More Ledes -- An Overview

I'm happy to tell you that this week's exercises were all ungraded drills, where I'd try to identify what you were good at and what needed improvement before I started grading you in a meaningful manner.

I'm happy because many of you fell into a common trap for young journalists,and that's committing too many fatals.

The reason for fatals appear to be all over the broad, and we'll take a look at why those fatals happened in some of the subsequent blog posts. But an overall theme seems to be an inattention to detail. Simply put, you have to do a better job of making sure what you have is correct after you finish writing and before you turn in your assignment.

Now would be a good time to alert you to this rule: once you turn in a deadline assignment to me, I won't accept a revised copy. After you turn something in is not the time to catch an error; it's before you turn something in. Make sure that you make fact-checking a priority.

Also, I had someone miss deadline on one of these assignments. If the assignment were to be graded, the grade would be zero. But even if you miss a deadline, I ask that you still turn in your work. I will critique and return your work, regardless of grade, so at least you get the knowledge and lessons from having done the assignment, even if you don't get a recordable grade.

Finally, these were our final ungraded exercises of the semester. From here on out, it's for real.

But as long as you keep learning via the blog and class discussions from what you and your peers have done, then you'll take able to take full advantage of the grading opportunities. It won't be a scary thing; it'll be a chance to show off how much you're learning.