ASSIGNMENT ONE:
PROVIDE THE INFORMATION BELOW

Name Laurel
Mobile phone 13641283349
Email Laurel_409@hotmail.com

Add photo here:

Personal Web page

Blog address

Survey:

Career goal:

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

In 5 years? A journalist

When you graduate? 2008

Are you interested in a career in journalism? A little bit

How can this course help you reach your goals? I have no idea.

Goals for this course:

Are you interested in producing for this course:

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

Guests:

Would you like guest speakers from any particular professions?
No such request yet. But I will be very excited if my guest is a movie or music star.

Experience:

Please briefly describe any work you have done in the news media.
In the summer vocation of last year, I took an internship in a Beijing local newspaper. I was translated and editing foreign reports.

How many television packages have you produced at this school? (Please include links if possible)
None

Do you have any production skills necessary to run a news broadcast? Please list.
None


News Habits:

Which foreign and Chinese newscasts do you regularly watch?
Xinwen Lianbo in China

How familiar are you with foreign news broadcasts? Can you watch them at home? Over the Internet?
Not much. The only way for me to watch CNN is to watch the TV in hotels which if I have chance to live in.

Please list some strengths and weaknesses of foreign news broadcasts compared to Chinese broadcasts.
Foreign news broadcasts may be more objective.

What newspapers and news Web sites do you visit regularly?
CNN, NYT, NBC. Sometimes.

Do you read the Washington Post and the New York Times? (Hint: You should)
Once I bought a piece of out-date NYT in school. Most of time I visit its website.

ASSIGNMENT TWO

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

Chinese engineers blew up a protective dam used during construction of the Three Gorges Dam. This blast is to unleash the full force of the Yangtze River upon the world's largest hydroelectric project. An offical says that the blast creats more tham 6.7 million cubic feet of concrete fragments and they are keen to concerning about the dam's massive environmented impact.


ASSIGNMENT THREE
Please paste the Obituary assignment here.

Laurel is a director of Global Times.
Laurel was born in a newspapering family in Shanghai: her parents were both journalists for Xinhua Agency. Under the family influence, she majored in International Journalism in Communication University of China. She then went to the United States for further study and got a Master’s degree in International Affairs and International Communication in Boston University.
Laurel started her career as an interpreter for United Nations. Three years later, in a regular conference, she won recognition from Mr. Gu Liang, a senior editor in Global Times of that time. She then became a journalist for Global Times in New York agency. Later she was assigned to many other countries as specially appointed journalist, such as Paris, Genevese, London, and etc.
Laurel came back to China in 2027. Rich experiences in news reporting enabled her to be a senior editor. Owing to her great devotion to Global Times, she was entitled to a director of it in 2034. Under her outstanding guidance, Global Times has become a famous newspaper in the world, sharing the same reputation as New York Times and Washington Post.


ASSIGNMENT FOUR
Write three pitches that you and some classmates can actually produce with the time and resources available to you.
1. One of the biggest problems of that Beijing facing when it applied for holding 2006 Olympics was air pollution. Several years has passed. The government has taken various measures to deal with it. Will it have big achievement in 2008? It is possible to interview some relative officials and ordinary citizens about their opinions. Add some charts or videos illustrating the improvement of what the government has done. 2. Owing to China's increasing influence in the world, there are a lot of news reports on China everyday all over the world. Some praise China; others criticize. Most of them are regarded as unfair and with prejudice in some Chinese point of view. What indeed do Chinese youth look upon those reports, especially in those influential global mass media，such as New York Times, Economists, Newsweek, and in the world? Interview some students and teachers about their opinions. 3. Talking about Beijing, many foreigners know the Palace of Museum, the Great Wall, the Temple of Heaven, and other famous historical places. But they know little of other interesting places, such as Houhai. Visit this place and make some introductions. Make the video like a tour guide.



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.