Intro -- Scholastic Journalism -- Copyright -- Contents -- About the authors -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Walk through -- Timeline -- Chapter 1 Understanding news -- Where does news come from? -- News value -- Timeliness -- Proximity -- Prominence -- Audience impact -- Surprise or oddity -- Human interest -- Conflict and drama -- Visual impact -- The importance of audience -- Beat reporting -- Featurizing news -- News in other contexts -- Sourcing news -- Primary sources -- Secondary sources -- Other factors affecting coverage -- Conclusion -- Chapter 2 Interviewing and reporting
Interviewing -- Developing questions -- Organizing the interview -- Setting up the interview -- Conducting the interview -- Observation -- Reliability of sources -- Internet research -- Conventional research -- Conclusion -- Chapter 3 News writing -- News writing -- The news lead -- Alternative news lead approaches -- Feature leads -- Contrast lead -- Vignette lead -- The descriptive lead -- Developing a news story -- Body of a news story -- Flow and organization -- Potential weaknesses in news writing -- Vagueness -- Wordiness -- Jargon and pretentious vocabulary -- Editorializing
Numerical distortions -- Passive voice -- Online news coverage -- Using quotes and attribution -- A news writer's checklist -- Conclusion -- Chapter 4 Writing specialty stories -- Health writing -- Academic writing -- Death coverage -- Speech stories -- Poll story -- Selecting respondents -- Civic journalism -- Yearbook writing -- Unique story angles -- Alternative copy or sidebar writing -- Conclusion -- Chapter 5 Writing feature stories -- The feature story idea -- The feature-writing process -- Conclusions -- Elements of feature writing -- Precise writing -- Details -- Pace -- Examples
Dialogue -- Voice -- Feature story types -- Profiles -- Human interest story -- Informative feature story -- Other types of features -- Conclusion -- Chapter 6 Sportswriting -- Writing the sports story -- Sports slang and sports language -- Developing a sports story with statistics -- Types of sports stories -- Advance story -- Trend story -- Sports news story -- Game story -- Sports feature story -- Feature leads for sports stories -- Packaged coverage -- Sports webcasting -- Getting started -- The webcast staff -- Conclusion -- Chapter 7 Opinion writing -- Developing editorial ideas
Role of the editorial -- Opinion vs. fact -- Editorial writing: the formula -- Editorial leads -- Developing the argument -- Editorial cartoon -- Columns -- Blog writing -- Review writing -- Reviewing tips -- Packaged opinion coverage -- Conclusion -- Chapter 8 In-depth reporting -- Finding topics for in-depth coverage -- School governing boards -- Athletics -- Curricular areas -- Extracurricular and other areas -- Beyond the school -- Localizing national and state trends -- Getting started -- Full-page coverage -- Double truck coverage -- Beyond the double truck -- Special issues -- The yearbook
