Friday, January 27

What is due by Monday at 7:59 am on your blog (however, the earlier you post, the earlier I can give you feedback on your stuff; I'll probably look at the blogs Sunday afternoon):
1. Your topic/news story (and consider how this is relevant for ISU students along with this)
2. 3-4 links to your example stories
3. What genre you are working with (newspaper article, television script, television-video-news, etc.)

Today, we have some time to figure out just what story/topic we want to cover as well as begin to find some examples stories and begin to discover just how to "localize" the topic for your fellow peers--ISU students.


So how do you find a topic/news story? Well, there's no right or wrong way. However, I've always had the best luck in first starting with what interests you. It sucks writinng about/working with something that you hate or are immediately bored with. Now, your "interest" may not be necessarily covered in the news that day, that week, whatever. We can probably work with that--with a little thinking.

Another good starting place? What are the major headlines and stories going on around the world? Well, the elections come to mind. There are a million and one ways to write a story relevant to ISU students regarding this topic... but I won't list them here, of course.

You may also want to check out some of these links to begin to get ideas.. but there are endless ways to get those said ideas:

Some bigger news/sports outlets:

http://www.cnn.com/

http://www.usatoday.com/

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/

Some slightly smaller ones:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/

http://abclocal.go.com/wls/index

And some college newspapers:

http://www.dailyillini.com/

http://www.videtteonline.com/

You can even get some story ideas from bloggers (like us!!)... just don't use any of his posts as examples as we're not working with the genre of "blogs" for this particular project:

http://perezhilton.com/

And here's just a good journalism site if you're wondering more about writing/the world of journalism:

http://www.poynter.org/


Finally... here's your ISU web page (it does have links to the calendar of events and websites for various student groups):
http://illinoisstate.edu/

Happy writing/blogging/story finding!! : )