Citizen Journalism II: Taking your writing to the next level

Name of facilitator: Mary Turck

E-mail: maryturck@visi.com Phone: 612-436-9187

Is this workshop for you?
This class was designed for people who already have writing experience and/or have completed the Citizen Journalism workshop, and who wanted more. Are you ready for this workshop? Here are some questions to help you decide:
• Are you able to come to all four meetings? (The workshop is currently scheduled for March 4, 11, 18 and 25. At the first meeting. we will talk about whether to move the March 25 meeting to April 1.)
• Are you willing to do the assignments in between meetings?
• Do you feel able to write at least a 500-word (two-page) news story?
• Are you willing to do research on-line and also to interview people in the community?

Newsroom Action Plan
The specific focus for the Spring 2009 session of Newsroom is food and hunger issues. While we will talk about the elements of reporting, we will do so in the context of actually planning and reporting stories about food and hunger issues in the Twin Cities. The workshop will function as a newsroom for this series.

Meeting #1: Story telling
Quick review: WWWWW
On-line tools: Google reader, Delicious, Twitter, Facebook
Assignment:
Write a rough draft of an article for next week

Meeting #2: Getting personal
Workshop articles.
Fact-checking and documentation
Assignments: (Continue working on first story.)
Visit a PLACE and interview a PERSON. Bring notes or blog post or journal entry plus any photos or video or audio to next session.

III. Visualize this
Continue workshopping articles
Adding visual interest to stories: Graphics and charticles, photos, slideshows, video
Assignment: (Have your story polished and ready to go next week.)
Take photos or video to tell a story of food and hunger in a different way.

IV. The big picture
Structure and sequence for series
Going beyond the story - giving readers options for involvement, planning follow-up stories, providing additional information resources
Evaluation

Class Time: 6:30 p.m. –8:30 p.m.

Class Dates: Wednesdays, March 4, 11, 18, 25

Place: Twin Cities Daily Planet Office
2600 E Franklin Ave., Minneapolis MN 55406

What experience do you bring to this class?
Mary Turck is the Editor at the Twin Cities Daily Planet (www.tcdailyplanet.net); past editor, Connection to the Americas and AMERICAS.ORG; free-lance writer and editor, with dozens of articles and more than 15 books published over the past 20 years.