Assignment for Monday

The assignment for next Monday, as in the syllabus, is:

Watch a newscast to see how reporters write to their video. Are they describing what you’re looking at, or using their narration to add context and meaning? What difference does that make to your appreciation or understanding of the story? Evaluate the use of active voice in the same story. Post your assignment to your blog. Your entry should be between 300-800 words and formatted for online.

As I mentioned at the end of class, this is not directly connected to 'writing a lead'. Please watch another newscast and see how the video connects to the narration. Does it simply describe the image you see, or does it enhance the context and meaning?

Remember the S-V-O construct that is commonly used when writing leads. See if you can observe this in the narration during the newscast. This is called the active voice: the subject of the sentence performs the action expressed in the verb.

Example of active voice: (red is the subject that has active voice--> the action it performs is blue--> the passive voice is in orange)

Scientists have conducted experiments to test the hypotheses.

Pay attention to the lead used in the newscast too, as we will discuss leads again on Monday!