Outsiders (I mean, non-journalists) actually notice when you write a bad lede.
The other day, my Latin American Politics teacher told us that he hated it when reporters didn't put the facts up high enough. I didn't ever think people even noticed that, really.
Just one more bit of info to file away...
Friday, September 18, 2009
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Lesson 3
Stay out of the coach's box.
STAY OUT OF THE COACH'S BOX.
If you're 115 lbs and 5'2'' then you will be physically removed from the aforementioned box by a big football coach calling you "little girl."
If you don't know where the coach's box is, find it. Then, don't go there.
Just trust me on this one.
STAY OUT OF THE COACH'S BOX.
If you're 115 lbs and 5'2'' then you will be physically removed from the aforementioned box by a big football coach calling you "little girl."
If you don't know where the coach's box is, find it. Then, don't go there.
Just trust me on this one.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Lesson 2
My second lesson comes from a saying my mother has told me for years.
"If you have to rationalize, you already know you're doing the wrong thing and you're just trying to tell yourself it's ok."
In ethics class we've been discussing how to rationalize something. However, in my personal experience, I've come to learn that Mom was probably right. If you have to ask yourself if something is ethical or not, you already know the answer. Right? You know deep down. If you have to think about how much you're willing to hurt someone, then you already know that it's not ethical.
I'm old enough to know it's true, but young enough to hate realizing my Momma was right.
"If you have to rationalize, you already know you're doing the wrong thing and you're just trying to tell yourself it's ok."
In ethics class we've been discussing how to rationalize something. However, in my personal experience, I've come to learn that Mom was probably right. If you have to ask yourself if something is ethical or not, you already know the answer. Right? You know deep down. If you have to think about how much you're willing to hurt someone, then you already know that it's not ethical.
I'm old enough to know it's true, but young enough to hate realizing my Momma was right.
La primera
I've just begun this endeavor. It's going to track all the things I pick up along the way of becoming an ethical and responsible journalist. We've seen the good, the bad and the ugly. Now, it's time to focus on being the best.
Day one:
Twitter is hard. I mean, tweeting something that is worth reading is a little difficult. I don't want to do the "I'm eating dinner" tweet. I want to do something dynamic....confined to 140 characters. Crazy.
I think the reason we like this is because it's challenging. It's like writing a summary lede and being limited to 140 little letters.
I'm still working on it. I'm still trying to pare-down my usually verbose language. I am, after all, a girl and girls will always be terrible at trying to casually tell a story. (But then again, that's what makes us such wonderful feature writers.)
Day one:
Twitter is hard. I mean, tweeting something that is worth reading is a little difficult. I don't want to do the "I'm eating dinner" tweet. I want to do something dynamic....confined to 140 characters. Crazy.
I think the reason we like this is because it's challenging. It's like writing a summary lede and being limited to 140 little letters.
I'm still working on it. I'm still trying to pare-down my usually verbose language. I am, after all, a girl and girls will always be terrible at trying to casually tell a story. (But then again, that's what makes us such wonderful feature writers.)
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