Writing news for the Web is just like writing for our in-class practice stories. You're writing in real time, with the goal of getting a story up quickly and updating it as needed.
And we are going to practice writing news in real time in this class. For your first exercise, I want you to cover ANYTHING -- and I mean anything! Cover your favorite TV show. Cover a game you're watching on TV. Cover your roommates having dinner. Whatever.
But I want you to cover it this way: first, in your blog account, write a preview story 100 to 250 words in length, in which you preview the event. Then, write a story of the same length at the end of the event, recapping it.
And EACH story will have to include TWO related hyperlinks. A hyperlink is a highlighted and/or underlined set of text that, when clicked upon, takes you to a separate Web page. In the case of news stories, we try to hyperlink to things that provide additional background and information on a subject area.
And hyperlinks can come from just about anywhere. You can hyperlink to other media coverage of the same thing. Or a clip of your subject matter on YouTube. Or the home page of your subject's Web site. Or a Wikipedia entry. Or a biography. Or whatever helps provide background.
In print, we provide background in one dimension: in text, following your lede and nut graf. Online, we can offer background in a second dimension via hyperlinks, leaving your writing more compact and to the basic essentials.
Now, how do you hyperlink? Simple. You highlight the section of text you want to have hyperlinked; then click on the "link" button or linked chain symbol at the top of the page; when a URL box pops open, enter the URL (Web address) of the page you want hyperlinked, and then hit "okay."
Then, go back to the text and click on the hyperlink to make sure it works.
Make sure that the section you highlight is relevant to the hyperlink. If you're doing a story about MSU's football coach, for example, maybe you want to have a hyperlink go to the first time you mention the coach by name, Mark Dantonio. Or if you're writing about the football team's shocking win against Notre Dame in 2010, you want to highlight your reference to the "Little Giants" play.
Either way, look for resources online -- hellooooooo, Googles! -- that can help you provide readers value-added background and multimedia regarding your topic.
Again, EACH story MUST have at least TWO hyperlinks EACH.
Your stories will be due via email links from your blog to my email by the start of our next class.
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