Our weeks begin with the most difficult and challenging class: editorial leadership. In this class, we will be required to write no less than 20-25 editorials, op-eds, columns, and reviews, plus we must coordinate a public forum on some community topic. This is a lot of work. Jeremy and I had lunch with our department chair today, and even she seemed amazed by the workload in this class.
Our first assignment, due next Friday, is a 1,500-2,000-word op-ed piece (40-50 inches for you journalists out there; for you regular citizens, that's an article that takes up more than half a newspaper page, with no pictures). I can honestly tell you, I have never seen an op-ed piece that long in my life -- not even in the New York Times or The Washington Post. Nobody will read a piece that long. What's worse: the piece is on economic development.
Yawn!
For those of you wondering what an op-ed piece is, I wish I had a good answer for you. Our professor defined it by what it is not: "It is not a feature story, and not a full-on editorial." It is an opinion piece, normally contributed by a community member or leader. Normally it doesn't include quotes or a significant number of interviews, but ours, for some reason, do. I'll be sure to post it here when I'm done. I'm sure you're all waiting with bated breath.
Anyway, after that, we have a one-hour course, grand rounds. Last semester, this course consisted of us going into the community, familiarizing ourselves with a different beat each week, and subsequently writing a three-page page on the same subject each week. It was a lot of work for a one-credit course.
This semester is no different. We will be expected to produce a multimedia piece (a video or slide show) every other week with an accompanying PowerPoint presentation outlining our reasons for chosing the topic we did and providing background information not included in the multimedia piece. For those of you who have never produced a three-minute video, I can assure you, it is no simple task. The work we are talking about here is a minimum of five hours every other week (including the reporting). Again, quite substancial for a one-credit course.
Tuesdays we will have research methods, a very challenging, yet beneficial course. We will learn much about statistics, have exams on termanology, and be expected to produce a group project for publishing in an academic journal and a proposal for our masters project (which we complete this summer in lieu of a thesis). I really enjoy the professor, and am looking forward to the project.
Wednesdays will present another interesting course -- media management. We will learn about newsroom things, such as advertising, circulation, and production, normally avoided by most journalists. Unfortunately, things like advertising and production play into some editorial decisions more than they should, so it will be interesting to see things from the other side of the table and watch how decisions made on the other side of the newspaper office affect the newsroom.
One pitfall of this class: We will be required to assist on a newspaper delivery route from 3 a.m. to 6 a.m.
In January.
By the way, in case you forgot what January in Anniston looks like:
Yikes...
Wish us luck!
1 comment:
And you thought you were getting off easy by having no classes on Thursday and Friday. Just goes to show ya! LYM
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