Melvin Mencher's News Reporting and Writing

Teaching by example with vivid writing, Professor Mencher shows students the fundamentals of reporting and writing news in Mencher's News Reporting and Writing, 10th Edition.

This Workbook provides material for you to sharpen your journalistic skills and to broaden the background essential for the practice of journalism. The material covers a wide range of journalism. You are asked to cover speeches, write obituaries, use the Internet to gather material, and report accidents and fires.
Seven types of work are offered in the Workbook, beginning with Check It, exercises and quizzes that you can do and then check your work. Each chapter begins with a Check It.
The other six kinds of work are:
Exercises—All the facts are supplied.
Assignments—You are asked to observe events, interview sources, and use the Internet to gather material and provide background.
Projects—Two types are offered, one for reporting events on campus, the other for reporting in your city. Some projects involve team reporting.
Home Assignments—Work your instructor may assign to be done on your own time.
Class Discussion—Media topics.
Search—Using the Internet to gather information.
Unless otherwise indicated, the Exercises are set in our city of Freeport. A map of Freeport and two city directories and a Source list are hyperlinked throughout the Workbook.

How to Use the Freeport Map, City Directories and Source List

An exercise may refer to the superintendent of schools without naming the official. Your story should include his name, which you can find by consulting the Freeport Source List under Freeport School Officials. You'll find his name is Herbert Gilkeyson.
You may be told that Marcia Gold was injured in an automobile accident. Because addresses are an essential part of a person's full identification, you would consult the Freeport Directory to find her address, 831 Brighton Ave. A person's occupation is also part of his or her identification, and you would then look up Marcia Gold in the Freeport Source List. You find that she is a member of the Freeport City Council. This, too, goes in your story of the accident.
Your instructor may give you an exercise about a fire in Freeport and ask you how you would go about covering it if you were on deadline. You would, of course, call the Freeport Fire Department for information. If it were a big fire you would want on-the-scene information. Because you are on deadline and cannot take the time to go to the scene, you might call people who live nearby.

Using the Freeport City Map and the Freeport Cross Directory, you can locate someone to help you:

Let's say the fire is at State Highway 166 and U.S. 81. Consulting the map, you find Three Corners Junction is in the vicinity, on Hunter Avenue. You consult the Freeport Cross Directory under Hunter Avenue and you find that the first entry lists a Three Corners Café. This sounds promising and you call the Café and ask for information about the nearby fire. You are lucky—a customer says she can see the fire from the Café and describes the scene for you.

You can access the map and directories easily through the box on your screen.

Writing News Stories
You will be writing stories in a variety of styles—for print, broadcast and for The Freeport News online news service, www.freenews.com.
Each of the writing tasks is identified by a slug, one or two words at the head of the exercise or assignment. Put the slug under your name at the top of your story.
Some of the slugs in the Workbook are accompanied by an identifying icon that describes the nature of the work:

indicates you are to conduct a poll or survey.
indicates the work is based on material in the textbook News Reporting and Writing, tenth edition.
indicates you are to write for www.freenews.com.
indicates you will search the Internet for information.

Please click on a resource on the left navigation to begin.

Melvin Mencher's News Reporting and Writing, 10/e