Journalism and Communications (Grades 9-12)
Tuesdays 2:45 – 4:15
$350 per semester
In this high-school level elective course, students will learn essential technical, ethical, and legal elements of written and visual media. Skills such as professionalism, writing mastery, responsible reporting, and precise layouts will be emphasized as students read, respond to, and write their own news and feature articles. To practice these skills, students will produce a monthly campus newsletter and produce a yearbook for Pacific Coast Learning Center. Students will be responsible to turn in original work according to specific deadlines and learn page design, publishing techniques, copy writing, editing, photography, record keeping, time management, teamwork, and leadership skills.
Unit 1 – Introduction to Journalism
Unit 2 - Unit Censorship and Journalism Ethics
Unit 3 - News Reporting
Unit 4 -Unit Interviewing
Unit 5 - Editing and Proofreading
Unit 6 - Opinion Writing
Unit 7 -Layout and Design
Unit 8 - Photo Journalism
Tuesdays 2:45 – 4:15
$350 per semester
In this high-school level elective course, students will learn essential technical, ethical, and legal elements of written and visual media. Skills such as professionalism, writing mastery, responsible reporting, and precise layouts will be emphasized as students read, respond to, and write their own news and feature articles. To practice these skills, students will produce a monthly campus newsletter and produce a yearbook for Pacific Coast Learning Center. Students will be responsible to turn in original work according to specific deadlines and learn page design, publishing techniques, copy writing, editing, photography, record keeping, time management, teamwork, and leadership skills.
Unit 1 – Introduction to Journalism
- Genres of journalism
- History of news reporting in America
- Understand various elements of a news publications
- Hard and soft news differences
- Assignments of school newspaper jobs
Unit 2 - Unit Censorship and Journalism Ethics
- Ethical considerations in reporting
- Bias in the media
- Freedom of Press defined
- The Media and the Law
- Guidelines for professional and student publications
- Consequences of plagiarism
Unit 3 - News Reporting
- Organizational strategies and content development
- News article formatting
- Citing sources in news articles
- Sports reporting
- Styles of leads
- Where to find a story
Unit 4 -Unit Interviewing
- Professionalism in journalism
- What makes a great question?
- Interviewing techniques
Unit 5 - Editing and Proofreading
- Common writing errors
- Proofreading symbols
- Giving and receiving criticism
- Self-editing
Unit 6 - Opinion Writing
- Use of satire
- Techniques of successful opinion writers
- Persuasive arguing
- Rhetorical strategies
Unit 7 -Layout and Design
- Graphic arts in journalism
- Cutting work to fit a page count
- Digital and print media design
Unit 8 - Photo Journalism
- Visual media in the news
- Layouts
- Photo editing for print
- Visual storytelling
- Citing photo sources
CLASS MATERIALS:
A detailed materials list will be emailed to all registered students by August 1, 2020