For the past 3 months I have been learning the basics of Journalism. Aside from meeting new people my main goal was to be a better reporter and writer. The course was scheduled every Wednesday from 6 – 9 pm. The course’s required assignments and homework were not too bad and with a minimum passing mark of 50%, I told myself I can do this.
During the early phase of the course our instructor Mr. Strother always opened the class with discussions on news. All news: local, domestic and international. Many of the students were openly sharing what they read on the news papers and what they saw on TV. Some of the topics I can remember were:
- Land lease on Mt. Washington
- Snow base for Mt.Washington being the most packed at over 500cm
- Ko’moks First Nation’s new treaty entitlements
- Murder of an 18 year old Tyeshia Jones from Duncan BC
- Lookout for a white van who was suspected of following young kids
- Don McRae’s recall
- Gigantic floating jelly blob from Alaska
- Banning smoking in public parks
- Islamic revolution in the Middle East
- Police beating in Kamloops
- Japan’s Earthquake
All these topics were discussed openly in class and it really made me aware of the importance of knowing what’s going on around us. It’s have a meaningful opinion about whats new and old.
One thing that really stuck to me was the display of how powerful multi-media devices are and how the internet generation can really force a geographical, political and social change. From a little pocket cellphone anybody can supply images and video clips for the world to see and react to.
One of our homework assignment was to get a local story and share it with the class. I was surprised to see how many coffee shop stories came up. I learned that some coffee shops in town have karaoke nights where groups of people sing their favorite tunes. Some have literature nights where people can recite a poem and some have an art night, where people can gather and show their artistic talents on a canvas. Now, after being in the Valley for 9 months I start really noticing the number of coffee shops in town…there’s a lot.
During the middle part of the course, we focused more on proper news writing. I learned the proper use of “quotation marks” and terms such as bulletins, crawlers, leads, nut graf, convergence and attribution. It is very important to give credit to who you are borrowing the information from. It can be words, pictures or films, we have to acknowledge them.
The textbook we used cost $100 and the content seemed very little, but I did learn something from it. Through the examples given in the book on how to write news leads, I was able to educate myself with some history. I learned that the term “deep throat” was used as a name to cover up the Watergate scandal squealer Mark Felt, and not just used in conjunction to pornographic films.
Some others I learned:
- Many university students use their loans for Starbucks coffee
- Rehabilitation centers in Japan designed for the computer addicts
- Uncontrollable demonic though of someone on drugs
- Journalism is the job that pays you to be nosy
During one of our class we had the editor of the local newspaper – The Comox Valley Record’s Mark Allen as our guest speaker. It was very interesting to know that what keeps the newspapers afloat is advertising. He said up to 40 % of what’s in the paper are Ads. He also added that the internet version of their newspaper is not doing so good and was given a lesser priority in news updating. If I recall correctly, our instructor Mr. Strother had a surprised look after that comment. Considering that he mentioned to us a week before that the era of the end of Newspapers is here as done by The Seattle Times who stopped printing on paper and is now fully online.
Mr. Allen provided good information in the newspaper business. He mentioned the name “Black” as the kingpin of the newspaper business. Apparently this man owns hundreds of newspaper companies Canada wide and also in the USA.
During the last weeks of the course we were introduced to http://www.wordpress.com. This webpage design website was used to allow us to publish all our homework and assignments for the public to see…if you choose to. Of course privacy settings can change this. According to our instructor wordpress is not just a bonus for the ENG 109 Journalism course that we took, but this is a tool that can be used in our daily lives.
English 109 Journalism is an excellent course as it made me aware of my surrounding locally, domestically and globally. It made me aware of the power of the internet, and the various websites that are very informative, and it taught me how to capture and report significant events that I experience everyday.
Thank you for the lesson.
estesun 