Baby steps towards learning Journalism

4 Lecture hours in Journalism

So far, I have attended 4 lecture hours and find myself, inextricably drawn towards a career in Journalism. The faculty members at the institute include industry professionals. They promise that learning journalism at the institute will be a fun activity for us. One of them being the Chief-Editor of a vernacular daily.

My course curriculum includes topics like:

1) Indian Press laws, History of Journalism;
2) Writing;
3) Reporting;
4) Editing;
5) Newspaper Management & Mass Communication.

The Chief-Editor of the vernacular daily is instructing us on various aspects related to Reporting.

So let me see if I can recollect the factors that determine the "newsworthiness" of a story filed by a reporter.

They are:

1)Impact;
2)Proximity;
3)Timeliness;
4)Prominence;
5)Conflict;
6)Relevance, Usefulness & Interest.

Ah!! Yes, I do remember them:-)

Some books on Journalism that we have been told to follow include:

1)News Reporting & Editing- K.M. Srivastava
2)Interpretative Reporting- Curtis D. MacDougall
3)The Indian Reporter's Guide- Richard Critchfield

Tomorrow's blog will cover details about Day-5. A new lecturer. The subject to be taught is Editing- the most uninteresting part of Journalism, or so I have been told.

By the way, can you suggest some books that I could use as reference material? Please leave a comment on my blog and let me know.

Thanks in advance.