How is the website, www.allarounddanville.com , different from traditional print media? This is the place where news isn’t just what an editor sitting in a newsroom decides is news - you get to decide.
Beneath the photos on the right side of your screen you’ll find a variety of areas including Neighborhoods, Information Please, Nostalgia, School Days, Sports, The Arts, Vermilion River Country and We the People. If you click on Staff Blog after you’ve clicked on any of these areas you’ll find posts from our news columns on that subject.
You don’t have to wait for the staff to post this kind of information, you can do it yourself. You might write about meetings that are coming up, special programs, announcements about awards, an article about the history of something in the area, a post telling about a meeting or sporting event you’ve attended or a story about someone you know who is especially interesting. The choices are endless.
Say your school PTA is selling candy bars as a fund raiser and you want to get information out on how people can buy them. Go the area entitled “School Days.” Click on the “School Days Community Blog” tab and then click on the “Click here to Add an Entry” Instructions on the page will walk you through, but basically you type in what you want to say, give your entry a headline and click submit. If you are used to typing in any type of word processing program, everything will look very familiar. Your entry will then show up in the Community Blog area under that category and on the main page.
What is newsworthy? Whatever you think is. But remember, in the Community Blogs you are the reporter so let’s take a minute to talk about journalism. As a journalist, your goal is to share facts not opinion. Opinions are great to be posted at length on your personal blog on the site or in the forum area. In this area, it’s like Joe Friday used to say on Dragnet, “the facts, ma’am – just the facts.”
The best way to remember to include everything is to see if you’ve answered the classic reporting questions – who, what, when, where, why and how? In our candy sale example you would include what group is involved, choices of candy, prices, the goal of fundraising, timeframe of the sales effort, and who to call for information. You might talk to one of the students and ask why they need to raise the money then quote them in your story with quotation marks around their actual words.
If you are writing about a meeting or event you’ve attended, double check to be sure you’ve written down what happened accurately and that you have people’s names spelled correctly.
Start with the main point first and get as much information in your first few sentences as you can. People get tired of reading quickly so you have to grab their attention.
Try you hand at reporting this week. Next week we’ll talk about photos.
