Assignment
Your FOURTH REPORT assignment is to turn in a print or broadcast version of some type of election - on any scale, from local to national, within 24-hours after midnight following election night.
1. If you're able to stick to your beat, great! If you need to pick something outside of your beat, for this assignment, that's perfectly fine.
2. This is an exercise where everyone will be required to study up well in advance of the election on some type or election race or initiative on the ballot, and that's why it is being launched on October 11th, more than three weeks prior to the election, so you have plenty of time to research and brainstorm what you will be covering on election night.
3. Then, you can work on a "frame" of the story prior, and come election night, see how the turnout of votes evolve and then turn in your story just before midnight the next day.
4. This assignment is worth 15 points of your final grade.
Your ELECTION REPORT assignment is to turn in a print or broadcast version of a story covering any LOCAL (within Colorado) individual or issue on the ballot.
· School Boards: Have you seen how contentious these are, mostly due to masking? Douglas County is highly contentious.
· City Councils: Several in the Denver Metro Area have long-time members flipping off. Littleton is for the first time ever electing a Mayor, whereas previously the council voted.
· Statewide Ballot Issues: Marijuana Prop 119 is in nearly every newscast commercial break - Shall retail marijuana sales tax be raised for out-of-class learning such as tutoring?
· SECRETARY OF STATE’S WEBSITE: https://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/elections/Initiatives/ballot/contacts/2021.html (Links to an external site.)
Here are some resources, which are either linked here and/or in the FILES section of Canvas.
They include:
· Ballotpedia: Colorado Election Measures 2021 (Links to an external site.) - nice resource on items on the ballot in our state on Tuesday, Nov. 2nd, 2021.
· Colorado Secretary of State's Election Calendar 2021 (Links to an external site.) - good place to watch deadlines throughout Oct and Nov
· How to Cover Election Day and Beyond (Links to an external site.) - nice article from the Columbia Journalism Review
· How to write a lead - good article on why "grabbing" your audience right out of the gate is so important
· News Report Planning Template - if it's been a while since you've written a news article, this is a great way to organize the material you've gathered, for both print and broadcast, and put it into a cohesive, digestible sketch before putting pen to paper.
· News Writing for Print Tips (Links to an external site.) : Excellent article about the basics of print writing, the Inverted Pyramid, and how to know what to include - and in what order - in a print story.
· What is in a PRINT News Article - EXPLAINED (Links to an external site.) : This document explains the parts of a news article, including headline, subheadline, byline, dateline, copy, etc. This example is approximately 250 words. Most assignments for this class will be twice this long at 500 words.
· TEMPLATES: Both of the following template links are located in the SYLLABUS and in the assignment itself:
· Broadcast News Template (Links to an external site.) : This template uses the side-by-side broadcast news format in Google Docs (or the version in FILES is a MS Word .docx) which you can copy and utilize for your story. As mentioned in class, I request that you write the whole story, from anchor toss, to anchor take-back.
· Print News Template (Links to an external site.) : This template is a simple print outline for your story, which requires a headline, a subheadline, a byline, dateline, and the copy and content of approximately 500 words.