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Course Syllabus

COMM 2910 Newspaper Production II

  • Division: Fine Arts, Comm, and New Media
  • Department: Communications
  • Credit/Time Requirement: Credit: 2; Lecture: 2; Lab: 1
  • Prerequisites: COMM 1900 or COMM 1910
  • Semesters Offered: Spring
  • Semester Approved: Spring 2020
  • Five-Year Review Semester: Summer 2025
  • End Semester: Fall 2025
  • Optimum Class Size: 15
  • Maximum Class Size: 20

Course Description

Snowdrift senior staff students have the opportunity to lead and assist with instruction as students engage in an in-depth examination of Journalism and new writing processes. Senior staff will help in planning design and publication of the student newspaper. This production process will involve feature writing, page/graphic design, typesetting and business management.

Justification

Students need experience in leadership positions as well as newspaper production techniques such as page layout, design, headline writing, editing, etc. to produce a high-quality student paper. The course provides some training in subject and skill areas that would be covered in advanced journalism courses at larger schools. The course will transfer as elective credit.

Student Learning Outcomes

  1. Senior students completing this course will know and practice the principles and skills of good newspaper production as they write, edit, design, layout, and publish the school newspaper.
  2. As a second year course for senior staff students they will take a leadership role.
  3. The focus of this Spring course is to layout and design pages for every publication in the newspaper. Students will read newspapers, focus on layout and respond critically to professional journalistic style.
  4. An important goal of this course is to foster an appreciation of the Scholastic Journalism rules and regulations. Students will experience all aspects of journalism and will be requires to meet assigned deadlines for in class publications. As senior staff students in this course will encourage junior staff in meeting deadlines.
  5. Students will learn to work with the first-year newspaper editorial staff, photographers and members of the community to foster a professional relationship.

Course Content

Course objectives will be accomplished by providing students with learning experiences in the following subject areas: Writing Hard News; writing soft news; leadership; group communication; editing and revision techniques; Redesigning a newspaper; Proofreading and assisting Jr. staff; Advertising; Ethics of news reporting.