Shorts—Keep Writing, NewsHounds!

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Write On, NewsDawgs!

You know the old joke about Carnegie Hall?

The interviewer asked the violinist, “Tell me, maestro, how did you get to Carnegie Hall?”

The musician considered and replied, “Practice, practice, practice.”

That’s your job now. The more you write, the better you’ll get at the basic inverted pyramid. Faster, too. So below I am posting batches of fact sheets for news stories. In addition to the weekly assignments, try to write one batch each week and send them to me on your own schedule. I will accept and grade these newswriting assignments through the last day of the semester (Dec. 4).

In addition, everyone should do at least one more speech story—either a live speech that you cover (clear with me ahead of time) or one of those I've dug up below with transcripts and/or video links. For these old speeches, I trust you will do the story without Googling it to see how the pro’s did it (!).

• Shorts4

• Shorts5

• Shorts6

• Speeches (500 words): Obama to students (Sept. 8, 2009); Bush Address on Economy (Sept. 24, 2008); Obama Inauguration (Jan. 21, 2009) video/text;

More to come.