Journalism and Yearbook   2023-2024

Mr. Stucky

CLASS CODE FOR CLASSROOM: hbpgual

Supplies: For most day to day work, we will be working with chromebooks. If you’d like, you can use headphones to listen to music during your assigned work, and you can also bring a mouse, keyboard, or anything else that helps you get those assignments completed. 

In addition, if you’d like to contribute to the classroom supplies, we will always need paper towels, tissues, scrap paper, and the like. For Journalism, if you have any old SLRs laying around, or have other equipment that can enhance the classroom experience, feel free to bring them in or reach out to discuss it. If you or your parents would like to make a donation to the Journalism class, feel free to reach out, and we can get you a receipt from the school. 

Objectives: Together students will learn how to create hard-hitting headlines, short and long-form news articles, Podcasts, Live Streams, Online-Ready Videos, and short video packages tailored to a specific audience. Our immediate projects will be the school’s yearbook, the morning announcements which will take place on a daily basis, as well as a bi-weekly newsletter. 

Towards these goals, students will complete in-class activities that relate to selected readings, writing exercises, research, and interview tactics, as well as various writing activities both in-class and for homework. 

Grading: 

  • Newsletter:                                                                      25%
  • Photography:                                                                   25%
  • Announcements:                                                             25%
  • Yearbook                                                                         25%

As all of our projects are time-specific, there is no opportunity to make up for late work. It is either done or not handed in to our client, which is the school. If you are absent after you have been given an assignment, it is expected that you continue to work on that assignment with an eye toward the communicated deadline. If there are extenuating circumstances, please let me know as early as possible, so we can get that assignment covered. 

Behavior: This class will function like a working newsroom. You will be treated like a mature adult, and this will prepare you for an office environment. We will have regular meetings to discuss our approach to coming deadlines and projects, and you will have agency and a say in what we do. There will be many different roles, and I encourage you to try many, if not all of them in order to discover your passion. I will root for you, and work with the administration to ensure that your individual voice shines through in your work. With that said, there will be projects that are on a specific timeline, so there could be times of stress as we work to meet a deadline. These deadlines will be communicated well in advance. 

We will all work together towards our goals, and it’s expected that everyone works to help others out if needed. Some of you will also be called on to lead others on projects. 

Participation: It is expected that everyone in the class be engaged in projects. If you don't want to reliably write, edit, or attend extracurricular activities around the school, we should have a discussion about your expectations for the class. 

Working Office: When I am not giving a lecture, this class will function as a working office. Some of you will be appointed editors, and some of you will be given a specific beat to report on for the school’s website, the newsletter, or our announcements.

Homework: Homework will be assigned through Google Classroom. Please make sure to add the code BLANK to your classroom account through your school email. This will enable us to work together on assignments as needed. If you are able to get your work done in class, there shouldn’t be much in the way of homework to complete. 

Absences: It is your duty to check in about absent work. I will update Google Classroom with assignments students worked on for the day. You get one day for every day you are absent to make up the work. For example, if you are absent for three days, you will have three days to make up the work. However, if you are there the day the work was assigned, then absent for the due date, it will be due upon your return to school. 

Communication: Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions, especially in the first few weeks of the school year. Hope Charter School’s phone number is 407-656-4673. If you call the office and leave a message, I will do my best to get back to you in a timely manner. My email address is Phillip.stucky@hopecharter.org. Feel free to email me with any questions or concerns, or if you would like to set up an appointment to meet with me. Email is the quickest way for you to reach me and to get a response. 

Skyward: Skyward is where you can check your child’s grades. This system is replacing Progressbook for all of Orange County. We will do our best to keep this up to date. This system is a great tool to see your student’s average grade for every subject, as missing assignments. This is also where you can check your child’s absences and tardies. There have been some difficulties with the county overall in switching programs, so hopefully, it will be a smooth transition at the start of school! This is an invaluable tool and I encourage you to frequently use it! 

Schedule:

1st Unit: Mechanics of News-Writing

  • Understanding the role of reporters in society and politics. 
  • Inverted Pyramid of news writing style
  • The importance of headlines
  • Different types of journalism: News aggregators, long-form, puff pieces, interview styles, investigative journalism. 
  • How articles get approved and published. 
  • Ethics in Journalism

2nd Unit: Editing using AP Style Guides

3rd Unit: History of Journalism

  • Importance of the Printing Press
  • Role of partisan politics in relation to printing news
  • The early importance of pamphlets and how they assisted in global revolution (Common sense, etc.)
  • Early Business models of journalism. 

4th Unit: Current Business Models Of Journalism

  • Early business models (1900’s)
  • Shift to TV news and important events through history. (Debate impacts on politics, early video sources of war coverage as it shifted through the Vietnam era)
  • “Big Three” network news importance
  • Aggregation of news networks: 90% of the United States's media is controlled by four media conglomerates: Comcast (via NBCUniversal), Disney, ViacomCBS (controlled by National Amusements), and AT&T (via WarnerMedia).
  • What is “Separation of Church and State” in Journalism, and why is it important? 
  • Online free model vs. Subscription model

5th Unit: Exploring Online Sources of Journalism

  • Website curation
  • Blog creation
  • Instagram and how it impacts realtime journalism and fake news
  • Twitter’s impacts on immediate news coverage
  • Podcasting strategies
  • Livestream strategies
  • YouTube Production

6th Unit: Creating News packages for networks

  • Network anchors, reporters out in the field. Production standards and critiques. 
  • Exploration of live news via radio and TV compared to prepared news segments. 

Sincerely, 
Mr. Phillip Stucky

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