Welcome to the English 621 blog

Although the basics of good journalism have not changed very much over the years, the tools sure have. I began my career typing stories on manual typewriters. After a while we plugged our typewriters into the wall. Then came some very primitive computers. Eventually Radio Shack came out with a portable computer that could send stories over phone lines. Then came satellite dishes, the Internet, email.

You get the idea. Being a good reporter now requires a wide range of skills and an ability to adapt instantly. Reporters need to blog, to Tweet, to shoot and edit video and still photographs, to record sound, to upload, download, archive and post.

So, you might ask, with all this fancy digital stuff, what are we doing writing news stories from old fairy tales and other dull nonsense and printing them out on dead trees? Well, we're learning the basics: How to collect facts. How to verify them. How to assemble them. And how to communicate what we've found to an audience. And how to do it all fairly and accurately. We need to that if we're going to be journalists, no matter what medium we are writing for.

In this course we're not going to ignore traditional skills, because they still matter. And we're not going to ignore the real world, because that is the world in which you are going to work. So by the end of the first class we'll all have blogs. We'll post some photos on those blogs. Maybe even some video.

Until then, bookmark and keep an eye on this blog. I'll make announcements here, post assignments, make suggestions. So check in every day to see what's new. If you have questions or comments, please feel free to post them.