Q News Story Practice Objective: Try It #4 is designed to give you practice in writing a typical news story in the concise, inverted-pyramid style that professional journalists use. Before you begin, please make sure you have reviewed "The Body of a News Story " in the Course Resource's JOUR 201 Manual, pages 51-52 in Chapter 7 of the Handbook of Independent Journalism, and Chapter 37 in The News Manual. Finally, bolster your understanding of news story basics with this resource before you begin the exercise: Activity: Select and open or download one of the following for this practice exercise: Police Story Practice Exercise3 (PDF) Police Story Practice Exercise4 (PDF) Police Story Practice Exercise5 (PDF) n.b. You must use the scenarios provided in this Try It. Do not try to complete this exercise using a story you have selected from the news. Using the scenario, write a news story for print publication using inverted-pyramid style. Begin your story with a summary news lead of no more than 20 words and one sentence. Use an active voice, past tense verb. Objective: To practice applying journalistic conventions for putting together a news story in the concise, inverted-pyramid style that professional journalists use. Your story should follow all of the rules you've learned so far about organizing a news story in inverted pyramid style. You should stack your news from most important general information to the least important specific information. Please listen to this PowerPoint, "Basic News Writing," by a UMGC JOUR 201 instructor for step-by-step instructions on how to organize a basic news story. You want to make the paragraphs in the body of your news story no more than one or two short sentences each. Weave the paragraphs together by applying the tips from the "Using Transitions" chapter of the JOUR 201 Manual in the Course Resources. Follow all the relevant rules in the "Course AP Stylebook" posted in the JOUR 201 Manual. Stick to the essentials. A story of 200-250 words may not be enough; one double that may be too much. Use the Checklist for News Story Exercises in the assignment handouts posted in the Course Resources to help you polish your story. Once you have drafted your story, think about how you would want to present it as an online news story. How would it need to be changed? What kinds of links would you use? Tell us what you would do differently or would add to the story and why! Look at "Packaging News Online" material in the JOUR 201 Manual and experiment with hyperlinking! Deadlines: Post your Try It as a reply to this post by 11:59:59 p.m. ET Saturday. Then, please thoughtfully critique at least two of your classmates' Try Its as soon as possible, so that everyone can benefit. Again, don't worry about not being qualified to review someone else's work. You're all learning so share your new knowledge with your classmates. Help them do better and allow them to help you by saying what you like about your classmates' work first, then offer constructive suggestions for improvements. Your advice should be friendly, encouraging, specific, and useful even as you're pointing out areas that can use some further work. You must give at least one substantive suggestion on how to improve each story you critique. Once you get your own feedback or see feedback given to your classmates that applies to your work, revise and re-post your Try It. Everyone is expected to revise their Try Its at least once during the academic week, even if they receive no feedback so keep reading and learning. If you discover your grammar needs a touch-up, you can refresh your memory of basic English grammar rules with JOUR 201's grammar practice quiz under the Activities & Assessments > Quizzes links in the course navbar before you submit your revised Try It. Best practice: Before you submit your initial response to the discussion question, click "subscribe to this thread" beneath the message box. This way, you will receive and be able to respond immediately to notices that someone has commented on your remarks, which can help make these discussions more like conversations. Keep track of those suggestions for improvement in your writing with this error log in the Course Resource's assignment handouts. You can use it in your editing! (Response required.) - 30 - ©2022 University of Maryland Global Campus