News Sense: The Building Blocks of News

 Here is the link to the completed course:
http://www.newsu.org/course-tracking/report/mah_newssense05/87a23e7424feb53fcbaf0c0ed7ae2f19

I learned that news happens all around us and good reporters are always open to finding a story. Good reporters strive for fairness, accuracy, context, and truthfulness in their stories.

A story is newsworthy if it has one or more of these elements:

• Prominence-who
• Importance-what
• Human Interest-what
• Timeliness-when
• Proximity-where
• Meaning-why/how

A good journalist always verifies information, they do this by:

• Direct Observation-finding the details
• Interviews-identify people being quoted, attribute facts and quotes, and double check facts.
• Documents and databases
• Leaders, Experts, and officials-use them judiciously, don't over use them.

A journalist should also clarify, they do this by:

• Researching-knowing your story
• Asking- asking for simpler terms, or the main point
• thinking-understanding what's going on and being able to put it into simpler terms for someone to understand.
• translating- telling what the meaning of the story is.

To build a news story, all stories must do the following for readers:

• Invite-your lead needs to invite readers into the story.
• Inform-tell the reader what's going on.
• Illuminate-shed further light on something to give the reader a clearer picture.
• Connect-connect a reader to a larger picture for understanding, such as history, culture, wider community, and human nature.