Class canceled Thursday, Sept. 29

I'm ill and have to cancel our class tomorrow, Thursday, Sept.
29.

Please take the weekend to re-read "Hiroshima" or dip into Bragg's "Somebody
Told Me." Your quiz on Hersey will be on Tuesday.

We'll begin talking about Bragg next Thursday.

Assignment Schedule: Tuesday, Sept. 27/Thursday, Sept. 29

Tuesday:

Power Point Lecture on Hiroshima (be sure to take notes; it will help with your quiz on Thursday)

Small groups -- News Briefs: Please bring an electronic copy of your news brief. I'll break us into small groups and you'll help each other make the briefs perfect to send to the Insider. I'll visit each group and help with polishing. We'll send these off to the Insider before the end of class. Please remember to print a copy of your brief - and, when your briefs are published, a copy of the Insider's version. Keep these in your portfolio to turn in at the end of the semester.

At home: Finish reading Hiroshima. Study for quiz on Thursday. The quiz will primarily be on the book, but will include a few questions about the latest news, too.

Thursday:
Quiz on Hiroshima and latest news

At Home: Begin reading Rick Bragg, Somebody Told Me

Assignment Schedule: Week of September 20

Please rely on each week's blog postings -- and not on the syllabus -- for your assignments. We'll be shifting plans a bit, and the blog will provide the most up-to-date information.

For Tuesday, Sept. 20: Attend talk/reading by visiting writer Ross Gay in Powers Hall 117 during class time. Take notes.

Write: Two to three paragraphs from your coverage of the reading. Paragraph 1 = lede; Paragraph 2 = residual information from lede; Paragraph 3 = quote from the most relevant source.

You don't have to bring hard copies to class on Thursday, but be sure to have an e-copy available for editing. Be ready to discuss on Thursday.

For Thursday, Sept. 22: Continue workshop of news briefs. Review coverage of Ross Gay (post-event coverage techniques). Get assignment for next week's news brief (see note from Brian Estadt below). These news briefs will be due in class on Tuesday, Sept. 27. Bring one hard copy of your news brief for me, and an e-copy to edit and send to the Insider during class.


Over the Weekend:

* Read Hiroshima. (Please note: The quiz will be on Thursday, Sept. 29. I'll give a lecture on the book on Tuesday, Sept. 27. The lecture will help you prep for the quiz.)
* Work on your news briefs.

*********

From Brian Estadt:

Go here: https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=189KVvQfZNrqYZG9NnzwIST8wJOJOfFOWfKnNh3nBN14


It's the Academic Villages schedule, and the Insider would be interested in previews for any events from Wednesday, Sept. 28, through October 12. Of course, not all of those events are created equally ... it would be much easier to preview an appearance by Sauvity's Mouthpiece, for example, than the October 7 CAFT open discussion (esp. since we already covered the basics of what CATF is in first batch of briefs).

Updates on the campus sports teams also are welcome. These articles, however, should have the latest information, so if they are written early, they should be updated just before they're handed in.

And really, it would be much easier if they were just done — but done thoroughly, with interviews with the coaches and a player or two, per team — a day or two they had to be turned in. Campus sports info: http://www.greensburg.pitt.edu/athletics/home

Basically, anything else happening on campus also is game (bulletin boards are a college journalist's friend), as long as it falls between those dates.

Spot Reporting Tomorrow, Tuesday, Sept. 20

Hi Everyone -- We'll be adjusting our schedule just a bit this week. On Tuesday, Sept. 20, we'll be going to PH 117 to hear visiting writer/poet Ross Gay speak in Professor Vollmer's poetry class. You'll be writing a spot-news report about the event. You'll need the 5ws/1 H, of course, plus at least one quote from the event. (The quote should come from the most relevant source for the story.)

For background, here's Ross Gay's bio:

Ross Gay is an American poet and professor. He is the author of two collections of poetry, Against Which (CavanKerry Press, 2006) and Bringing the Shovel Down (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011). His poems have appeared in literary journals and magazines including American Poetry Review, Harvard Review, Columbia: A Journal of Poetry and Art, Margie: The American Journal of Poetry and Atlanta Review, and in anthologies including From the Fishouse (Persea Books, 2009). His honors include being a Cave Canem Workshop fellow and a Bread Loaf Writers Conference Tuition Scholar, and he received a grant from the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts.

Ross Gay was born August 1, 1974 in Youngstown, Ohio and grew up outside of Philadelphia. He received his B.A. from Lafayette College, his MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, and his Ph.D. in American Literature from Temple University. He is a basketball coach, an occasional demolition man and a painter. He has taught poetry, art and literature at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa. and Montclair State University in New Jersey. He now teaches at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana and in the low-residency MFA in poetry program at Drew University.

****

On Thursday, we'll revisit your news briefs, edit any ones we didn't get to last week, and review this spot reportage.

Guide for News Briefs

Guide to News Briefs

• Headline
Give your brief a headline. Avoid to-be verbs. Use the headline and your name in the subject line when sending your brief as a Word attachment. Capitalize the first letter of the central words in the headline.

• By-line: Skip two spaces from your headline. Add your by-line (by xxxxxxxx). Skip two spaces.

• Don’t indent paragraphs. Flush left. Skip two spaces between paragraphs.


• Keep paragraphs and sentences short. Very short. No more than two sentences per paragraph for now.

• Use active voice.


• Be sure you have the most relevant information in the first paragraph, then arrange additional information in descending order.

• Introduce, fully ID and quote a relevant source by Paragraph 3.


• Your last paragraph should provide contact information where readers can find additional details.

• Triple-check for accuracy (facts, grammar, etc.).

Contact Information for Village Senate and Village Activities

Anyone who ends up covering a Village-centered event, here's useful contact information from Frank Wilson:

"Students in the Village who are the mainsprings of the activities you are
investigating are really better sources than me. All of what we do in the
Village is based on collaboration between students and the directors, with
the driving force being initiatives coming from the students.

Village Senate: (You are encouraged to attend, to see for yourself)

Heather Metro hnm5@pitt.edu
Vanessa Malinowski vmm15@pitt.edu
Fred Mejia fmm11@pitt.edu

Music Scene:

Claire Secen cvs8@pitt.edu
Cody Kraski crk36@pitt.edu
Justin Antoszewski jpa12@pitt.edu

Story Assignments to Choose From

These will be due via e-mail on Sunday, Sept. 11 by 2 p.m. We'll workshop in class on Tuesday, Sept. 13, then send finished pieces to The Insider.

Guidelines:

You'll need to track down the primary sources for the events. See me if you have questions about who to contact.

The Insider is looking for preview briefs that are between 175 and 275 words, with a single source and direct quote.

The direct quote should NOT be a basic fact. For example, if the basic fact is that the event is the event being previewed is the first spoken/written coffeehouse event of the semester, the direct quote should illuminate or add depth to the basic information. In that situation the quote could be the organizer discussing why people should particpate or what they expect from the semester's lineup of readers.

Again, the quote should not be a statement of the basic facts of the event.

Your story assignment will be based on one of the following events (assignments made in class):

* Wednesday, September 14 ☮ 8pm in The Coffeehouse — Live Music: Michelle Lewis

* Thursday, September 15 ☮ 7pm in Campana Chapel — Exploring the “F” Word:What is Feminism? Kick off La Cultura event. Join a panel of faculty,staff and students to explore this word and its multiple meanings. Intro by Dr. Elisa Beshero-Bondar, Moderator – Dr. Pilar Herr, Panelists – Sheila Confer, Dr. Estela Llinas, Dr. Bill Rued, Judy Vollmer, Justin Reed

* Friday, September 16 ☮ 11:45 in Village Hall 101 — Campus Alliance for Free Thought (CAFT)

* Monday, September 19 ☮Noon in Village Hall 101 — Village Senate Meeting - All interested student are welcome to attend or join

* Monday, September 19 ☮ 9pm in The Coffeehouse — Open Mic Night – Acoustic instruments only

* Thursday, September 22 ☮ 5:30 pm in Village Hall 101 — Dinner/Discussion: Join us as we get to know Dr McAlister a little better. Students attending will pick the discussion topics on arrival. YOU MUST SIGN UP on Sheila’s door (Village Hall 102). IS there a faculty member you would like to invite to dinner? Let Sheila know by emailing sec10@pitt.edu. (NOTE: This preview should be about the faculty/student dinners in general — what they are intended to do and so forth — not a focus primary on this one professor.)

* Thursday, September 22 ☮ 7pm in Village Hall 118 — La Cultura Film Series

* Friday, September 23 ☮ 8pm in The Coffeehouse — Keep It Local Fridays: Live music by the Panther Hollow String Band featuring Pitt-Greensburg’s own Dan Mudry, Systems Analyst from the Computer Center

* Monday, September 26 ☮Noon in Village Hall 101 — Village Senate Meeting - All interested student are welcome to attend or join

* Tuesday, September 27 ☮ 7pm in the Coffeehouse — Written/Spoken Series

In addition to those 10, there are so opportunities for sports coverage, including:

* Womens/Mens soccer — Preview the game that next game — including date, time & location — after our Sept. 14 publication & recap early season so far -- team record, top players, comment from coach. Reporter should update info so it's current as of Sept. 13.

* Women's volleyball — Preview the game that next game — including date, time & location — after our Sept. 14 publication & recap early season so far -- team record, top players, comment from coach. Reporter should update info so it's current as of Sept. 13.

* Women's tennis — Preview the game that next game — including date, time & location — after our Sept. 14 publication & recap early season so far -- team record, top players, comment from coach. Reporter should update info so it's current as of Sept. 13.

Writing for the Insider: A Style Guide

Every media outlet uses a stylebook to ensure consistency from sentence to
sentence and from article to article. Like most new outlets, The Insider uses “The
Associated Press Stylebook” for general style guidelines. Since our readership
primarily is limited to the Pitt-Greensburg community, we have some campus-
specific styles you should be aware of. These are some of the basic style issues that
regularly confront The Insider staff. If you aren’t sure of how a word should be
spelled, capitalized or punctuated, check the stylebook and dictionary.

And:
Journalists drop the comma before “and” in a series. Ex: Our flag is red,
white and blue.

Attribution:
Very rarely will you need to use anything other than “said” for attribution. You might be tempted to jazz things up with more descriptive or active attribution verbs. Don’t. It’s bad writing to claim that your sources laugh, smirk,
smile their words. Spend your extra time coming up with powerful, effective non-
attribution verbs. That said, “asked,” is, obviously, fine for attribution.

Active/Passive construction:
In fiction, an argument can been made for the artistic use of passive sentence construction. In journalism, there is no argument. Especially not for beginners. Stick to the active voice with your writing. Have your subjects do something instead of having something done to them.

Contractions:
Some publications encourage contractions while others never use them. The Insider encourages the use of contractions.

Dates & Times:
We drop “:00” from times at the top of the hour — it’s 3 p.m., not 3:00 p.m. Also, if we list a group of times that do not pass noon or midnight, we only use the a.m./p.m. designation once, after the last one listed. Ex. She has classes
at 8, 9 and 10 a.m. He has class from 9:30 to 10:45 a.m. If a p.m. time were added to
her list of classes, it would look like this: She has classes at 8, 9 and 10 a.m. and 1 p.m.

It’s essential that you also check out the time element, times, midnight, noon and a.m. p.m. entries in your “AP Stylebook.”

Descriptions in general:
Try to avoid descriptor overkill. Don’t bombard readers will all the detail all at once. The best way to do this is to scatter the descriptors among the source’s first few references in your article.

For example, let’s say it’s essential to inform readers that Jane Doe is 43, a
resident of Mt. Pleasant, a mother of two and a history professor.

Sure, you could introduce her to readers like this: Jane Doe of Mt. Pleasant, 43,
a history professor and mother of two, agrees with the students.

But c’mon, you’re writing a story, not a resume. Why should the reader have
to wade through all of that descriptors to discover the action of the sentence?
Instead, make your sentences a little more artful with this sort of approach:
History professor Jane Doe agrees with the students. Doe, a 43-year-old mother of two,said she would expect her children to stand up for their rights like the Pitt-Greensburg protestors.

“This is what we want from students — to look at this information with a
critical eye and decide for themselves,” said Doe, of Mt. Pleasant.

Also, when a title or descriptor exceeds two words, place it after the name
and offset it with commas.

Wrong: Senior secondary education major Sarah Peterson said she was excited
to …
Right: Sarah Peterson, a senior secondary education major, said she was
excited to ...
Also right: Senior Sarah Peterson, a secondary education major, said she was
excited to …

Hyphen or dash?
§ This “-“ is a hyphen. This “—“ is a dash.
§ A hyphen connects words. A dash can be used in place of a comma.
§ Dashes are especially useful when you have a series in a phrase that
would be offset by commas. Ex. The limited selection of colors — they had only yellow, brown and purple cars — prompted her to buy elsewhere.

§ Some word processors automatically convert two side-by-side hyphens into dashes. If it doesn’t and you don’t know how to create one, just leave two dashes without a space between them.

§ Both hyphens and dashes are explained in the punctuation section in the back of your stylebook. It’s only about 10 pages long, but it’ll clear up some common misunderstandings.

Identifying faculty and administration:
Never abbreviate “professor.” Don’t capitalize it. Use that title only on first
reference; on subsequent references, just use the professor’s last name.
Avoid overidentification. For most stories, it is enough to simply identify a
faculty member as an “English professor” instead of a “professor of English in
the Pitt-Greensburg writing department.”

Always lowercase titles that are offset by commas after a name.
As per AP, do not capitalize titles that essentially are job descriptions.

Read the AP stylebook’s doctor entry. It calls for reporters to include “Dr.”
before a name only for medical doctors, not academics. The exception to that
rule is if the person is being quoted in the context of their area of expertise
— for example, you’d use Dr. Tom Berg if Tom Berg has a doctorate in art
history and he’s being quoted in a story about art. Since pretty much all of
the faculty on this campus who have doctorates are teaching courses in their
area of expertise, it stands to reasons that The Insider does use this courtesy
title — but, as with all courtesy titles, it is used on first reference only.
See what AP says on the matter by checking out your stylebook’s entries for
academic titles, professor and titles.

Identifying students:
In addition to the basic AP style of listing first and last names on first reference and using only surnames on subsequent references, we want to know what year — freshman, sophomore, junior, senior — a student is. To limit the number of commas in a sentence, we prefer the class status to precede the student’s name.

Example: Sophomore Tom Ebbets agreed … instead of Tom Ebbets, a sophomore, agreed …

For general campus news and features, it isn’t necessary to identify a student’s field of study. But when it is relevant to the story — such as identifying
someone as an English writing major in a story about downsizing the writing
program — be sure to include the student’s field of study.

Numbers:
There are a lot of specialized styles concerning the use of numbers. The numerals entry (and the other stylebook entries it lists, particularly addresses, ages, course numbers, dates, decades, dimensions, fractions, monetary units, room numbers) in your stylebook is one of the most essential ones to study. A few of the very basics:

§ If a number starts a sentence, spell it out — or, better yet, restructure
the sentence so it doesn’t begin with a number. This rule supercedes
all but one other numbers-related style rule. The lone exception?
Years. It would be technically correct to publish this sentence: 1991
was a great year for music.

§ If it’s a single-digit number, spell it out. If it’s two digits or more, use
the Arabic figure.

§ Ages — regardless of if you’re talking days, moths or years — are
Arabic figures. Even single-digit ages.

§ Seriously, read the numerals entry. There’s a lot of numbers-related
rules out there.

University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg/Pitt-Greensburg/UPG:
The preferred style when referring to our campus is Pitt-Greensburg. We try to avoid the full name unless it appears in a direct quote. This is because we all know what Pitt-Greensburg is and the full name is unwieldy — 11 syllables is a bit much to have to write over and over. Always use Pitt-Greensburg on first reference.

Background: A couple of years ago, campus President Sharon Smith told campus employees that the commonly used UPG wasn’t acceptable because the acronym wasn’t easily understood outside of the campus community. She directed employees to refer to the campus either by its full name or Pitt-Greensburg.

The Insider is not a university employee, so her directive does not apply to
us. Our primary audience is the Pitt-Greensburg community, and our readers
immediately understand what UPG stands for. Therefore, it is acceptable to use UPG.
We haven’t yet made it a style rule, but we’ve found that “UPG” works best as an
adjective and “Pitt-Greensburg” works best as a noun.

Spacing: There is only one space at the end of sentences.

The Insider Wants You

The Insider, our online campus newspaper, is looking for photographers. Please e-mail Brian Estadt, the Insider advisor, at brianestadt@gmail.com if you're interested. The Insider can provide camera equipment and training, as needed.

Also, in addition to the stories you'll be doing for The Insider in class, there are openings for specialty writers of all kinds. If you'd be interested in writing a column, doing regular features on local culture, reviewing music and movies and more, please send Brian a note.

Publishing your work in The Insider now is a great step toward building a portfolio that can help you get a job in journalism or public relations later on. It's also a great way to connect with other writers and the campus community. Oh, and there are those 15 minutes of fame Andy Warhol always talked about.

Post Your Ledes Here

Post your events/news brief ledes in the comments section below by 2 p.m. on Monday. We'll cover these in workshop on Tuesday.

Happy weekend!