Journalism Summary 12/10/12

Tick, tick, tick! The deadline for article submissions has come and gone and I am pleased to say all students made the midnight December 11th cut-off (well, close enough :>)

Issue II of The Mosaic Monthly has been up-loaded to the printer, and barring any last minute glitches (as can happen in the newspaper biz) we should be distributing and enjoying our paper on Monday.

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On Monday we will also plan our final issue (sadly!). Instead of volunteers, I will be assigning sections to students in the hopes that everyone will take advantage of the opportunity to contribute to the paper. For some students, this may be significantly out of their established comfort zones, so I apologize in advance for any "kvetching" you may hear. Please continue to support them as much as possible at home, and let me know if I can be of any assistance!

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This week we shared our fairy tales that were written from the perspective of a minor character in a well-known story. The students' preferences for creative writing are very clear and we enjoyed the momentary departure from "serious" journalism.

They were so delightful, we agreed that before the semester is over, we should have them bound up in booklet form and distributed to all for posterity's sake. I will be asking for the finished pieces sometime after the holiday. Please have your student type his or her fairy tale and make sure it is ready for publication. Prepping for publication is very time consuming and any editing you can assist your student with is much appreciated!

We also discussed on Monday the similarities and differences between perspective, prejudice, and bias and how bias can be detected in media. I distributed a personal bias audit and asked the students to keep their answers private from the other students so they could feel free to answer honestly. Without revealing any personal biases, we discussed how we might have arrived at these pre-conceived notions and challenged ourselves to consider the sources that may have contributed to our view points.

There is no additional homework this week, however, if your student has still not written an in-depth, please encourage them to do so before the break. I am always looking for stand-out articles for an up-coming issue!

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