Category Archives: Unit 1: News Reporting

Week 4 (9/14-9/21): Political News

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This week, we’ll be looking specifically at political news, and writing our own news articles. Please click here for an overview of the entire unit. Your work for this week will take longer than your work for last week, so please plan your time accordingly.

Optional Zoom Class: Monday, 9/14, 10:50am We will check in with each other, discuss anything you want to talk about from last week, I will run through reminders/things that your work has made me think about, and then we’ll go over the activities + assignments for this week.

Due Dates:

Everything but the Unit Reflection will be due by the end of the day on Sunday, September 20.
The Unit Reflection will be due by the end of the day on Monday, September 21. This is so you have time to reflect after you’ve turned in all of the other work for this unit.

There will be no penalty for late work for anything in this unit.

Goals for This Week:

  • Learn to rhetorically analyze news writing (even news that seems “unbiased”) to uncover political biases/perspectives
  • Apply your knowledge of the genre(s) of news writing to write your own news pieces
  • Evaluate your own learning, actions, and goals for this unit

Overview of Tasks:

  1. Write your way into the week
  2. Read my digital lecture on political news and read the examples I include
  3. Annotate my examples using Hypothes.is
  4. Discuss this week’s discussion question with your classmates (via comments)
  5. Write your own imaginary (or not-imaginary) news articles (Unit 1 Project)
  6. Reflect on this unit and write about your reflections

Detailed Instructions

Step 1: Write Your Way Into the Week

Here are your thinking questions for this week! Please spend 5-15 minutes freewriting about them (or ignoring them and freewriting more generally), which you can then share with me if you wish or keep to yourself. If you don’t want to write, please at least read the questions and think about them!

  1. Which news sources do you think of as having a political bias? (It can be a bias you agree with or a bias you disagree with) What do they do that reveals their bias to you?
  2. It’s easiest to see political bias in articles that talk about specific politicians, or Democrats vs. Republicans. What other kinds of political biases are there, and how do you think they might affect news writing?
  3. Remember that bias affects not just how we write about things, but what we choose to write about. What points of view or issues do you know exist in real life, but don’t see covered in the news very often?
  4. In the U.S., it’s very easy to think about politics in terms of Democrats vs. Republicans or left vs. right. But there are many political positions that don’t fall neatly into how we think about those categories. What examples can you think of? (Please don’t just name other political parties– let’s think about the beliefs and policy positions that may motivate people to join one party vs. another. Someone in the Republican party and someone in the Libertarian party may agree on a lot of things, and two Republicans may disagree on a lot of things.)

Step 2: Read the Digital Lecture and Examples

Read the digital lecture here.

Step 3: Annotate my Examples Using Hypothes.is

In addition to whatever other annotations you would like to make on the articles, please find sentences where you think the political bias or perspective appears. Then try to rewrite it so it conveys the same information but with a different political perspective.

Step 4: Discuss

Please comment on this post discussing some or all of the following:

  1. What should a journalist’s responsibility be regarding political bias? What circumstances affect the nature of those responsibilities?
  2. What about the responsibilities of a newspaper editor and what they choose to publish?
  3. How would you define “fair and balanced” reporting?
  4. In your Week 3 annotations, some folks brought up the concept of propaganda. How would you define propaganda? What makes something propaganda, instead of an opinion or argument? Is propaganda always bad?

Please also read and respond to your classmates! Try to respond to both someone you disagree with and someone whose response made you think about something in a new way. Feel free to make as many replies/discuss as much as you want.

Step 5: Write Your Own News Articles

Full instructions are here.

Due Date: September 20 (Sunday) at 11:59pm
Submit Via: Blackboard OR Posting to the course site (if you would like to also share your creations with the class). I hope many of you do choose to share, since I think these will be really fun, and we can all learn from each other’s work.

Step 6: Reflect on the Unit

Full instructions are here.

The Due Date for Unit 1 Reflections is September 21 (Monday) at 11:59pm. You are welcome to submit them on Blackboard OR post them on the course site, if you would like to share your reflections with the class. There will be no penalty for turning this in late.

Unit 1 Reflection Instructions

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At the end of each unit, I will ask you to submit a reflection on your/our work for that unit. The instructions/rubric for each one will be very similar.

The Due Date for Unit 1 Reflections is September 21 (Monday) at 11:59pm. You are welcome to submit them on Blackboard OR post them on the course site, if you would like to share your reflections with the class. There will be no penalty for turning this in late.

In your reflection, please answer the following questions:

  1. What do you feel like you learned this unit that you didn’t know before?
  2. What did you already know , but now understand better or learned more about?
  3. What (if anything) do you feel like I wanted you to learn, but you still aren’t sure about?
  4. What are the strengths of your final project articles? What are you most proud of?
  5. If you were to revise your final project articles, what would you want to do differently?
  6. How would you describe or rate your participation/engagement in this unit?
  7. What did you do this unit that helped make you successful?
  8. What (if anything) do you want to do differently in the next unit?
  9. What additional things (resources, support, information, etc.) do you wish you had had for this unit?
  10. Is there anything you would like me to change (in the structure of our course, in how I’m presenting information, etc.) going forward?
  11. What (if anything) from this unit would you like to discuss/think about/explore further? (either this semester or just in your life)

You can write this as an essay, or you can copy/paste the questions and answer each one individually. You can be as formal or as informal as you want.

Length Requirement: There is no set length (in pages or word count) for this reflection. Your reflection should be as long as it needs to be for you to feel like you have answered all of the questions.

Grading:

The unit reflection will be graded out of 5 points.

0 points: You didn’t turn in a reflection.
1 point: You turn in something that does reflect on the unit at least a little
2 points: You address at least half of the questions in your reflection
3 points: You address most of the questions in your reflection
4 points: You answer all of the questions in your reflection
5 points: You answer all of the questions using specific examples

 

 

Instructions/Rubric for Unit 1 Project

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Due Date: September 20 (Sunday) at 11:59pm
Submit Via: Blackboard OR Posting to the course site (if you would like to also share your creations with the class)

At the end of Week 3, I will compile all of your observations about your own and your classmates’ articles into a list of Rules for News Writing. You will use this collaboratively-generated list to then write your own news articles.

Instructions

As your final project for this unit (due at the end of Week 4), you will write 3 imaginary news articles around the same imaginary topic.

Your Options:

  1. Write each article in the same subgenre but from a different political perspective (My example from the syllabus: Star Wars– A set of news reports about Luke Skywalker blowing up the Death Star. One from a pro-Empire news site, one from a pro-Rebels site, and one from a centrist site.)
  2. Write each article in a different subgenre about the same topic. (Star Wars example: 1 news report simply reporting that Luke Skywalker blew up the Death Star, 1 analysis for how this will impact the Empire economically/politically, and 1 opinion piece arguing whether or not the Rebels are terrorists or freedom fighters. Or, you could do less-serious pieces: “The Dark Side of Fashion: Inside Lord Vader’s Closet” )
  3. Do either of the above options for a real world topic instead. However, if you choose to write about a real world topic, you must make sure your reporting is accurate/cite sources. The plus side is, in news reporting, you don’t have to use MLA or APA formatting. A hyperlink to the source works just fine!

If you choose option 1 or 2, please be as creative as you want.

The rubric is below (either in the document viewer or available as a downloadable file).

Download

News Articles

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This article is about the wildfires in California. In this article it tells you how the community is holding up to it because it’s obviously not the first they’ve had to deal with this year. They add facts about how many acres have been attacked and the hundreds of homes who’ve been destroyed. I chose this article because I’d good to be informed about what is going on in other states and maybe even think what can I do to help make a change. (Facts)

This article talks about how president Trump wants to handle COVID-19 with a vaccine by Election Day which is only a couple of months away. This article they also mention statements that health providers gave on you shouldn’t put a date on science trying to justify what Trump said in his conference. I chose this article because to think we’re actually living in 2020 and facing a pandemic is extremely scary since we don’t know why the president is trying his hardest for the vaccine to come out during Election Day. (Facts)

This article speaks about Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case. In this article they explain how the U.S Virgin Islands are seeking an expanding investigation on Epstein sex trafficking case. I chose this article because as a female I like to be informed of information like this because I would like to know what’s going on in my surroundings and having to know to be extra careful is something I need to know about. (News)