Helpful Materials for Reporters
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Here you will find resources that will help you through every step of the reporting process and help you craft effective articles. You can find specific tips for each section of the paper and general reporting and writing resources below.
News Resources
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- Mentor Texts: News articles that are well-written and show how to organize and write the article.
- Organizing Straight News: Tips for using the Inverted Pyramid and other ideas for writing a straight news article.
Features Resources
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- General Tips: A document and a presentation with general tips and guidlines for writing style, organization, and information for features articles.
- Profile Piece Mentor Texts: Four articles that are well-written examples of profile pieces.
- Types of Leads: A Google Slides Presentation with definitions of the types of leads you can use in features writing and links to articles that use those leads.
Sports Resources
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- Going for Active, Accurate Sports Coverage: A document with general tips and tricks for writing strong sports stories.
- Effective Excerpts from Mike Tomlin article: A document with quotes from an article about Steelers' coach Mike Tomlin with students' comments about what makes those passages effective.
- Sports Mentor Texts:
- Going for Active, Accurate Sports Coverage: A document with general tips and tricks for writing strong sports stories.
General Resources
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*Please click on the links below to access the materials.
- Blank Interview Notes
- Interview Cheat Sheet
- Quoting Cheat Sheet
- How to Write Headlines
- Angles (Elements of News) & Where to Find Story Ideas
- Blank Background Draft
- Sample portfolios/blogs from previous years:
- Alyssa: https://lysoltalksadvicee.weebly.com/
- Katrina: https://katrinasacluti.wixsite.com/journalismfinal17
- Kathleen: https://lee2017.wixsite.com/valhalla