You want us to do what!?

Friday in EL227, my News Writing class, Dr. Jerz asked us to do an exercise that I think practically scared us to death. He had about two pages filled with facts about a crime story, including a seperate story that was background information for the second. He read through the facts two times while projecting them on a screen. He read at normal speed and moved the paper down as he went, so as I began the exercise I started just reading instead of listening. Well, this didn't work because he moved the paper down JUST as I was about to write a fact. After the first read through he gave us ten minutes to compile our fact (other students commented on this as well), then he read it again for the final time and we had about a half hour or so to write a crime story out of the fact we were able to scribble down.

I think by this stage we were all in a panic because we either didn't have enough facts, or the facts we were able to catch were so random that they made for a very incoherent story.

At the end of class, Dr. Jerz assured us this was just a practice exercise, not for points. THANK GOD!

I chose to do the first story once I realized it was here (hah!) and that it was very short. I only missed a few details, but they were important. I didn't catch what the warden at the prison said, or the highway patrol. In fact, I had no quotes...a major no-no.

This exercise taught me how difficult it will be in real life to get these facts, people aren't going to slow down just because you need to write things down. Last night I decided I'm adding a tape recorder to my Christmas list, please, Santa? Help a budding journalist out!

I also learned that I might want to get into crime reporting. It seems very interesting, and I think it would be an edgier(yes, edgier)field. Although the problem with crime reporting is the lack of opinion included. You cannot opinionize whatsoever in crime reporting, it's strictly fact, and you have to walk on eggshells all the time. This might pose a problem for me since I love to include my opinion in my writing.

Overall, I thought this was an excellent exercise. It really helped to prepare me for the real world, and I definitely think we should do more of this in class.

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I'd like to send my thoughts out to a classmate who Dr. Klapak informed us was hit by a car while jogging. I don't want to give a name because this is speculation, but the student was not in class on Friday and is supposedly in a Pittsburgh hospital on life support. Please keep this person in your prayers.

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