Many of the things we discuss and do in Intro to Journalism will help you as readers and writers no matter what profession you choose. We'll discuss fair and balanced reporting, and perhaps our talks will make you more aware or more critical when you read a newspaper or listen to TV news. We'll talk about writing in clear, simple, precise language, which may help you write a memo or a letter to your boss or your employees. And the stories you investigate and write will certainly make you more aware of soc ial and political happenings in the community. These are things that everyone - not just a journalist - needs to know.

The stories you write for this course will be basic "hard news" stories, not the more colorful features you read in magazines and on the inside pages of newspapers. You'll do those things in other journalism courses. In Intro to Journalism, however, you'l l learn the basic skills needed to write any type of newspaper or magazine story. You'll learn how to ask questions, how to prepare for interviews, how to select good quotes, how to organize information, how to tell news from public relations. By term's e nd, I hope you'll know enough of the basics to try something a little more colorful.

I want our classroom to be open at all times to questions and a free exchange of opinions. You'll learn right away that there is no such thing as "objective reporting." Every reporter makes judgments with every word he or she writes. I want you to be awar e of the decision-making process so your judgments as writers - and, I hope, as readers - will be informed and thoughtful.

The attached syllabus gives story deadlines; our discussions in class will always aim to teach you the skills needed to do each upcoming assignment. I always allow class time to discuss story ideas and stories in progress.

Here are some important rules to remember:

Your DEADLINE is the beginning of class on the day a story or assignment is due, unless otherwise noted on the syllabus. Deadlines are written in stone. Your grade on any story will drop one full letter grade for each day the story is late. [HINT: If a story is due on Tuesday, don't wait until Thursday to turn it in. Turning it in to me on Wednesday lessens the damage.] If you miss a deadline, don't just sneak out of class without saying something to me about it. I've been known to show a small amount of sympathy for people who face up to their indiscretions. And DON'T skip class if your story isn't complete. That just adds an absence to a missed deadline.

A misspelled name in a story means an automatic drop of one full letter grade. Always ask a source how to spell his or her name or look up the spelling in a library.

You are human, so you are permitted one misspelled word or typographical error for every full page of writing. Anything more means a drop of one full letter grade for each additional misspelled word. So proofread your work carefull y after typing or Printing it. If you're a poor speller, buy a dictionary.

Inaccuracy in a story means a drop of one full letter grade.

Plagiarizing a story means a failing grade in the course. I also will report plagiarism to the dean. Plagiarism is: turning in a published story as your own; turning in a story written by another student as your own; or copying inf ormation from someone else's story (published or not) and leading me to think you found the information through your own reporting. In addition, anyone who fabricates quotes or information in a story will get a failing grade and will be reported to the de an for doing fraudulent work.

Your stories must conform to Associated Press style. There is an abbreviated Stylebook in the back of your text. Stories must be typed, double-spaced, with one-inch margins. Feel free to correct mistakes with a pen or pencil if you catch them after you type or print a story. In fact, you should always proofread stories after typing or printing them.

There are three categories of stories you cannot do for this class. l) You cannot cover a sporting event or write sports related news. 2) You cannot write a story about an organization with which you are involved or cover a news event in which you are a participant. 3) You cannot write a news story based on something you merely watch on TV, such as a presidential news conference or a session of Congress.

Class attendance is mandatory. You are allowed two absences, for whatever reason. Anything beyond that will affect your grade.

Homework is due in class on the day for which it has been assigned. Homework is graded on a pass/fail basis: If you turn it in and show reasonable effort, you will pass; if you don't turn it in, you'll get an "F" equal in weight to a deadline story.

Please be on time for class. I hate it when people saunter in late. It has been my experience that very few students are late just once. Most latecomers do it habitually. If you're that type of student, it will hurt your g rade.

There's one more important element of Introduction to Journalism. You'll be required to read the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and will have a short news quiz every week on major current events. Each quiz will cover news printed in the seven days preceding the day of the quiz.

Finally, this is a writing class, and so you must write correctly. Mistakes in grammar and punctuation will severely lower your grade. I'll point these mistakes out early in your homework assignments so you can get help at the Writing Workshop fo r serious problems. I've given many "C" and "D" grades over the years merely because students refused to seek help for incorrect writing and continued to make the same mistakes over and over. Now's the time, once and for all, to learn the basics of good w riting if you haven't already.

This course is designed to give students working on The Pitt News staff, who are presumably serious about writing and journalism, a chance to meet regularly with a professional teacher/editor to criticize the paper and offer suggestions for improving its style, content, layout and design.

We'll have no text in this course other than The Pitt News itself. You should come to class each week with copies of the previous week's papers, and you should have read them all very thoroughly, paying specially close attention to the work done by people in the class.

Each week, I'll prepare some comments, questions and critiques of the work in the paper. But I'd also like each of you to arrive with comments on your colleagues' work. I want our classes to be an open, honest, thoughtful exchange of opinions. Criticism - when offered constructively - should be neither threatening nor painful. In fact, I think it's invigorating to have your work read seriously and carefully by people who want you to do your best.

We'll also look at the actual layout and design of the paper. so when you read the papers for class, consider how the pages look, and always feel free to ask questions about the visual aspects of the paper.

In addition to discussing work that you've already written, we can always take time to discuss stories in progress, and also to kick around ideas for stories that the editors might assign to the reporters.

Your grades in the class will be based on a number of elements, with much attention paid to the quality of your work, whether it be editing or writing. Showing up for class and publishing stories won't earn you an automatic "A" in the class. You' ll get the "A" for taking an active part in discussions, and for showing me that you do excellent work by the end of the term. In other words: Improvement counts. After all, you're not professionals - yet.

Every writer in the class must publish at least six stories during the term. That's about one story every two weeks - which is more or less equal to the amount of writing you'd do in a regular journalism class. After each story appears in print, I'd like you to clip your stories, mount them on a piece of paper, and give them to me. I also want you to give me your raw copy - that is, a printout of your story before the editor works with it

As for editors: I'll have to work more closely with you to determine what work you do for the paper from day to day.

There are some basic rules of journalism to which I'll hold you during the term. Obviously, I can't enforce deadlines because those are between you and your editors. And because I won't be grading your stories, I can't give you grade penalties. But when I evaluate your writing and editing, these rules count:

A misspelled name in a story will lower my evaluation of your work. It will count against the writer AND the editor who was responsible for the story.

Misspelled word and typographical errors will lower my evaluation of your work. These types of errors will count somewhat more heavily against the editor of record than against the writer.

Errors in basic writing, punctuation and grammar will lower my evaluation of your work, both for writer and for editors.

The best way to put it is this: I'm looking for good journalism and good writing, which means writing that is both interesting and correct.

At any time during the term, feel free to meet with me one-on-one to discuss your work and your progress. You've all made a big commitment to working for The Pitt News, and I expect you all to do very good work. Whether you achieve excellence is up to you .

One of the biggest differences between writing and speaking is that speaking is easier to punctuate. I mean that in two senses: First, that it's easier to punctuate your speech with inflection than it is to give the same sort of emphasis to writing; and s econd, that because you can punctuate spoken language with inflection, gesture and timing, you don't have to worry about putting dashes and semi-colons in the proper place.

But just try to take someone's spoken words and turn them - without altering them - into words on a page. Ask any journalist or stenographer how difficult it is to punctuate, with commas or parentheses, sentences which even well-educated people speak in u nscripted, unrehearsed conversation.

It might seem unnecessary to say that the job of language is to communicate the thoughts of the speaker/writer to a listener/reader. Yet any English teacher can tell a gallery of stories about shocked students who argue with a teacher's comments on a pape r and say, "But that's not what I meant!" In almost every instance, the student ends up being surprised to learn that while the teacher's reading was not what the student meant, it nonetheless accurately reflected what the student's words actually "said."

And so the job of a writer - in your case, a student writing an essay for an English class - becomes to say what you mean. This doesn't merely come about from putting words to page, but only after the arduous process of reading your words again and again until you're comfortable that your meaning is clear, that one idea doesn't unwittingly contradict another, that each word you've chosen to use conveys the meaning you sought.

When you speak to someone, you can catch yourself being unclear and begin again. When you write, you won't be in the armchair next to your audience, so the piece must stand on its own. This only happens when you've rewritten your essay at least once, and probably more than once. As Jorge Luis Borges, the fine Argentine writer, has said, "The only reason writers ever publish what they write is so they will finally stop rewriting."

Yet even where you've said just what you want to say, your reader may still have difficulties with your text: Difficulties with the language you use, with the rhythm of your language, with the complexity of your thoughts. The task for the reader, then, be comes to understand what you have said so that he may continue the discussion. Your reader may find that she concurs with what you've said and will find her own way to say it and apply it to her experience; or she may find that she disagrees, which can on ly happen fully and constructively when she first understands.

In General Writing, we will spend a lot of time learning to understand the notions of some formidable men and women. They will all be experts at what they do, and they will write about their areas of expertise with style and substance. Yet their writing i nvites - even commands - a reader to respond with a point of view of his or her own. While reading these writers, you should try constantly to imagine the world in which they live and how their worlds touch yours.

Your task is General Writing, then, is not to read between the lines of these essays, but rather to read outside the lines, for this is a course in writing, not a course in literary analysis. If we agree with these writers, then they might well be springb oards from which to take a deeper look at our own lives and cultures; and if we disagree, then someone must assume the task of putting these writers in their place.

Should you become lost in these writers' words as you read their challenging essays - lost in their often unusual ways of expressing their ideas or in the breadth of their knowledge, their expertise - you might consider reading a passage aloud to yourself or to a friend in an effort to hear the author's voice as he speaks to you, placing the inflections of oral language where they seem most appropriate. This is a wonderful way to make a piece of writing come alive, to make it seem more like a conversation with a writer than a dissertation by him.

When people say a writer is "speaking" to a reader, they normally mean the term figuratively. But reading a written passage aloud can literally give you something of a chance to hear a writer speak. Notice how many lectures and readings the university com munity sponsors throughout the semester by scholars and creative writers. Why do this when these people's writings can be read in books and journals? If you've ever attended a lecture or reading, you'll know immediately that hearing someone speak her word s can give you deeper pleasure when you read her written words.

So the challenge becomes your exploration of the written word, which happens less and less often in a time when people would rather learn by watching (movies or TV) or listening (Oprah or Ricki). What listening cannot do is allow you to reach a t horough understanding of the words which confront you, for spoken words go by too quickly to retain their nuances. Reading, then, lets you become intimate with the words, while listening or speaking only lets you become familiar with them. This combinatio n of familiarity, which is a pleasant feeling, and intimacy, always a more complicated relationship, gives you a chance to enter into a strong, informed, thoughtful discussion with the writing in a way a "casual read" never could.

It probably won't help you to make a better argument by quoting passages from the people whose work you read and then telling what they mean. Your job is to extend the conversation. Merely "analyzing" a writer means you've successfully jumped through some age-old scholarly hoop, while applying your understanding of a writer to construct your own argument means you've taken the conversation in a new direction. And no matter how specific a writing assignment might be in General Writing, you will always be e ncouraged to do more than simply assign meaning to others' words. You should always be prepared to show that you understand what a writer says by having something of your own to say about the matter. This is how good reading leads to good writing, and how attentive readers become better writers.

It may help to begin your journey each time by speaking your argument out loud and predicating your written essay on the notions you find yourself forming as you speak. As you polish your first effort, you'll need to add a word or a comma here and there t o make the spoken words "readable," all the while being sure that your written words say what you mean to say. In the end, a conversation that began with a writer's words will have passed through your own voice and onto your own page. The pain you'll feel as you do it will be a combination of writer's cramp and writer's block. But at least you'll know you're a writer.

What gives you pleasure at the movies? Why do some movies stay with you, while others fade quickly from memory?

This class will seek to get you more involved in the movies you see in theaters or on home video. Our first class will be a general discussion of movies and movie-going. Each week we'll decide as a group which current movies we want to see and then discus s them in the following class (You'll see the movies on your own.)

Our goal is to begin your process of becoming a more thoughtful moviegoer and to increase both the emotional and intellectual pleasure you get from the movies you see.