Instructor's Guide
The teaching assignments that accompany Journalist’s Resource studies are designed to be flexible. They can be used in whole or part and can be adapted to a particular task. The newswriting assignments, for example, could be applied to the writing of the headline, the lead, the nut graph or the full story. Material from the assignments could also be combined with other material, for example, in the writing of a background, feature or local-angle story.
Selectively applied, the materials are suitable for use in newswriting and reporting courses at all levels, undergraduate and graduate.
To accommodate instructors who might want to use the site as the basis for a full course, we have constructed a syllabus for a semester-long introductory newswriting course. The syllabus uses material from the site, augmented with standard course readings, including material from the AP Stylebook.
The site also has enough material in some policy areas to underpin specialized reporting courses, such as a science reporting course or an environmental reporting course.
Whatever the specific use of the material, the pedagogical goal is the same: to help journalism students to understand policy research and to apply it effectively in their reporting.
