Test Story #3 -- An Overview

Seems like all the video stuff made you a bit rusty on your writing. Let's go over some patterns I saw that I feel can be improved upon:

>>> Yes, we did have a fatal. Three, in fact. The essence of journalism is getting it right. That's our first duty; to make sure what we wrote lines up with the facts. In this case, you referred to the Ingham County Commission as both the Ingham County City Council and the City Commission, both of which are incorrect; and you listed the fire truck donation as $60,000, when in fact it was $600,000.

Finally was this slip-up in a lede:

The heroic act of two 15-year-old girls went unnoticed at the latest Ingham County Commission meeting . . .

I know what you meant to say, that the heroic acts didn't go unnoticed. But that's not what you said. And that's a fatal, I'm sorry to say.

I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again: there is no such thing as a small error in journalism. Any mistake erodes your credibility with readers, and gets them wondering what else you may have gotten wrong. If you're going to make it as a journalist, you MUST make fact-checking your top priority.

Don't take fact-checking for granted. Learn to check items, line-by-line and item-by-item.

>>> The news isn't that things were discussed; it's what was done or not done. Too many ledes or section starts defaulted to things were discussed. That's not the news, right?

This was a lede that went in that direction:

Heroic teenage girls, gun regulations and a commissioner pay raise were some of the topics discussed at Tuesday afternoon's Ingham County Commission meeting.

You would have been better off to emphasize what happened -- and de-emphasize the simple fact that they met -- like this:

Heroic teenage girls were honored, a gun regulation was proposed and a commissioner pay raise was rejected at Tuesday afternoon's Ingham County Commission meeting.

Just putting everything into a catch-all category like "discussed" -- when some of the items wet far beyond discussion and resulted in inaction -- falls short of ultimate outcome.

>>> Label transitions to subsections. When ending reporting on one item and beginning another item, use transitional tags at the start of a subsection lede like, "In other business," or "Also at the meeting," so readers can see the transition point clearly.

>>> Fact-checking includes checking for AP Style. I don't still have to remind you of that, do I?

>>> Don't freak out. Oddly enough, looking at last semester's blog after the third out-of-class story, that class had the EXACT SAME PROBLEMS with this assignment. Literally. I just had to cut-and-paste the problem areas and update the exact examples.

A part of me says maybe we should do this test story closer to when we actually work in class on similar stories. But the other part of me says the things we learn we need to retain, as we'll need them every day as journalists. I'm leaning toward the latter.

BTW, the last class I taught had the best overall grades of any class I taught. So if this class follows suit, you'll make up for what was not a very good day around here.