News articles offer students an immediate means to communicate with a public audience, and, if published on an established platform, can offer the added benefit of editorial intervention by professional journalists.
Compared to the op-ed, a genre many students find tempting, news articles rely less heavily on personal expertise and more heavily on reported information that is “new” (such as interviews, newly available primary source material such as data or documents, or recently emerging scholarly studies). While these journalistic pieces traditionally do not espouse or defend an “opinion,” news articles known as “point of view,” “advocacy,” or “solidarity” journalism have become more common. In these pieces, the author openly acknowledges their own subjectivity, while continuing to strive to provide the reader with as complete an understanding of the topic as possible.
Platforms include The Sophian, local newspapers like The Daily Hampshire Gazette or The Shoestring, amateur digital platforms such as Medium, professional digital platforms like Slate, or even national outlets like The New York Times.
Methods
Students may be assigned to write a short news article (750-1200 words) reporting on a topic related to the course. Frameworks for research could include interviews of experts or affected individuals, citations of academic research, site visits, public records, public records requests, etc.
An instructor may choose to have students convert a scholarly essay written for the course into a journalistic piece.
Students will need to learn the basic conventions of the genre. A related activity may include diagramming or outlining professionally published pieces of the same scope as student assignments. In general, short journalistic articles are often structured along the following lines:
- Introductory Hook – something timely or vivid to catch the reader’s attention.
- Nut graf – the meat of the story in a single paragraph – provides the main point or theme.
- Mechanistic Development – sequence of facts, quotes, and analysis that tells the story.
- Inclusion of quotes by experts or affected subjects – effective quotes employ key details, characterization, entertaining and clear analogies.
- Counterargument – usually occurs about two-thirds of the way through the piece.
- Conclusion – the broader meaning and implications.
Wikipedia’s entry on News Style provides a clear introduction to basic journalistic style.
Assistance and additional materials are available from the Jacobson Center or the Journalism concentration. These include pedagogical guidance and more detailed handouts on journalistic style, interviewing, public records requests, pitching to professional outlets, ethics, and other elements of journalistic practice.
Students do not need to publish their work for the exercise of creating a journalistic piece to be worthy. However, the process of submitting a strong final piece for publication can offer students a sense of meaning and validation.
Learning Goals
- Deepen engagement with tailoring a project for a specific audience.
- Engage with motivation and timeliness.
- Adapt academic work (style, argument, use of evidence) for a different genre.
- Consideration of the needs of professionalization if seeking formal publication.
Examples
Professional
Professional examples related to your discipline can be found in newspapers and magazines. Look for examples that match the subject matter, scope, or audience of the students’ assignments. Especially consider using models from local newspapers so that students can expand their sense of audience beyond the national models they may be more familiar with.
The Conversation and Aeon are digital platforms that exclusively or primarily publish journalism and op-eds written by academic scholars. These platforms provide strong examples of effective interplay between disciplinary expertise and public writing. Faculty may consider contributing to these platforms themselves to enhance their pedagogy and public impact.
Student
Smith Public Voices is an archive of professionally-published student work maintained by the Jacobson Center. Many of the featured pieces are journalistic and all are published in the mainstream press.
Several classes at Smith that explicitly center public discourse have resulted in published student work. Students in Smith’s core journalism class and in the journalism capstone have published numerous journalistic pieces that can serve as strong examples of the genre. Examples follow.
- JNX/WRT 350: Journalism in the Field
- Scully-Bristol, Naomi, Dying on one’s own terms (with sidebar), The Daily Hampshire Gazette
- Petty, Olivia, Amid staggering demand for food assistance, new federal law is poised to worsen hunger in western Mass, The Shoestring
- Fay, Laura, Living proud in a hostile era: Navigating trans rights in the second age of Trump (with sidebar), The Daily Hampshire Gazette
- WRT/ENG 136: Journalism: Principles and Practice:
- Doyle, Mollie, Del Bene, Ami, and Haff, Maeve Keenan, Massachusetts bill aims to lessen social work burden, The Daily Hampshire Gazette
- Wilson, Mary Kate, Bucelli, Francesco, and Halpin, Abigail, Fare questions: local school meals face healthy criticism, in The Daily Hampshire Gazette
- Kolbert, Phoebe, and Engrav, Charlotte, Telehealth Providers Prepare for the Future, Ms Magazine
The department of Statistics and Data Science has made an explicit effort to center public discourse in SDS-related writing. In SDS 236: Data Journalism, co-taught by Ben Baumer and Naila Moreira, a number of student teams have published journalistic pieces that center data analysis including:
- Linker, Campbell, Kowal, Lindsay, and R., Tulip, Attacks on health research could cost local economy millions, The Shoestring
Additional course-generated published student work includes:
- Zoe Merrell ‘19 (ENV 311: Integration III – Interpreting and Communicating Information) in the Daily Hampshire Gazette
- Katherine Keenan ‘19 (AMS 351/ENG 384 Writing about Women and Gender) in the Daily Hampshire Gazette
Smith students have also independently published journalistic articles, often with editorial input from the Jacobson Center or Smith faculty.
Multimedia Expansion
Journalism-style writing dovetails well with blogging (WORDPRESS BLOGS AND WEBSITES). Text-based broadcasts (view module here), or Instagram (view module here) can serve to encapsulate and bring public attention to the piece. Podcasts (view module here) based on the students’ journalistic work or employing journalistic structure and practices can broaden audience, genre, and students’ technical capabilities.
