Journalism is an exciting field on which to offer instruction. It is also a difficult field to teach. Students often come to a course in journalism with some knowledge (and usually many opinions) about the field. This knowledge is usually based on personal experience and exposure to the new media and does not include any sophisticated analysis of the processes of journalism or broad thinking about the implications of the field.

A good journalism teacher will try to move students from their normally narrow and parochial view of the field to being able to understand its implications and importance to society.

And there are also the skills to teach -- reporting, writing, editing, headline writing, and layout and design, just to name a few. Many journalism teachers at the high school level have the nearly impossible task of teaching the how of journalism along with the who, what, when, where and why. They are charged with producing a publication for their school, making sure that it comes out on time and stays solvent.

Many of those high school teachers succeed admirably. They create opportunities for their students that no other teacher on campus can match. Their students catch the fever of journalism and collegiate journalism programs -- and ultimately the field of journalism itself -- are the beneficiaries.

Many of the ideas included here come from those teachers. This page contains material for those teaching courses in journalism, particularly those using Journalism: Who, What, When, Where, Why and How or other books listed on the home page as a text.

Not everything on JPROF that might be useful to an instructor can be found on this page. You should look in the individual sections listed on the left navigation bar for more material.


Syllabi and lesson plans

This site contains several syllabi, lesson plans and classroom activities from colleagues who are teaching courses in journalism at the high school and college levels:

• Journalism 100: Introduction to Journalism. An introductory course in journalism at the University of Alabama with sections taught by Dr. George Daniels and Dr. Wilson Lowry.
  • Book report assignment
  • Team project assignment
  • Extra credit opportunities
  
  
• Journalism 436 Teaching High School Journalism. A course for preparation of teaching journalism at the high school level. (University of Alabama)
  
  
• Communications 201 Writing for the Media. This Emory and Henry College course introduces students to the concept, conventions and forms of media writing. News and the inverted pyramid news story structure are emphasized in this course. The course uses Writing for the Mass Media as its main text.
  
  
• Communication 302 Editing the Written Word. This Emory and Henry College course provides students with the concepts and demands of editing in a professional setting. Students are required to learn the skills of an editor and apply them with practical exercises. The course uses The Complete Editor as its main text.
  
  
• Communication 424 Web Journalism. This Emory and Henry College course gives students the opportunity to explore problems and issues related to the practice of journalism on the news media: the World Wide Web. The course uses Web Journalism: Practice and Promise of a New Medium as its text.
  
  
• JN430 New Media Workshop. This University of Alabama course provides exploration, practice and application of media convergence in a newsroom environment. The class combines reporting, editing, design, photography, multimedia, promotion and advertising to maintain the young adult web magazine Dateline Alabama. The course is taught by Dr. Ed Mullins and uses Web Journalism: Practice and Promise of a New Medium as its text.
  
  
• MC102 Introduction to Media Writing. This is a course that I taught for many years at the University of Alabama before I left there in 2003. The course was required for all mass communication majors and used Writing for the Mass Media as a text. The course is no longer being offered, but during the time I was teaching it, I developed an extensive web site for it. That web site can be found here on JPROF. (Jim Stovall)
  Lecture notes for MC102
  
  
• JEM 200 Introduction to News Writing. This is the first professional course for Journalism and Electronic Media majors at the University of Tennessee. The course covers many of the same topics as MC102 (above) but has an even stronger news and information focus. I am currently the coordinator for all of the sections of this course, and I deliver a weekly lecture on writing related topics. Those lecture notes can be found at the course's web site on JPROF.
  
  
• JEM 222 Online Journalism. This is the first of two courses offered by the UT School of Journalism and Electronic Media in web journalism. The course is currently taught by Dr. Bob Stepno, and you can find his syllabus here.
  
  
• JEM 422 Managing News Web Sites. This is the second of two courses offered by UT's School, and the one I am currently teaching. The course introduces students to a variety of content concepts such as lateral reporting, backpack journalism and web packages. Students produce projects for the TennesseeJournalist.com (tnjn.com), the news web site of the School of Journalism and Electronic Media.

Local stylebook

Chapters in Journalism: Who, What, When, Where, Why and How, Writing for the Mass Media, Web Journalism, and The Complete Editor are devoted to a discussion and explanation of journalistic style and why the rules of style -- and particularly the use of a stylebook -- are important. If you are the adviser to a publication or teaching a course in writing where students have to write about local topics, you will want to compile a local stylebook. This is a set of rules and guidelines that the AP stylebook would not address. It might also specify times when rules different from those in the AP stylebook might be established. In the writing section of this web site, we have provided some guidelines for beginning the compilation of a local stylebook.

And to see a local stylebook in progress, the staff of the TennesseeJournalist.com, the news web site of the School of Journalism and Electronic Media, has begun one that you can view here.


Teaching tips, discussion notes and cool ideas

This section contains a number of ideas for classroom activities and discussion starters that may help in making the points about journalism with your students. We are always looking to add to this section so if you've done something that works -- or thought of something you'd like to try -- share it with us. (My email is jstovall@jprof.com.) We'll post it on the site and give you full credit for it.

Editing for the web. These notes are designed for editing instructors who want to conduct a section on editing for the web or online journalism instructors who want to teach their students about the special considerations for editing for a news web site. They are keyed to this example that shows the differences between editing for print and editing for the web.

Responsibilities of the editor. Getting your editing students in the right frame of mind to become editors is a challenge for any editing teacher. JPROF.com has a set of discussion notes that contain many of the points you might want to make with your students at the beginning of an editing class. Above all, students should be taught that editors are the people who make decisions about the entire publication or web site, and they have to take responsibility for what is included in the publication. A reporter's mistake becomes their mistake if they do not take steps to correct it.

Notes on accuracy. The first lesson that beginning journalism students should learn is they are obligated to present accurate information to their audience. Many of the procedures of journalism are directed toward achieving accuracy. Editing students need to be reminded of this goal, too. It is the editor's job to ensure accuracy. This web site contains a set lecture/discussion notes that I use for my editing class when talking with them about accuracy and how to achieve it. (Posted Feb. 9, 2005)

Grading writing assignments. For quite a number of years I taught the introductory writing course at the University of Alabama, the infamous Mass Communication 102. I worked with seven or eight graduate teaching assistants each semester, and in our weekly meetings we talked a lot about grading. This memo to them grew out of those discussions several years ago. It outlines some of the considerations writing teachers should give when awarding grades.

Classroom activity: Adapting nursery rhymes (Garland McKee) Teach your students to write news stories by taking the facts of a nursery rhyme and putting them into an inverted pyramid news story structure.

Classroom activity: Using Aesop's Fables for Newswriting (Garland McKee) Teaching the inverted pyramid news story structure by reading Aesop's fables as information for news stories.

Classroom activity: Picture Perfect (Garland McKee) Teaching the principles of photojournalism through a play on the Jeopardy game.

Teaching online journalism resources. Mindy McAdams, who is quickly reaching the status of a guru of online journalism, has put together an exceptional list of teaching resources for those who want to conduct courses or units on online journalism. She did this for the Online Journalism Review.

Writing with verbs. Most good writing teachers stress the power and importance of verbs – often to skeptical students. Verbs are the engines of the language and have far more descriptive power than adjectives or adverbs. That’s where the skepticism comes in. Students interested in writing develop a belief that using good adjectives and adverbs will enhance their writing. Verbs are simply aids in the process. Here’s an exercise that you can do with your students that might turn their thinking around.

This exercise only a takes a few minutes and can be a lot of fun. (More)

Note: Roy Peter Clark has a good article on the Poynter web site about writing with verbs. (Posted Feb. 9, 2005)

Attacking wordiness. Most of the editing students I have taught over the last three decades share this trait: they are reluctant to change anything in an editing exercise, even when it is obviously wrong. Getting them to where they will correct grammar, spelling and style errors in the first step. But to be good editors, of course, they must go far beyond this. They must learn to recognize and attacking wordiness – the heart disease of good writing. Here are some lecture/discussion notes about what to tell editing students about wordiness – how to recognize the symptoms and cure the disease. (Posted Feb. 10, 2005)

Handouts, exercises and quizzes

This web site contains a number of exercises and quizzes. Many of the are in the site's Exercise Room, hosted by Annie, the Grammar Queen (right). Here's some of the other items on the site. You should explore individual sections to see what else is there.

Editor dilemmas (exercise)

Rules for using commas (HTML) (PDF version)

Clichés (short article)

Verbs of attribution (short article)

Simple words (short article)

Developing a local stylebook (short article)

References for journalists

Preview stories (handout) HTML, PDF

Obituary stories (handout) HTML, PDF

Speech stories (handout) HTML, PDF

A glossary of grammar terms (an extensive listing of terms, rules of grammar and punctuation and examples)
Grammar, Spelling, Punctuation and Diction study guide

Important dates

Time and place crossword puzzle 1 (HTML) (PDF)

Time and place crossword puzzle 2 (HTML) (PDF)

Guidelines for the student photojournalist (HTML) (PDF)

• Beginning Photoshop (PDF)

• Preparing images for the web (PDF)

• Photoshop guidelines (PDF)

Mark Twain: Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses (essay)

What did Abraham Lincoln really look like? (short article)

George Smiley and the coverage of the battle of Antietam (short article)

In addition, a number of web sites have online quizzes and tutorials that teachers might find useful, including the following:

• NilesOnline.com (http://nilesonline.com/stats/)
• Investigative Reporters and Editors (with a terrific math test: http://www.ire.org/education/math_test.html)
• University of North Carolina math competency test for journalists (http://www.unc.edu/~pmeyer/carstat/mathtestquestions.html)
• Poynter.org: Why Math Matters by Chip Scanlan (with additional links) (http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=52&aid=71048)

Web resources

Many excellent resources are available to teachers of journalism. Here are a few:

News-directory.org. The folks at this site are trying building a comprehensive news web site and journalism web directory. A form on the site allows you to submit your site for inclusion on the directory.

SunshineWeek.org. Sunshine Week is a national initiative to open a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information. Participants include print, broadcast and online news media, civic groups, libraries, non-profits, schools and others interested in the public's right to know. There are resources for teachers to use to impress upon students the importance of open government and the public's right to know.

Newsinitiative.org. This is a national initiative led by five of America's leading research universities with the support of two major foundations (Carnagie and Knight) to advance the U.S. news business by helping revitalize schools of journalism. According to the site, "The universities will take advantage of the riches of their institutions by integrating the schools of journalism more closely with the entire campus in an effort to better teach, challenge and prepare the next generation of news industry leaders for an increasingly complex world. The initiative will experiment with curriculum and hands-on experience with the hope of creating a national conversation with other schools across the country."

TeachFirstAmendment.org. Chances are that your students have the wrong idea about the First Amendment. Many think the goverment controls the content of the Internet. (It doesn't.). This site can help put things right in their heads.

NewsU. This site offers a variety of "courses" that you or your students can take. The site has lots of other resources, too.

Library of Congress resource. Of the many resource sites for instructors on the Internet today, one of the most valuable and accessible is the Library of Congress. Here is the link to the Library's webcast archive. This site has dozens of speeches and interviews that can be shown directly to your class from the site or that can be assigned to students to view on their own. The appearance of Bob Schieffer, CBS news correspondent, at the Library's Bookfest 2003 is a good example. Schieffer talked for about 20 minutes about his life as a journalist and his book This Just In. He answered three questions he says he is asked the most: Who is the most fascinating politician he covered? (Lyndon Johnson); What was his biggest scoop? (He tells the story of his getting an interview with President Gerald Ford for Walter Cronkite.); What was the biggest story he almost got but missed? (He almost got an interview with Lee Harvey Oswald on Nov. 22, 1963.) The archive is well worth a visit. (Posted April 24, 2005)

Newsline Publications. Instructors wanting a different approach to encouraging their secondary education students to follow news events might want to check out Newsline Publications' It's News to Me, a set of flashcards and game approach to current events. This approach has been developed by Barbara Goldman. Here's part of the description the Newsline site has for its products:

Pittsburgh, PA-based Newsline Publications, Inc. develops and markets unique educational solutions including games, workshops, programming and partnerships. The mission of Newsline Publications, Inc. is to strategically plan and create innovative products to stimulate the mind, educate target audiences and provide hours of entertainment.
(Posted April 24, 2005)

New York Times Learning Center. This site, which requires a free registration with the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com) contains a vast array of lesson plans on many different topics, many of them keyed to the news of the day. The site is divided up by topics, and journalism is one of the main topics. There you will find a variety of plans and classroom activities designed to help students understand the process and meaning of journalism.

Highschooljournalism.org. This site has been set up by the American Society of Newspaper Editors and contains a number of resources for both teachers and students of journalism at the high school level. The site has a remarkable number of lesson plans and classroom ideas on many topics such as advertising, bias, diversity, design, ethics, history, interviewing, news values, etc. While you're there, check out the ideas in the teaching tips portion of the site.

Poynter Institute. While there is no specific section of the Poynter Institute web site devoted to high school journalism, the institute does have a high school program and a director (Wendy Wallace). This article by the director tells more about the program. The Poynter web site has a vast number of articles and ideas about many journalism-related topics. High school and college journalism teachers are likely to find much of value there.

Journalism Education Association. JEA is the major national organization for scholastic journalism teachers. Its web site contains a variety of resources to help in teaching, including a number of articles and discussions about topics such as grading, photos and copyediting in its curriculum section.

Public Broadcasting System. PBS has produced and aired a number of shows concerning journalism-related topics, particularly through its American Masters, Frontline and American Experience series. These shows usually contain fully packed web sites that include teacher's guides for building classroom lessons. Here are just a few you might want to check out:

• Why America Hates the Press (Frontline)
  
  
• The Battle Over Citizen Kane (American Experience)
  
  
• The Wizard of Photography (American Experience)
  
  
• Murder of the Century (American Experience
  
  
• Henry Luce, founder of Time magazine (American Masters)
  
  
• Edward R. Murrow (American Masters)
  
  

Discovery Channel. The Discovery Channel maintains a large web site with a substantial section devoted to teaching aids. Teachers look for a way to post online quizzes and tutorials might want to take advantage of the tools provided (free) by this site. The site also contains a large number of lesson plans and classroom activities on a wide variety of topics. One of those is titled News Coverage and helps teach students about how news is produced.