MASS COMMUNICTION 271

BROADCAST NEWS WRITING

SPRING 2005

Instructor: Lance Arnold (lance.arnold@nicholls.edu)

107 Talbot Hall—448-4613

Office Hours: Monday - Thursday 12-3

 

Course description: Lecture and practice in researching, gathering and writing broadcast news.

 

Course content: To familiarize the student with the broadcast style of news writing, the methods of researching news stories, and to give the opportunity to write and produce news stories for broadcast outlets.

 

Course Goals: To give the students the knowledge necessary to competently complete the hands-on portion of the curriculum.

 

Required Text: Mayeux, P., (1996). Broadcast News Writing and Reporting (2^nd edition), Dubuque, IA : William C. Brown.

 

Materials: Each student must have one 60-minute audio cassette tape and one mini-dv tape.

 

Class procedures and requirements: Students will be required to write readers, voice-overs, packages and features for radio and television. Students will be expected to produce many of these projects to finished form.

 

Incomplete work policy: All work must be completed on time or it will not be accepted.

 

Attendance policy: Attendance will be taken every class. More than 3 undocumented absences will be punished with a deduction of 1 letter grade for each subsequent absence.

 

Make-up procedure: Without a documented absence, make-up work will not be allowed. With documented absences make-up work that is equal to the assigned work will be allowed.

 

Plagiarism and cheating policy: Either will result in a minimum penalty of “F” for the final semester. By taking this course, students agree that all assignments are subject to submission to Turnitin.com, an online plagiarism prevention and detection service. All work submitted to Turnitin.com will be added to its database of papers. Turnitin's privacy policy and a description of the service are available at http://www.turnitin.com. Specifically, this service compares your paper with Internet webpages, articles in databases, and all papers previously submitted from this university or any other. Turnitin then either confirms the originality of your work or gives the source of plagiarism. In cases of detected plagiarism, the paper and supporting evidence will be handled in compliance with the Student Code of Conduct (http://www.nicholls.edu/life/policy/code_of_conduct.pdf).

 

 

Grading policy: Students will be evaluated on their test and quiz performance as well as class participation.

         Quizzes                         20%

         Exams                           25%

         Participation                          5%

         Writing Assignments     50%

We will be using a 10-point grading scale in this class.

 

Disabilities: If you have a documented disability that requires

assistance, you will need to register with the Office of

Disability Services for coordination of your academic

accommodations. The Office of Disability Services is

located in Peltier Hall, Room 100-A. The phone number is

(985) 448-4430 (TDD 449-7002).

 

Syllabus Requirements: This syllabus is subject to change upon notification at the instructor’s discretion and is not a contract. It is the student’s responsibility to be familiar with the syllabus’s content and keep abreast of any changes that may be made.