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fandomhigh2009-01-22 06:29 am
trustshisbarber.livejournal.com) wrote in fandomhigh2009-01-22 06:29 am
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Journalism: Thursday, Period 4, Class 3
"Anybody who isn't sitting before the bell rings gets a detention!" Jonah yelled ten seconds before the bell rang. "Just kidding. I enjoy messing with your adolescent minds. Still, you never know when I might give any of you a detention, so stay prepared for it at all times."
"Today we're going to be talking about news briefs. According to the dictionary, a news brief is 'a summary of a news story; also a short news story.' Or, if we're talking about television or radio journalism - which is a medium that isn't nearly as terrible anymore as it had been because you people voted for me, good job - 'a broadcasting blurb.' We're going to focus on the 'short news story' definition. You take a story that's noteworthy but that you can't find interesting enough to write a few paragraphs about, you boil it down to its bare necessities, and you spit out whatever the result is. They should only be a paragraph long, somewhere around a hundred to a hundred and fifty words, give or take. And don't waste a great headline on these. Briefs are usually hidden a few pages into the paper and the headlines are in a much smaller font than your normal headlines. In other words, nobody will ever care what your headline is and will only read the brief if they're the kind of person who would normally read news briefs anyway."
"So, let's do a quick example of a good news brief. I'll take something I don't care enough about to write a lot on. Teenage fashion, for example. I couldn't give a crap about that if I tried and I can guarantee that I will never try so long as I live. Quick headline: Teen Fashion: Still Sucks After Many Decades."
"Now you have to find a way to write a paragraph about this crap. And, yes, you have to do it. A huge part of being a journalist is reporting on crap that you're not at all interested in but that still needs to be reported on. News isn't necessarily what you care about. News is what happened, sometimes with a bit of a spin. But now's not the time for spin. Now's the time for just what happened. And in this case, what happened is that young people have dressed like drunkards in a fabric store for the fifth straight decade."
"So, here's my brief on teenage fashion. AHEM."
FANDOM - Continuing a decades-long tradition of being walking aesthetic disasters, teenagers today continue to obsess over fashions they will be embarrassed about within the next ten years. Just like the hippies and disco kids of the seventies, the giant-permed weirdoes of the eighties, and the grunge and goth kids of the nineties, the children of the naughts will be ashamed to show their future children pictures of their high school days because they won't be able to figure out what possessed them to wear whatever it was they were wearing. "I can't believe I thought I ever looked good with that haircut," any number of students will be quoted as saying by this time next decade.
"That's one hundred and fifteen words. Great length for this kind of thing. But you're amateurs, so I can't expect you to write that much. So your assignment for today is to write an exactly one hundred and five word news brief about a subject that you don't care too much about while still trying to sound like you're at least slightly interested in it. Suggested topics: what celebrities are doing, what other teachers are teaching, the fact that our roads aren't big enough to drive on, animal migration, or anything else you only care enough to write one hundred and five words about. Get to work!"
"Today we're going to be talking about news briefs. According to the dictionary, a news brief is 'a summary of a news story; also a short news story.' Or, if we're talking about television or radio journalism - which is a medium that isn't nearly as terrible anymore as it had been because you people voted for me, good job - 'a broadcasting blurb.' We're going to focus on the 'short news story' definition. You take a story that's noteworthy but that you can't find interesting enough to write a few paragraphs about, you boil it down to its bare necessities, and you spit out whatever the result is. They should only be a paragraph long, somewhere around a hundred to a hundred and fifty words, give or take. And don't waste a great headline on these. Briefs are usually hidden a few pages into the paper and the headlines are in a much smaller font than your normal headlines. In other words, nobody will ever care what your headline is and will only read the brief if they're the kind of person who would normally read news briefs anyway."
"So, let's do a quick example of a good news brief. I'll take something I don't care enough about to write a lot on. Teenage fashion, for example. I couldn't give a crap about that if I tried and I can guarantee that I will never try so long as I live. Quick headline: Teen Fashion: Still Sucks After Many Decades."
"Now you have to find a way to write a paragraph about this crap. And, yes, you have to do it. A huge part of being a journalist is reporting on crap that you're not at all interested in but that still needs to be reported on. News isn't necessarily what you care about. News is what happened, sometimes with a bit of a spin. But now's not the time for spin. Now's the time for just what happened. And in this case, what happened is that young people have dressed like drunkards in a fabric store for the fifth straight decade."
"So, here's my brief on teenage fashion. AHEM."
FANDOM - Continuing a decades-long tradition of being walking aesthetic disasters, teenagers today continue to obsess over fashions they will be embarrassed about within the next ten years. Just like the hippies and disco kids of the seventies, the giant-permed weirdoes of the eighties, and the grunge and goth kids of the nineties, the children of the naughts will be ashamed to show their future children pictures of their high school days because they won't be able to figure out what possessed them to wear whatever it was they were wearing. "I can't believe I thought I ever looked good with that haircut," any number of students will be quoted as saying by this time next decade.
"That's one hundred and fifteen words. Great length for this kind of thing. But you're amateurs, so I can't expect you to write that much. So your assignment for today is to write an exactly one hundred and five word news brief about a subject that you don't care too much about while still trying to sound like you're at least slightly interested in it. Suggested topics: what celebrities are doing, what other teachers are teaching, the fact that our roads aren't big enough to drive on, animal migration, or anything else you only care enough to write one hundred and five words about. Get to work!"
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