Assignment 1

Your FIRST BEAT REPORT assignment is to turn in a print or broadcast version of a news story on your beat. For PRINT, this should be approximately 500 words. For BROADCAST, this should be approximately 1min 30 secs to 2 minutes. On this first assignment, I expect to see at least 2-to-3 quotes or soundbites. Photos or visuals are not yet required, simplify the assignment itself. This assignment is worth 10 points of your final grade.Here are some resources, which are either linked here and/or in the FILES section of Canvas.They include:

· 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 (链接到外部网站。) : 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  (链接到外部网站。) : 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  (链接到外部网站。) : 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  (链接到外部网站。) : 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.