for feedback.

Grading Policy:

Grades will be figured on a point basis totaled throughout the semester. 90–100=A; 80–89=B; 70–79=C; 60–69=D; 59 and below=F.