Our Class Publication

Greetings Everyone,

I just wanted to elaborate on what I spoke about in today's class and give you an idea of what will be happening for the rest of the year.

1. We will continue to work on Roadtrip Nation. Your continued assignment is to contact the person you are interviewing, schedule and then record your interview. Your immediate goal is to actually schedule your interview. By Monday March 28th I want a progress report e-mailed to me on how close or how far you are from actually conducting your interview. If you find yourself unable to contact anyone then you need to tell me ASAP so we can find a different person to interview or use different contact methods.

2. As I stated in class, we are going to create our own publication where we will decide what topics to broadcast, write about and/or podcast. THIS IS IMPORTANT. I WANT ALL OF YOU TO COME UP WITH TOPICS THAT YOU WOULD LIKE TO READ OR WATCH ON TV. If you are bored with the subject matter no one will want to read about it.

Tomorrow we are going to assign and vote for an editorial and layout staff. As a class we will decide who the editors will be, who will be responsible for layout, who will specialize in writing articles, and who will be responsible for broadcasting. These will not be permanent assignments. I want everyone in the class to experience all the different roles that go into creating a publication, so at some point (probably at the beginning of the next trimester, we will be switching roles. However for now our job is to create a staff and start producing articles and broadcasts.

3. For tomorrow, March 22nd, come to class with your five article/broadcast ideas fully formed. This means you will have written a thesis statement for each idea.

For example if you want to write about teenage pregnancy at WJPS you could write a thesis statement that states: I would like to write an article about teenage pregnancy at WJPS. The article would include research about teen pregnancy in the USA, statistics about which teens from what part of he country are most likely to become pregnant, and how the pregnancy has affected their lives. I would also interview teens who have become pregnant as well as the fathers of these children. In addition I would interview teachers administrators at schools, as well as medical doctors that deal with teen pregnancies to get their points of view on the subject.

This is the type of article proposal that should be submitted. Please use this form for your first choice and then have your other article ideas submitted using this form by Wednesday, March 23rd.

Finally, for those of you who were at Columbia last week (Luca, Deborah, etc), please come to class ready to share what you learned about setting up a publication.