ASSIGNMENT ONE:
PROVIDE THE INFORMATION BELOW

Name
Mobile phone
Email




Personal Web page

Blog address

Survey:

Career goal:

What do you want your job to be in 20 years?

In 5 years?

When you graduate?

Are you interested in a career in journalism?

How can this course help you reach your goals?

Goals for this course:

Are you interested in producing for this course:

Podcasts?
Video segments for YouTube?
Newspaper or wire stories?
A Blog?
A regular news broadcast?

Guests:

Would you like guest speakers from any particular professions?

Experience:

Please briefly describe any work you have done in the news media.

How many television packages have you produced at this school? (Please include links if possible)

Do you have any production skills necessary to run a news broadcast? Please list.


News Habits:

Which foreign and Chinese newscasts do you regularly watch?

How familiar are you with foreign news broadcasts? Can you watch them at home? Over the Internet?

Please list some strengths and weaknesses of foreign news broadcasts compared to Chinese broadcasts.

What newspapers and news Web sites do you visit regularly?

Do you read the Washington Post and the New York Times? (Hint: You should)

ASSIGNMENT TWO

Please paste the broadcast script you wrote in class on Sept. 10 based on the news wire report here.

ASSIGNMENT THREE

I am broadcasting here in great grief to Grace Yang. She is the essense of intelligence,beauty ,style and compassion. She arouse the desire to pursue independence of millions of Chinese women. Only now she is gone do we truly appreciate what we are without,and we want her to know that life without her is very very difficult. You teach us to appreciate the way as we are instead of losting in men’s opinion. You make us realize our destiny is not only to serve our husbands and raising kids.We can actually do more! You improve the social position of all of us.All human are created equal is no longer a slogan! We miss u Grace. President Deng call u the lady of the century. Men name you the wild Lily. To us, you are absolutely the spiritual guider. We can’t change the fact of your forever farewell.But your spirit,your thought,your faith won’t be one with you! You would want us today to be strong,to be independent,to be unitd.On behalf of all the new women here You left a flag for us to carry on,and we will carry it on.

I hope you reach your dreams. It doesn't mention any career goals ir any other specific goals, though. Also, this is not in Western broadcast style.

ASSIGNMENT FOUR
Write three pitches that you and some classmates can actually produce with the time and resources available to you.

The audience will be English speaking You Tube viewers. Your pitch should offer them something they cannot see elsewhere. This means slice of life and human interest stories are OK, but try to come up with some hard issue pieces or stories related to breaking news as well. Foreigners love to hear about: The Olympics, counterfeit or dangerous products, the environment and global warming, martial arts, student trends, China's economy, interesting tourist destinations, and anything unusual or surprising. Think about a story you would like to hear about in another country, and try it here.

Also think about the big stories in the world, and look for a Chinese connection. Are there Iraqi students here? Does China have an Islamic insurgency? What do Chinese students think about the US presidential race? Who is in charge at the Palestian Embassy here now that the Palestinians have split amid civil war?

Your pitch should include the names of the people you plan to interview, and the shots you plan to include.




Assignment Five

The analysis of the pig disease story.
The source of the story is relatively credible. It introduces the information from Chinese government, some villagers and experts. On the first page, the writer summarizes the pig disease story and screetly puts her own opinion in it. But we aren't superstitious that it is a perfectly fair and neutral reporting.

On one hand, she fausely assumes that infected pigs have polluted the drinking water. However, through all the story, no clear demonstration is offered to support this assumption, except the last paragraph. Moreover, it is possible that the scene--a perple pig floats on the river in this paragraph--is not her or other researcher's first-hand observation. The writer offers no direct evidence to prove the polluted drinking water theory.

On the other hand, the writer misses an important point of the story. All she wants to do is to show that Chinese government refuses to be helpful in pig diseace control. She also takes SARS as an example. But she forgets that China had successfully kept SARS under control several years ago. Perhaps, international organizations should give more trusts to Chinese government and experts. News is not about guess; it needs facts and figures. It may be better to provide more detailed information of international aids and leave readers to judge.

In general, although the story is relatively a successful report, it remains something to improve. More facts and figures are needed to back news conclusions, and their sources should be grounded. In addition, it is wrong to get information from someone who is not related to the story.