Test Story #3 -- Fatals Changes

There has been an issue that has vexed me all summer; that is, how do I impress the seriousness of getting it right and getting it on-time, without sinking you into a hole that's impossible to dig yourselves out from?

I'm talking about the 0.0 rule on fatals. During the regular semester I'm much more comfortable giving them out, because time allows me to offer so many extra credit opportunities, each of which replaces a fatal. So, during the regular term it's not that you have only four opportunities to have fatal-free test stories, for example; it's that you show me you can go fatal-free on four test stories or similar types of assignments, whether it takes you four or five or six tries.

And I'm fine with that. Repetition in writing and reporting only makes you better.

But with so little time to do our primary assignments in a seven-week term, we simply don't have time for a lot of extra credit. And that's not fair to you, especially when I see growing disparities between initial grade calculations and where I think you should be grading.

So, yesterday I was talking to J-school leaders after class about a number of things, and we came up with this idea: in hopes of striking a better balance between impressing the severity of fatals upon you but better calibrating your grade to a level that recognizes your progress, I have received permission to make a fatal grade a 1.0 instead of a 0.0.

Actually, this makes a huge difference. Every assignment is weighed with a number of points used to determine your final grade. For example, a 4.0 is 100 percent of possible points, a 3.9 is 99 percent, a 3.8 is 98 percent, and so on.

On that scale, a 1.0 is 70 percent of points. a 0.0 is zero percent. So at a 1.0, you're much closer to a 4.0 than a 0.0. I hope this helps equalize your grade.

The new fatal scale will be retroactive to all fact and time fatals this term. But the rule will NOT apply to attendance fatals. Any assignment that you fataled because you had an unexcused absence will remain a 0.0. You'll get credit for work in which you tried and hopefully will learn from; and not for work you never did without good reason.

Whaddya guys think?

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:

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:

The Happyland County Commission met yesterday afternoon, addressing several items within the county, both economic and social.

The problem here is that the news isn't that the commission addressed items; it's what the items were that were addressed. From this lede, you don't know if they gave out ribbons to old ladies or declared war on Russia. It's too vague. This next lede was better in that regard:

The Happyland County Commission met yesterday afternoon to discuss a new condominium development, purchasing pistols, their salary, and to honor two girls who saved a child from the water.

You do identify what the issues were, but it still falls short of ultimate outcome and end result; that being what actions they took regarding these issues: they approved a new condominium development, considered new gun restrictions, rejected increasing their salaries. You did note that they honored the girls.

Plus, it wasn't necessary that you include every element in your lede. A big part of journalism is deciding what is most newsworthy, and ranking that news accordingly (or even excluding things if you feel the newsworthiness was limited or simply not there).

This lede zeroed in on a single topic:

The Happyland County Commission met today and approved plans for a luxury condominium development on Elkhart Lake.

And that's fine. I'm not saying the development was necessarily the lede item; I think valid arguments could be made for any of the items being the most interesting, relevant and/or useful. Readers don't need us to summarize a whole meeting; they could probably Google an agenda themselves. What they need journalists for is to make sense of the news and tell them what matters most.

So don't be afraid to make decisions, based on the evidence and what may impact or interest readers the most.

One lede took ultimate outcome beyond the meeting. Remember the gun restriction decision was pushed to the next meeting? Well, this was one of your ledes:

The Happyland County Commission promised to consider a proposal requesting a three-day wait before a pistol, could be bought, after Sheriff Gus DiCesare suggested it at yesterday's commission meeting.

This is what I call a forward-looking lede; one that goes beyond what happened at an event, and is centered in what that means going forward, or what action is next as a result. When we talk about ultimate outcome, the outcome isn't that the board talked about it; it's that the board will talk about it some more. That's the latest and newest news.

Rank items based on importance, not sequence. Many of you ranked items in the order in which they were discussed. If that was a coincidence, that's okay. But in covering public meetings you should rank items based on what is most interesting/relevant/useful to your readers.

So, for a meeting story the order should be the most important topic, followed by the next most important, then the third, and so on. It should not be based on what was discussed first, then second, then third.

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.

Subsections should start with a lede. Many would start a subsection with something like, the commission discussed this-and-that, and then end the subsection with, the commission approved this-and-that.

A subsection should almost be like a mini-story in that the subsection -- like a single story -- should be topped by ultimate outcome. So in a subsection, you should be starting with, in other business, the commission approved this-and-that, and then offer the discussion as background.

Translate technical terms. Like, what is Planned Unit Development rezoning? Do you know? If not, how would you expect readers to know? If you do know, is there an easier way to describe what it means to rezone form agricultural to PUD? One of you did do that, by simply noting the board "plans to rezone the land to allow for construction" of condos on traditional farmland?

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

So, while on first reference you have a name and title (King Omar Sofradzija) on second reference you drop the first name AND the title (just, Sofradzija).

And punctuation still goes INSIDE the quote (like "this," and "this.") and NOT outside (it's wrong to do "this", or "this".)

Don't freak out. Oddly enough, looking at blog posts from the past two semesters after the third out-of-class story, those classes had the EXACT SAME PROBLEMS with this assignment. Literally. I just had to cut-and-paste most problem areas and update the exact examples with your work.

BTW, the last class I taught had the best overall grades of any class I taught. So if this class follows suit, this exercise can be put under the category of lessons successfully learned.

Ethics -- What Would You Do?

There's a fine line between showing readers the brutal truth of a situation so that they understand the powerful truth of any story, and showing readers a truth so brutal that readers ignore the point you were trying to make and instead question your judgment.

I can think of no better example of this than the so-called Falling man photo, taken by an Associated Press photographer during the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks and published by The New York Times the next day.

This remarkable article from Esquire Magazine in 2003 offers a summation of the complex and contradictory forces at play in deciding if running the image was the absolute right thing or the incredibly wrong thing to do.

If you were an editor on Sept. 11, what would you have done? And why?

Now, let's take you out of an editor's office and put you in the field. You come across this horrific scene: a starving Ethiopian girl, abandoned and alone and weak, who be being trailed by a vulture waiting for her to die. Journalists are supposed to stay out of the things they cover. But a life is almost certainly at stake. What do you do?

In this case, the photographer took the pic, then walked away. Was that the right thing? The wrong thing?

By the way, for this pic the photographer won a Pulitzer Prize. And probably at least partly because of this pic, he soon after committed suicide.

Video #2 -- Let's Look At Some Vids ...

... on topics including ...

homeless shelter video and blog posts

a blood drive video and blog posts

the municipal pool video and blog posts

nuclear reactors video and blog posts

pet adoption video and blog posts

zombie preparedness video and blog posts

summer reading video and blog posts

MSU recycling video and blog posts

MSU environmental sustainability vid and blog posts

I'm skipping tweets because it looks to me that you have that down pat. But look not just at videos and blogs, but as videos and blogs as a combo: how does each medium help in telling the story? How does each empower readers/viewers to choose their preferences in engaging the story? How does either medium surprise readers and create a sense of discovery. How do pairs of mediums complement each half?

What ideas do you see that you think work, and what do you think can be improved upon?

Please give these a good look.

Flight -- Peanut Barrel Rule

What made this story interesting? Well, the most basic reason was that there was a plane crash, and plane crashes don't happen every day. This lede went with that angle:

Lansing police said there were no serious injuries to a pilot of his family after their small plane crashed near City Regional Airport.

That's good. But we're not looking for a good way to tell a story; we're looking for the best way.

So, among plane crashes, what made this unique from other crashes? It wasn't the body count. It wasn't that it was a jumbo jet. But perhaps it was that a 12-year-old girl landed the plane. This lede recognized that:

A 12-year-old girl took over the controls of her family's airplane and managed to land it safely after her father passed out during the flight.

Now, let's put these ledes in the prism of the Peanut Barrel rule: what would you tell your friends? That a plane crash-landed at the airport but no one was hurt? Or that a frickin' tween landed a plane after the pilot passed out? Which truly stands out more?

I think clearly it's the latter. If you are writing, you are looking for the best lede, so keep reviewing your work and put yourself in the Peanut Barrel. If you're reporting, don't stop at a preset number of sources and keep looking for more people to talk to until all reasonable questions are answered.

Flight -- Missing Nut Grafs

Like we've been learning this term, nut grafs help amplify and support the lede by giving a second layer of detail from the lede. Like, if you make generic mention of a hero or villain in the lede, you use the nut graf to name the person, and maybe further detail what make them a good or bad person.

Having a nut graf allows for an orderly transition to the chronological narrative by giving the reader enough information where they know not only what the ending was, but they get enough detail to know how the ending came about, and who the key players are whose actions they can track in the narrative.

This story jumped straight from the lede to the narrative, minus a nut graf:

A 12-year-old girl landed a 4-passenger plane after her father slumped over in his seat while flying it today.

James Shanahan, a licensed pilot, his two daughters, Alyssa and Adrienne and his wife, Mary, were flying from Grand Rapids, Mich., when he suffered an allergic reaction from prescription medication he began taking this morning.

There's an easy way to catch if you're missing a nut graf: look at the questions posed by the lede. In this case, such questions include, which girl? Was it one of the daughters? How old is she? And how did she come to be the pilot, exactly?

This lede/nut graf combo does a better job of answering such questions before going into the narrative.

A small aircraft made a dramatic emergency landing at City Regional Airport this afternoon, the family inside escaping with minimal injuries, police and emergency officials say.

Authorities say 12-year-old Alyssa Shanahan took over the flight controls after her father went unconscious due to an allergic reaction to his medication, maneuvering an emergency landing on a field near the airport’s runway — avoiding any severe injuries for her family members in the plane.

Here's another way to judge nut graf adequacy: if you removed the lede and nut graf from the rest of the story and just showed readers those first two grafs, could they be able to accurately summarize the story?

You take lede #1 here and you couldn't. You wouldn't know for sure which girl was the hero. With lede #2, how it went down and ended up are all clear.

Flight -- Too Many Fatals

I'm sad to report four people fataled this assignment. And I'm even sadder to report that this one will probably ding your final grade in here quite a bit. This assignment was five percent of your final grade, so that's enough to potentially tip it down by a half-point.

The thing to remember out of this is that fatals are catchable. Please make sure you do you due diligence on your remaining assignments and avid any more fatals, to spare your grade any further unintended slippages. If you need help in creating a fatal-catching strategy, please see me ASAP.

Let's look at each fatal and try to learn from 'em.

In the first one, you said the plane overshot the runway about 100 miles from Lansing. That wasn't possible, since the emergency landing was at the Lansing airport. What happened 100 miles away was the pilot losing consciousness. That's when the control tower first noticed a problem.

This fatal falls under the category of making sure you understand the facts and sequence of events. Make sure you thoroughly read and understand what you are writing, before you start writing. And after you finish writing, please make sure your narrative is understandable and that it makes logical sense and that you haven't unintentionally inserted in some error.

In the second one, you correctly cited the incident beginning 100 miles away, but you said 100 mils west of Lansing. In fact, it was 100 miles east.

This one could have been caught if you rigorously double-checked against your notes every fact, statistic, time, name, address, title, ect., after finishing writing your story, to make sure you used each set of information correctly and didn't inadvertently make a goof.

In the third one, you said the plane came to rest 10 feel from an interstate highway. What you meant to say was 10 feet. But that's not what you wrote, and what you did write changed the meaning of the sentence.

This one falls under the category of not relying solely on spell check. I'll say it one more time: SPELL CHECK WILL NOT CATCH WORDS THAT ARE SPELLED INCORRECTLY AND THAT CREATE A CORRECTLY-SPELLED BUT UNINTENDED WORD.

The solution here is to run spell check AND then follow it up with a word-by-word and line-by-line scrutinization of your work.

The fourth one had the same problem. You were quoting the girl as saying she "couldn't reach the rubber pedals." You meant to say, rudder pedals.

I wish we had time for the extra-credit opportunities during the regular school year that would allow you to show me you can correct such problems and that would allow me to replace the old grade with the new. I'm afraid we simply don't have that time.

In assigning final grades, I will allow some leeway in your favor in projecting out your growth and possibly moving your grade up a notch. But I need to have ample proof that you're picking up good habits.

Please, guys, make sure you're giving yourself enough time to fact-check your material. No more fatals, okay?

Flight -- Some Little Stuff

Many of you said the pilot's wife suffered a laceration. A laceration is a cut. Why not just say she suffered a cut? Translate technincal jargon into simple language.

Plus, there were a number of AP style inconsistencies. Given that, I feel it's necessary to reinstitute an open-book AP style quiz. I will allow you to do it either during open lab or at home. It will be due the last day of class.

Video/Blogs/Tweets -- More Intros

First, let's look at some more intro videos, like this nicely-done one here.

This one needs captions to identify who is talking while they are talking, and more B-roll.

Other videos include this one that could use a lot more B-roll to break up the long interview.

Among blogs, these posts are pretty long but don't have many hyperlinks. The longer the post, the more hyperlinks you should have.

Here are the rest of the blogs: one on a TV show. And on two different TV shows. And on why people leave or stay in Michigan, which offers a nice contrast: one post is about why people leave; the other is about why people stay. And on basketball, with a preview post and a review post. This one uses an embedded pic, which I caution against: if you use a pic taken by someone else without their permission in your post, it's a copyright violation, whether or not you credit them!

Hyperlinks are different, since you are not actually using the pic; you're directing people by link to a site that has the pic. But this is not that case; it's technically illegal.

Among tweets, this one followed the de-flooding of a soaked basement.

Finally, here are the rest of the tweets: on a TV show. And on a TV show. A tweet stream on people leaving the state, with facts liberally offered tweet by tweet.

JRN 200 -- Sneakers Be Sneakin'

You may notice some inconsistencies in some of teh blog posts, like the one where I am critical of a student's blog for not having hyperlinks, yet it does.

That's because people went into their blogs after seeing the critique, and made the necessary changes.

Still, please pay attention to the point being noted.

Meeting -- Fatals Watch

Most people did a pretty solid job on the meetings story, but we did have a few fatals.

One was a time fatal. The story was only seconds late, but we are in a deadline business where deadlines are absolute and ruthless. Make sure you are giving yourself a time cushion ahead of the deadline so you can file on time with confidence.

Another fatal misidentified who was building the shelter, by reporting the church needed to raise $1.5 million. In fact, it was the coalition and not the church doing the money-raising.

A third fatal said the city was donating $1.5 million to the coalition, when in fact the city was donating an old fire house where the coalition planned to build a $1.5 million shelter.

Please make sure that you understand the facts before writing, and after writing make sure you didn't unintentionally mislabel something.

To date, nine of you have had fact fatals. Believe it or not, that's the best any 200 class of mine has done this far into a term. So, congrats?

Meeting -- Write With (AP) Style

Remember, with addresses you use closing abbreviations only when you have a specific address number, like 123 Sesame St., in which Street becomes St.

But if you are simply referring to a street without a specific address -- like just Sesame Street -- then spell out street.

The same rule applies with avenue/ave.

Stats -- Get To The Point

A good nut graf not only supports and details the lede, but supports and details what makes the lede most newsworthy.

If you're covering a football game, it's not that a game was played and that the game was part of a regular-season schedule and so forth; it's who won or lost, and why.

In the case of the stats story, what made it most newsworthy wasn't that a survey was taken; it's what the survey found. I think this two-graf nut graf sequence -- the type of which was repeated by quite a few of you on this exercise -- focused on the wrong thing:

A recent U.S. Census Bureau survey on American computer and internet use shows ownership and usage in households has dramatically increased since the early 1980s.

Conducted in October for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the survey came from a series of questionnaire supplements conducted as part of the Current Population Survey (CPS). The CPS is a survey of about 50,000 households, is conducted each month by the U.S. Census Bureau, and has come to be used as a tool to measure many economic, demographic, and social conditions of the U.S. population.

Statistics from the survey include the age, sex, race, and education of the householder; the type, size, income, and number of children in the household; and the household’s region.

In 1984, 8.2 percent of U.S. households reported to the Census Bureau that they owned a home computer. By 1997, it increased to 36.6 percent. Currently, 61.8 percent of 113.1 million American households have one or more computers, shows the survey’s findings.

Now, that last graf does look like a nut graf to me: it directly details the study's findings. So, why not get rid of the two existing nut grafs and make that fourth graf your nut, like this:

A recent U.S. Census Bureau survey on American computer and internet use shows ownership and usage in households has dramatically increased since the early 1980s.

In 1984, 8.2 percent of U.S. households reported to the Census Bureau that they owned a home computer. By 1997, it increased to 36.6 percent. Currently, 61.8 percent of 113.1 million American households have one or more computers, shows the survey’s findings.

Then you could take the two excluded grafs and move them to the end of the story as background, or eliminate 'em altogether.

I think the confusion may have stemmed from the fact that the background info was offered to you first in the press release. All because something is offered to you first doesn't mean that you should recite it in the order it was presented.

Just as if you were covering a city council meeting, you need to evaluate a press release and decide what is most important to emphasize, what is second most important, and what is not at all important, and order the information you present in that order.

Stats -- Watch Your Math

One of you wrote that from 1984 to 2001, there was a 48.1 percent increase in the number of households with computers. I assume you deduced that by looking at 2001's 56.3 percent and taking away 1984's 8.2 percent. The difference is 48.1 percent.

But here's the problem: what you said was that latter number represented the increase in the number of households with computers. In that case, the actual increase is 586 percent.

How did I get that? Again, you said it was the number of households. If 8.2 percent of households have computers and that number doubles, it goes to 16.4 percent. And that increase is 100 percent, since 200 percent of 8.2 equals 16.4, right?

What you meant to say was that there was a 48.1 percent increase in the percentage of households with Internet service. But that's not what you said. And yes, unfortunately that is a fatal.

Math can be tricky, I know. Most journalists get into writing because we can't stand math. And I'm not suggesting you avoid using math in your reporting; math is amazingly helpful in letting readers understand a story. But be sure you understand the math you're using.

If you need help, there are endless math resources -- percentage calculators and such -- online. Just Google away for some help.

Stats -- Write With (AP) Style

Is it internet, or Internet?

It's Internet, with a capital "i." Did anyone look in AP Style under Internet?

Also, don't forget to spell out percent, instead of using the percent symbol (%).

Finally, it's usually necessary to spell out and capitalize an organization in first reference -- like U.S. Census Bureau -- but in subsequent references you can lower-case and make generic the reference -- like census bureau.

Twitter -- Let's Look At Some Tweets!

Quite a few tweet streams followed the NBA Finals, like this one that did a very nice job of following the play-by-play not by noting every moment, but by noting key moments and offering periodic updates.


The problem, if there was one, was with the hash tag. Hash tags gather tweets with that tag not only from you, but from anybody in the world that uses the same hash tag. Because your hash tag wasn't unique enough, hash tag users got this.


A similar problem was faced by this tweet stream, also about the NBA, which used another popular hash tag. Same with this one, on the same topic.


Yet another basketball tweet stream did something different here: it used a tweet to ask a reader a question, and to gain a response via tweet. In the same way blogs differ from news stories in using its multi-dimensionality via hyperlinks, tweets allow you to interact with your audience while you report a story, something the print medium simply can't do.


Here's some tweets following a soccer game, and with a more unique hash tag.


Now, let's get away from sports. This one followed a Harry Potter movie. Again, you get a play-by-play. This one followed a TV show episode. Another one followed a baseball game. Tweeting is really that easy.

Here are some more tweet streams: of a city council meeting (FYI -- watch identifications so they are clear to readers). This one is following a TV show episode.

Blogs -- Lets Look At Some Posts!

First up is this blog offering: two posts about the national soccer team's latest game. The posts are a preview and a review, and could have done much more with hyperlinks. First off, having a hyperlink to the blog post you're reading in teh first place does not count as a hyperlink.

Second, when you cite a player by name, why not hyperlink to his biography on a team Web site? When referring to other teams, why not hyperlink to sites offering team news and information, like these blog posts on the NBA Finals did?

Unlike with print stories where you are discouraged from over-relying on other news and information sources in background, in the blogosphere it is generally accepted to lean on other media.

That's because it better takes advantage of the blog medium, by taking you directly to the original source and giving your audience a chance to fully evaluate that source. In print, you are just excerpting, so your reader doesn't have the same benefit.

This next blog had the right number of hyperlinks, but instead of embedding the hyperlink in the text, you are showing the URL. It's best to simply highlight a section of text. Please see me if you're having problems getting how to do so figured out.

At least those blogs had hyperlinks. This one lacked any linking. To successfully complete this assignment, you must include two hyperlinks per blog entry. And this one had such rich possibility. A link to the person's Facebook page. A link to Web pages of each school in question. A link to a photo-sharing service like yFrog where you could take and upload pics, and then create a hyperlink from the blog to the pic.

And this one had a lack of links. There was only one link on one post, and none on the other. The requirement was a minimum of two links per post. Why the reluctance to link? Let's talk about some possibilities.

This one had links, but unfortunatelty one didn't lead me anywhere. Nothing more frustrating to a reader than having frustrations in getting basic info. After posting a blog, check your hyperlinks and make sure they work.

One of you offered a ton of hyperlinks in these posts. Let's look at how effective those links were.

Here are some more blogs. This one is about this class.

Videos -- Let's Look At Some Tape!

First up is this one, with nice use of B-roll, captioning and narrating, but the audio is a bit rough. Yeah, I know you're working with basic equipment, but try to do the best you can to capture audible audio. This vid was similar in that regard -- nice editing, but the interview room had a big echo in it.

This next video did a nice job with audio and with the interviews. You got a nice, tight shot of source faces, which allowed you to keep the microphone nearby. And the space you chose had no background noise or distortions.

You could have improved it a bit with some B-roll, like that on the first video. Plus, make sure there's nothing distracting and totally unrelated to the story going on in the background, like in the one shot where someone is messing around with their phone.

I'm not sure if the b-roll in this vid was legal, but hey, it's a first assignment. My main hope was for you to work on shooting and cutting and organizing video, so when the next time around comes up, you're more comfortable with the process and can concentrate more on the product: the journalistic telling of a story.

It's one thing to be doing a story about an airport when there's planes flying in the background; it's another if you're doing a story abut airports and there's a guy picking his nose in the background.

Let's look at some more videos. Like this one. And this one. Let's not overlook this one.

Twitter: How To Tweet A Non-Breaking News Story

Tweeting a breaking news story is easy, as you've learned. Just type what you see, as you see it. But how do you tweet something that isn't breaking? Like a trend story, or something about a topic without a specific time peg or an actual event associated with it?

Actually, that's easy, too!

That was a situation a student in one of my past JRN 200 classes faced. She was doing a story about a rash of concussions among student-athletes. And here's her tweet stream, which I reversed so that you see her first tweet first and her last tweet last; the opposite of how it would appear on Twitter. Here we go:

#concussedathletes Over 300,000 sports related concussions occur each year, according to the Brain Trauma Research Center.

#concussedathletes The NCAA, the nation's largest college athletic association, has no guidelines for treating athletes with head injuries.

#concussedathletes The Big Ten is trying to implement its own regulations to deal with concussed athletes.

#concussedathletes Michigan State University is not pushing for the Big Ten to have the regulations.

#concussedathletes MSU soccer goalkeeper Liz Watza has had five concussions and said "The NCAA should create guidelines."

#concussedathletes Sports Specialist Dr. Homer Linard said the main concern with letting injured athletes back in the game is brain injury.

#concussedathletes Suffering a second concussion shortly after the first one can be deadly, according to the Brain Trauma Research Center.

#concussedathletes Incoming freshmen athletes at MSU are given a specific concussion test, called ImPACT. impacttest.com

#concussedathletes Athletic Clinical Coordinator Brian Bratta said "ImPACT assesses memory, cognitive ability and function of the brain."

#concussedathletes Once a concussion occurs at MSU, the athlete takes ImPACT again to gauge the severity of the injury.

#concussedathletes Despite new technology, the biggest indicator is the presence of symptoms, said Bratta. http://tinyurl.com/6cq9dx

#concussedathletes When a head injury occurs, MSU athletes are immediately given SCAT, the Standardized Concussion Assessment Test.

#concussedathletes SCAT is a checklist of common symptoms and tests balance, said MSU Certified Athletic Trainer Yume Nakamura.

Now, please notice a few things. Look at the first four tweets. Each could be a lede, right? For many of you, in writing a story -- especially trend stories -- you may find that you have more than one good lede option, but you can only choose one lede. But in tweeting the news, each lede option can become its own tweet.

Second, the tweeter took telling quotes and made each a tweet, like that of teh player giving her opinion on the subject. Just like a quote in a story, it's not YOUR opinion; it's what somebody who is a subject of your story thinks.

Third, interesting facts are offered as tweets, like those on what the effects of a concussion can be.

Fourth, a mini-series of tweets are used to explain a nuance of the story, like the half-dozen tweets that in total detail how MSU deals with concussed athletes.

Fifth, hyperlinks are offered via tweet. Notice the tweet that uses a tinyurl.com link. It's one of a number of URL shorteners that will take a long URL and convert it into a shorter one that better fits on a character-restricted service like Twitter.

Let's take a look at what another UR: shortener known as bit.ly can do for you, via this link.

JRN 200 -- A Scheduling Update

I know we threw around a lot of modifications to the semester schedule Monday; here's a recap of some of the changes, starting with out-of-class assignments:

FIRST MULTIMEDIA/BLOG/TWEET ASSIGNMENT: a 1-2 minute video/audio slideshow/podcast on what people have learned sofar this summer AND two blog posts with two hyperlinks per post on any topic AND 12 tweets with hash tags on the blog topic; still due by the start of class Wednesday, June 15.

SECOND OUT-OF-CLASS STORY: At least 600 words with a minimum of two human sources; still due Friday, June 17; rewrite due Friday, June 24.

SECOND MULTIMEDIA/BLOG/TWEET ASSIGNMENT: Topic should be an aspect or all of either your first or second written out-of-class stories (your choice); a 1-2 minute video/audio slideshow/podcast AND two blog posts with two hyperlinks per post AND 12 tweets with hash tags; due by the start of class Monday, June 20.

THIRD OUT-OF-CLASS STORY/MULTIMEDIA/BLOG/TWEET ASSIGNMENT: At least 600 words with a minimum of two human sources AND a 1-2 minute video/audio slideshow/podcast AND two blog posts with two hyperlinks per post AND 12 tweets with hash tags. Tip sheets due Wednesday, June 15; NEW PROJECT FINAL DUE DATE OF MONDAY, JUNE 27. No rewrite opportunity.

FOURTH OUT-OF-CLASS STORY: At least 600 words with a minimum of THREE human sources. Tip sheets due Friday, June 17; project final due date of Wednesday, June 29 (last day of class). No rewrite opportunity.

FOURTH MULTIMEDIA/BLOG/TWEET ASSIGNMENT: Canceled.

NEWSPAPER READINGS/CURRENT EVENTS QUIZZES: Finished for remainder of term.

PRACTICE STORIES: Three remaining scheduled practice stories are canceled.

TEST STORIES: Three remaining; dates TBA.

OPEN LAB TIMES: We will schedule open lab times for many of the remaining class sessions. You will be expected to work on your out-of-class stories, multimedia or social media projects during these times. It can be anything related -- phone or email interviews, writing, researching, editing, asking me for help and advice, ect. Please bring whatever materials you need to work on these projects in class.

Open labs will be part of or all of classes on Wednesday, June 15; Friday, June 17; Monday, June 20; Wednesday, June 22; and Monday, June 27.

If you have any questions or concerns, please ask me about it ASAP.

Out-Of-Class #1 -- Every Rose Has Its Thorns ...

Overall to date, this class has performed very well. In many ways you have been ahead of my previous JRN 200 classes in terms of your demonstrated ability and pace at which you picked up new skills.

I'm sorry to say the first out-of-class story assignment is NOT one of those examples. Only three people scored a 3.0 or higher. Just as many people fataled this assignment; an all-time high for a class I taught. Not good.

Still, it's your first assignment in a compacted class. Plus, you have a rewrite opportunity that has the potential of substantially improving your grade. It's critical that we learn from this first go-around and make many of the errors one-time-only deals.

Lets look at some common problems:

>>> This is not a good place to fatal. There were a total of three fatals; one of which was a time fatal. Even excluding that one, I've never had more than one person fatal on any single out-of-class story assignment.

The fatals definitely fall under the "catchable" category. In one, the author misspelled the name of President Barack Obama. Not only is that such a well-known name, but the example of misspelling Obama's name is actually an example in your syllabus of what constitutes a fatal.

The second author had two fatals: first, you had a misspelling in a quote, using "their" instead of "there." Any change from a literal quote is a fatal.

Second, you misspelled a source's name, which should have been caught because you had the correct spelling on your source list. If you have two different spellings of one name, you know at least one has to be wrong. You need to notice such inconsistencies.

I suspect you may have come close to a third fatal. In one section, that same author referred to auto facture instead of auto factory. A factory is a place where things are made; facture is the process of how something is made. (Facture is the root of manufcture, for example.)

Why I suspect the use of facture may have been unintended is because in 21 years of writing and teaching, plus roughly 40 years of being a voracious reader, I've never come across the word ever used, in any way, at all.

I'll say this again: spell check will not catch instances where you misspell a word in which the misspelling creates a correctly-spelled but unintended word.

>>> Do your own work. There was a distinct lack of original reporting in many of your stories. Instead of calling or emailing people, instead you used Web site content or the reporting of other media.

Using such sources are acceptable either as secondary sourcing or as a last resort. They should not be used as primary sources. If you have one side of an issue interviewed in person and the other side you simply rely on such secondary sources, that is not reporting.

One story on the housing market cited ABC News and a Web report, but it didn't appear you got any data directly yourself. Neutral experts can direct you to such data. So can Google.

That is digging into one side of an issue and doing a lousy job of researching the other side. You lose the chance to discover things about the other side and to do a back-and-forth exchange where you learn of issues and perspectives and questions to ask the original side about. And that's not journalism.

And that leads to another common problem ...

>>> A lack of vision. Many of you hit hard one side of an issue, then touched on an opposing side, and then failed at all to look at other relevant perspectives. The latter is necessary in differentiating simple he-said she-said fight-enabling and true journalism that deconstructs an issue from various angles.

Many of you talked to people doing things, but not to people affected by things. Many of you talked to proponents and opponents, but not neutral experts who could help referee the opposing views.

Here are some examples:

>>> You don't consider who is affected. one story regarded STD among college students. You talked to college health officials and experts, but you failed to talk to the people affected: students. Do they rely on the health officials? Do they think the health institutions you highlighted are effective and useful? Do they even see STDs as a concern?

Another story dealt with shortages of prescription medicines. You talked to pharmacists. You cited federal regulators as your neutral expert, but instead of talking to them you jut referred to their Web site. You didn't at all appear to talk to drug manufacturers -- after all, they are the ones who are falling short in making drugs -- nor did you talk to those who are or could be impacted: patients!

Such examples went on and on. One story dealt with the housing market, but didn't quote a single home owner of home buyer. Another story regarded a municipal water park and talked to managers but never talked to those who paid for it and use it: taxpayers.

A story about plans to haul used nuclear generators down the St. Clair River talked to the power company planning to do it and even to a government official who has concerns about the plan, but never talked to are local residents and local officials who may have strong feelings about 16 radioactive generators sailing right by where they live.

>>> You had a lack of balance. One story on summer recreational programs allowed the managers of such programs to tout the benefits, but readers are fair to say managers will have a natural bias touting such programs; their paychecks depend on it.

Nowhere did you talk to a neutral expert -- perhaps a parks and recs prof -- on whether such programs are popular and whether people view them as much as a viable option to a real vacation as the managers do. Nor did you quote many ultimate judges of whether such programs are worth doing or equal to a more traditional getaway: area residents. The story was so one-sided, it essentially sounded like a press release rather than a news story.

>>> You needed wider perspective. Another story regarded an archaeological discovery my MSUers that you claimed would be a big help to history researchers. Well, of course MSUers would say their work is important. What about getting perspective from a researcher not from MSU?

One story concerned the Patriot Act. Your exploration of opposition rationale was far more detailed than that of proponents. You talked to an activist about why they hate the act, but you never talk to law enforcement official about why they like the act. At least you did cite a neutral expert: an MSU criminal justice prof.

>>> The lack of interviews pre-empted opportunities to catch potentially-misleading statements. The aquatic center story cited pool officials as saying the facility was covering operating costs. And that rang a huge bell for me.

Back in my Las Vegas days, I wrote that the Las Vegas Monorail was struggling. Monorail officials always tried to throw me under the bus, claiming they were making an operating profit; that is, they were bringing in enough in fares to cover what it cost to run the monorail every day.

The problem was, while fares covered operating costs, they did not cover capital costs; that is, paying back the money used to build the monorail. Saying you're covering operating costs is akin to saying your paycheck is covering all your bills, except your mortgage. Your bills minus your mortgage is your operating cost; your mortgage is your capital cost.

Now, how did I know this? It's not because I'm a fiscal genius. I flunked Econ 101 in college (though a lack of attendance probably had something to do with it). I knew that because I got a hold of a neutral expert -- in this case, a Wall Street bond analyst -- who highlighted that for me.

So I was able to write in 2007 -- on my next-to-last day at work -- that the monorail was on track to run out of cash reserves by 2010, a story that was immediately ripped by monorail officials who claimed I didn't know what I was talking about. By the way, the monorail filed for bankruptcy last year. And please note in the latter story how a monorail official is still insistent that the rail line is covering operating costs. Jeez, Louise ...

I didn't just take someone's word for it. I checked with neutral experts and I educated myself so I knew when I was being told the truth and when I was being misled.

>>> Finally, you told me but you didn't show me. It's not enough to lay out a point; you also have to show the proof and/or offer a translation.

You tell me in a nut graf that grads are fleeing Michigan, but it's not until the 27th graf do you offer data proving that point, via a moving company's study. Another nut graf notes more people are attending summer school at MSU, but it' not until graf eight you offer data from MSU enrollment data. You tell me HPV is MSU's most common STD, but you never say exactly what HPV is.

You tell me many students choose to live in the summer, but you never show me any statistics. What is the summer dorm population compared to the summer enrollment total? And how does that percentage compare to the regular school year?

In the drug shortage story, you say the shortages primarily revolve around injectables, but you never say what an injectable is, or what some examples of such drugs -- that readers may be familiar with -- are.

In a story about disaster planning, you tell me MSU has a plan, but you never detail what that plan entails: what kinds of scenarios it covers, and what it calls for students to do.

The summer programs story has an official telling you that summer sessions draw more people than during other parts of the year. Some numbers to nail that down would have been nice. You write about MIPs, but you never detail the consequences. Is it a felony or a misdemeanor? How much can you get fined? Can you go to jail?

Guys, we don't have a lot of time in this class to get these problems resolved. I wish we had more time, but we don't. But that's not an excuse for me to just say, "Oh well, too bad for you guys." We have to find a way to make this work, within the time restrictions we have. And we will.

But I need your help in helping you.

I urge you to act on the points made in this blog post and in whatever comments I made on your graded papers.

I urge EVERYONE to seriously consider a rewrite, as this (and each of the rest of the out-of-class stories) will have a significant impact on your final grade.

I urge you to take advantage of class times to ask questions asking me to explain concepts and strategies and to talk about how you could do better. I know no one likes asking what they may deem as a "stupid" question in class, but trust me, many of you face the same issues, and if we all ask questions (and get answers) as a group, we'll all do better, and do so more quickly.

I urge you to see me during my office hours to review your work and make sure you are utilizing good habits and avoiding bad ones. I will make office hours for you, if possible within my work schedule and needed for you to succeed.

I know this is going to mean a lot of work for you over the next three weeks. We have out-of-class stories and in-class work and multimedia stuff coming up. The next three weeks will be a bear, no matter what we do or don't do.

But we can make these next three weeks worth your time, by doing what we need to do to get the grade that truly reflects your ability. Everyone here is smart enough to get a solid grade in here. Now, we need to make sure that we connect that potential with demonstrating that ability.

Let's do this.

Murder -- And Two Fatals

Two fatals on this exercise, both of 'em avoidable.

In one, you spelled the North Point Inn as the North Pointe Inn, with an "e" at the end of "Pointe."

A thorough double-check of the spellings of all names would have caught that one.

In the other, you referred to the North Point Inn as a hotel. Both in the preface and in a direct quote, it was labeled as a restaurant. You not only made an assumption, you made one that was contrary to a thorough reading of the facts.

Again, folks, we need to make sure we do the little things and get 'em right.

Murder -- Write With (AP) Style

Is it 5-feet-10-inch or 5'10 or five foot ten or 5 feet 10 inches?

It's the first on or the last one. AP Style, under dimensions:

Use figures and spell out inches, feet, yards, ect, to indicate depth, height, length and width. Hyphenate adjectival forms before nouns.

EXAMPLES: He is 5 feet 6 inches tall, the 5-foot-6-inch man, the 5-foot man, the basketball team signed a 7-footer.

Use an apostrophe to indicate feet and quote marks to indicate inches (5'6") only in very technical contexts.

Plus, did you need to refer to the North Point Inn by its full name in every reference? No.

In the first reference, a full name is necessary. But in subsequent references, something more generic and/or abbreviated would suffice, like inn (with the "i" in lower case) or the restaurant.

If there was a common and well-known acronym for the restaurant -- like MSU for Michigan State University -- then you could have used that. But in this case, there was not.

Murder -- Did You Need Quotes ...

. . . here?

"He was about 5 feet 10, maybe 6 feet tall, in his early 20s, medium build," Cortez said, adding he was wearing "blue jeans, a blue plaid-button-up shirt, and blue tennis shoes."

"He had a scarf, a floral scarf, tied around the lower part of his face, cowboy style. It covered the bottom half of his face," she said.

There really isn't any difference between quoting this or paraphrasing this. As a quote, it really doesn't add a more human tone or voice than it would as a paraphrase.

If a quote is dull, technical or lacks a human-sounding voice, you're probably better off just paraphrasing the person, like this:

The suspect was between 5-feet-10-inches and 6-feet tall, in his early 20s and with a medium build, Cortez said, adding he was wearing blue jeans, a blue plaid-button-up shirt, and blue tennis shoes.

He had a floral scarf tied around the lower part of his face, cowboy style, that covered the bottom half of his face, she said.

Murder -- Sufficient Description

Very nice work overall on this assignment. And no fatals! But I can always find something to nit-pick about. Like this:

This was one of your descriptions of the suspect:

Cortez said the man was about 5 feet 10 inches to maybe 6 feet tall, in his early 20s, and medium build.

Is that sufficient? No. It's too vague to be very useful to readers. Either that, or I'd be looking very carefully at Beau and Jason. And backing away verrry slooooowly.

Think about it. How many people in the world fit that description? It's so many that you are not narrowing down suspect possibilities in the mind of the public; you actually are making a whole lot of innocent people look guilty!

It's best to use suspect descriptions when you are so specific that it can narrow down the suspect pool, like here:

The robber was between 5 foot 10 inches and 6 feet tall, in his early 20s, medium build, wearing a floral scarf over his face, blue jeans, a blue plaid button-up shirt and blue tennis shoes, and may have had an accomplice, according to Cortez.

This ID is far more useful. Besides telling readers the killer is color-blind, it's a distinctive description that -- combined with the time and place -- helps readers zero in on a single suspect, or a limited suspect pool.

Multimedia -- Some Blog Examples

We'll look at some blogs from past classes. since each medium was supposed to help tell the same story. First up is this blog stream on various topics has a nice and conversational writing style without being opinionated.

Nice use of hyperlinks that offer background not only in text, but in video as well. Really, whatever background you offer by hyperlink can be in any other medium, as long as the content helps tell the story or builds upon the story or offers relevant background.

Another blogger's stream here takes things a step further: not only are there hyperlinks, there are embedded maps and videos and such. Look at the very nice use of hyperlinks to provide background here, allowing posts to be much shorter in size than print stories offering comparable information.

Also, note how multiple blog posts help tell a single story. The top three posts are all about teen driving restrictions; the last four are about MSU women's soccer. When we talk about a single news story equaling several blog posts, this is what we mean.

The multiple post version also has the advantage over a single linear written news story in that you can highlight various facets of a story because each gets its own post, whereas in a written story you have to pick what is the highest and best use of emphasis in the one lede you have.

You can see more examples of what blogging for news looks like here and also here.

A couple of flaws to note: first, make sure that your hyperlinks actually work and that they don't go bad. Nothing more frustrating to readers than a dead end to information, as opposed to a gateway. Double-check your hyperlink after posting your blog to make sure it works.

Second, no need to end a blog post with something like, continued in blog 2. Totally unnecessary. A blog is an ongoing conversation, so of course you'll have more to say.

Multimedia -- Maps Are Easy

Maps are sooooo easy to make. Really. Let's go to Google Maps and find out!

I made a map here for a past JRN 200 class. You can use free tools like Google Maps to make maps that zero in on an area, offer text to go with pinpointed lcoations, ect.

You could even turn a map into a multimedia version of your story, by embedding video, audio and/or pictrues into your pinpoints, like here.

JRN 200 -- Homework For Weekend of June 11/12

You need to read two free downloads mentioned in the sylllabus. To make things a bit easier for you, I've provided some links to thos downloads here. The downloads are Journalism 2.0 by Mark Briggs and the Reporters Guide To Multimedia Proficency by Mindy McAdams.

Multimedia -- Video 101

I know this might seem to be a tough assignment, given that you don't have much to refer to and you don't have any detailed direction. But guess what? You do.

Just like you, when it came to multimedia I threw my fall 2010 and spring 2011 JRN 200 classes into the lake to teach them how to swim. And actually, people picked things up fairly quickly, and became proficient with minimal instruction. Just like with writing, you learn by doing.

The difference is, you've been writing for most of your lives, and when it comes to video you may have never made an edit before in your lives. Hence, it feels a helluva lot more awkward. Just go with it; I think you'll be surprised how good you get in a short time.

In that we learn by looking at work, I've included some links to the first multimedia assignment from past classes. Let's take a look and see what it looks like when people stop being polite and start getting real ... no, wait, that's the "Real World" slogan.

So again, a reminder: when they did these videos, these people had the exact same amount of video training as you do now. This was their starting point, and I hope it will give you a template of sorts to know what this first assignment could look like in terms of a final form.

First up is a video where the problem isn't the visual. It's the audio. I can barely hear what some folks are saying. Can you?

Yeah, I know you're working with basic equipment, but make sure that you grab audio in as non-echoey and quiet a space as possible. And get a microphone as close as you can to the subject; in the case of using flip cameras, that means shooting very close-up if you are shooting an interview.

In the same way a print story must be easy for a reader to navigate in terms of word use and structure, a video story has to be easy to watch and listen to in terms of clear video and understandable audio. Make sure the audio and visuals are clear and easy to follow for your viewers.

Plus, in that vid the captions are incomplete. Think about the same standard you'd use for attribution in print: what is the minimum amount of information readers need to know to sufficiently identify the interview subject and know why they are credible on this subject?

I'd say you need a full name and some sort of title; like Makia Brooks, JRN 200 student as opposed to just Makia.

You can help show and tell things to viewers via something called B-roll. B-roll is footage showing what your story is about. Like if you're doing a story about a bakery, B-roll would include cooks baking at the bakery, or customers buying tasty basked goods, or even external shots of the bakery building.

B-roll is useful to run while you are doing narration, or during transitions between sound bites, or to help break up a sound bite visual. Think about the typical sound bite; it's just someone going blah blah blah. Not that exciting to look at. But what you can do is start a sound bite with the standard shot of someone talking, then slip in a few seconds of B-roll of what they're taking about as they continue to talk, and then return to the shot of the person talking as the sound bite nears an end. That way, viewers get to see who is talking, and what they are talking about, as they talk.

You can see some decent B-roll use here.

Try to be precise in where you have transitions between interviews. In this video, the first person seems to get cut off. Perhaps you transitioned too quickly. With the last one, the interview subject kind of trails off at the end. Maybe the edit should have been a bit sooner. In the same way you try to be precise in using quotes in print, try to be just as precise in audio and video.

In all fairness, the producer of this vid had previous video experience, so he had a head start from many of you.

Still, I want you to notice -- and even emulate -- the strong points shown. Look at the creativity and variety of B-roll. Look at the use of captions. Look at the use of fairly short and to-to-point sound bytes. Look at the way the producer went to a bite, then someone else's bite, then back to the original person's bite. It nicely breaks up the first person's bite so the viewer doesn't get stuck listening to one person talk on and on and on. Note the narration at the start of the piece, offering a strong lede to the story.

There's a lot to learn from this vid.

This next vid has a lede that's very fun and produced well but not exactly in the most journalistic style; still, for this first assignment it's fine. But what I really like is the back-and-forth use of sound bites. It doesn't feel like an interview; it feels like a conversation the viewer is having with two students. Very nice way to break up what was time-wise a verrrrry loooooong video. It's over three minutes; I'd like you guys to aim for between one and two minutes, max.

One person did something a bit different: a podcast. That is, an audio-only report kind of like a radio segment. It worked well, except for one thing -- it was a bit hard to keep track of who was saying what. Perhaps the person acting as the show host could have prefaced each new commenter with a quick identifier, such as "What do you think, Dave?" or "Devyne?"

You may ask yourself, "Where do you post a podcast?" I didn't know either. So I Googled "podcast upload" and found something in about five seconds. I used podbean.com, which is free (with registration) and which you can link to here.

That wasn't the only bit of different multimedia done by previous versions of this class. This person did an audio slide show, where still images are used instead of video, and sound is run concurrent with the person pictured at the time.

Look at how the author introduced animation of sort, by having the still image pan back slowly. That's a nice touch, making a static shot a bit more lively.

I'm sorry to say this story failed in a very critical area: one name was misspelled in the closing credits.

I wish I didn't have to, since otherwise this was such a nicely-done assignment. But no matter what the medium, the journalistic value of getting it right applies. If I gave you a pass on multimedia, I send the message that it is lesser journalism. It's not. I'm sorry to say this was a fatal.

The standards are no different from print. Only the medium is different. We still have to get things right and on-time and organized in a sensible and easy-to-understand form and we still need to offer evidence from sources being quoted directly.

Blogs -- Blogging 101

There is a misconception that blogs have to be snarky and/or opinionated. That's not so, in the same way that a newspaper doesn't have to be borderline libelous just because the National Enquirer is.

Instead, how news blogs differ from news stories is primarily in tone and presentation.

Regarding the former, a news blog is written more conversationally, whereas a news story is written authoritatively. A blog sounds like a conversation. It's okay to use woulda and shoulda and coulda and even first-person references. It sounds like a conversation a reporter is having with someone while they're putting together a story, or after a story has been written and that reporter is filling in his friends at the Peanut Barrel.

In presentation, a traditional news story is offered in one shot, offering a summation and history of what happened. Blogs, on the other hand, are a stream of news, spread out over various posts. You have have posts with one side, another side and then a neutral expert's take. Or it may be a blow-by-blow, with a new post picking up where the last one left off.

Otherwise, there are many similarities between news blogging and news writing, even if the approaches to similar ends are different.

Yes, a news blog is conversational. But a blog for news is not personal; it still has to be on a topic that is relevant, interesting and/or useful to your readers. It's your voice; not your opinion.

A news blog is focused. Like a sharp lede in a story, you should get to the point.

A news blog is short. A good post is 100 or 200 words long. But that's because you can file a single post for a single facet of a story, with other facets getting their own posts. In a news story, we put all those facets together into a single report. In blogging, the blog itself is the single entity; posts simply tell the latest installment of an ongoing story.

In news stories, we offer evidence by putting facts and background into a story. In blogging, we offer such evidence and background not in text but by hyperlink.

Hyperlinks are links from a text section of your blog to another Web site, usually one that is directly related to the text section in question. We can usually spot hyperlinks by noticing an area that appears highlighted, like here.

For example, let's say you're doing a story about me. Maybe you set up a hyperlink from a highlighted section of my name in a blog to my Facebook page. Or my LinkedIn page. Or maybe you're talking about how awesome I am, and in that section you hyperlink to an online article about me winning a crapload of awards.

Just like in print, it's a way to not just tell readers, but to show them. In print, we show and tell in the same dimension. But in a blog, we leverage that medium's strength and make backgrounding multidimensional.

Now, how do you create a hyperlink? Easy.

First, you highlight the section of text for which you want to create a hyperlink. Then, you click on the symbol on your blog or email account that looks like a globe with a chain link over it. That's the hyperlink key.

When you click on that key, you'll be asked to paste in a URL, which is a fancy acronym for a Web address. That should be the URL for whatever you want to be the hyperlink destination.

You paste that in, hit OK (or whatever the concluding key is), and voila! Hyperlink city, baby!

For this class, I will be asking you do do some news blogs. For each assignment, I will be asking you to do two blog posts, with a minimum of two hyperlinks per post, on a single news topic.

I think you may be able to get a sense of how you can turn a news story into a blog by looking at this Gawker.com blog post based on a news story you have have heard about on your own: Michigan's ban on energy drink/alcohol mixes. Oh, and whaddya know, this blog links to -- and even credits -- The State News!

Take a look at the blog and its style and how it presents information, and then look at the State News story and its presentation method. See similarities? Differences? How alike goals are accomplished in differing ways? And see how helpful hyperlinking is to provide background without cluttering the blog or breaking its conversational tone?

Twitter -- Tweeting 101

Like the rest of multimedia, you may not immediately link Twitter to journalism, but once you deconstruct it and look at it, it starts to make sense.

This is the most basic value of Twitter -- it's another way to relay events live and as they happen to an audience who may not be near a TV or radio or whatever. You can essentially "broadcast" live, just using text sent to mobile devices and readers. And you do it 140 characters at a time.

What you try to do is capture telling thoughts, moments and facts, in some sort of sequential order. Think about what you notice that stands out. Think about an anecdote or detail that you would share with a friend, if a friend was standing right next to you. Think about the play-by-play of something unfolding in front of you. Think about summations. Those are all potential tweets.

Ideally, the best tweet streams can be put in reverse order and read just like an inverted-pyramid news story, with (timewise) your first tweet summing up what happened, and the following tweets filling in details and offering a chronology as something unfolds.

Here -- again, in reverse order, with the tweets in order of when they were posted -- is the State News' sports Tweet stream just before and from the press conference announcing Coach Dantonio's heart attack in 2010:

Report: Football head coach Mark Dantonio suffered a heart attack but is OK.

There is a "important football-related press conference" scheduled for 1 p.m. It is unclear if it is related to reports of Dantonio's health

MSU: Dantonio will remain at the hospital for a few days for monitoring. Return to sidelines at a later date.

MSU: Offensive coordinator Don Treadwell will manage day-to-day responsibilities of head coach.

MSU: Dantonio had "symptoms consistent with a heart attack."

MSU: Dantonio had a cardiac catheterization procedure early Sunday morning.

AD Mark Hollis said Dantonio will not be on the sidelines for the Northern Colorado game Saturday.

Hollis: "This is a time for the Spartan nation to come together, to rally."

Dr. D'Haem of Sparrow Hospital said a full recover is expected.

Dr. D'Haem said procedure is very routine and happens often. Also said he expects no long-term negative impact. Return yet to be determined.

Dr. D'Haem said Dantonio began feeling symptoms around 12:30 a.m. Sunday.

Dr. D'Haem: Heart attacks are never good...but I would classify this as a rather small heart attack.

Hollis said he spent the night at the hospital until about 5:30, the returned to hospital this morning at 8.

Dr. D'Haem: "Stress doesn't cause coronary heart disease, but very stressful events can be a trigger."

Coach Treadwell on players' reaction: "They're handling it as well as they can. They love their head coach."

Hollis: "(Dantonio's) thoughts went immediately to his family and then to the football program."

Treadwell said the fact staff has been together for a number of years will make this process easier from a football point of view.

Dr. D'Haem said timetable for Dantonio's return will be taken week-by-week.

There's a lede. There's a nut graf. There's supporting details. There are quotes. There is background. It collectively qualifies as a journalistic story. And you did it within the confines of social media.

This is exactly how The Associated Press wire service has always filed breaking news stories as a story is breaking: line-by-line, with the idea the lines can be pasted together into a story. It allows the writer to push out a story (and an editor to edit copy) much faster than if he or she waited to have a mass of information combined into a story, and yet a reader still ends up with all the information they need to consider the package in its totality.

So really, tweets are just a way of applying old journalistic skills in a new way.

Now, in this class I am going to demand a minimum of 12 tweets per assignment. But if you go waaaay beyond 12 tweets, that's okay! If there's something going on that calls for constant updates, then tweet away until you feel the story is adequately told.

You can also supplement your tweets with links to a photo uploading site, like yFrog, which can help tell the story beyond the 140 characters allowed in a tweet, and beyond simple words.

Plus, you can also link to anything on the Web with the aid of a URL shortener, like bit.ly. What the service does is take a URL and replace it with a much shorter one. Using a bit.ly link here gives you more room to write text without the URL taking up so much space.

Also, as part of your assignments here I will ask that any tweet stream be accompanied by hash tags. A hash tag is a phrase led by the hash tag symbol of #. On Twitter, that allows someone to search by hash tag, which will reveal any and all tweets from anyone that includes that hash tag.

Let's say on the aforementioned Dantonio tweet stream you had hash tags. And let's say the hash tag was #sickcoach. Incorporated hash tags would look something like this:

Report: Football head coach Mark Dantonio suffered a heart attack but is OK. #sickcoach

There is a "important football-related press conference" scheduled for 1 p.m. It is unclear if it is related to reports of Dantonio's health #sickcoach

MSU: Dantonio will remain at the hospital for a few days for monitoring. Return to sidelines at a later date. #sickcoach

And that's it. Easy, right?

Bicyclists -- What's The Point?

Every good story starts with a good lede.

A lede that passes the peanut Barrel test. A lede that makes things clear for readers and intrugues them, pulling them into the greater story. A lede that sums up what is the latest and most important. A lede that looks at ultimate outcome and context.

A lede centered on the accident simply as something that happened would leave something to be desired. Yes, the accident was the most serious consequence here. But four months ago as a long time ago. That has to be very old news.

Given the disparity in time, I think it would have been wise to emphasize the timelier event, which of course was still directly connected to the accident since it was the reason she was in the hospital in the first place. This lede did that:

A McDonald's manager was released from Omar Memorial Hospital Monday after being hit by a car and sent flying off her bike.

This lede is technically sound, other than missing a date fix for when she was hit by a car, which would simply require ending the sentence with four months ago. But I found a better lede, one that highlighted something that made this story a bit more interesting and may arguably be the main point of why this story is newsworthy, two days after the hospital release and four months after the crash: the fact that wrecking her body hasn't scared her off from riding.

For a 37-year-old bicyclist, a bicycle accident on Feb. 8 has not changed her attitude about riding a bike at all. In fact, she still wants to ride.

After Marsha Taylor suffered a concussion, broken neck, six broken ribs, a broken arm and broken pelvis from being it from behind by a car, sending her flying off her bike, she said if she could she'd still be out there riding now.

"It's hard to ride a bike when you have crutches," she said.

First, see how this was soooo Peanut Barrel:

"Hey Omar, what story did you work on today?"

"I wrote about this woman who just got outta the hospital after getting all busted up riding her bike. And even though she got all messed up, she still wants to ride!"

That's one thing that makes this story a little bit different from any other accident story, right?

Second, look at how nice of a lede/nut graf/telling quote combo this is. The nut graf nicely supports and amplifies the lede, and the quote puts a human voice and context on the previous grafs while also providing evidence for the reader.

This lede entirely disregarded the time element by putting the latest happening in a delayed lede role, and turned the accident into a mini-anecdote, like this:

Marsha Taylor was out for a routine bike ride about four months ago when her world was turned upside down.

Taylor -- a 37-year-old recreational cyclist who estimates she's logged about 3,500 riding miles this year -- said she was struck from behind by a car while on a roughly hour-long ride in early February.

The opening of this lede obviously isn't pegged to the time element, like the first lede we looked at. It instead is trying to set context and tell a bigger story that goes straight to the Peanut Barrel rule: that somebody was just doing their daily non-newsworthy thing when the switch on their normal life was flipped to the "off" position.

You know, it considers an angle that makes this story unique. It's ironic. It's contextual. It's a good lede, and great vision in terms of identifying what made a story truly different from the usual and expected.