eating habits of college students

Turn in Story Idea: Saturday, October 2
Submit Brief Report of First Interview by: Saturday, October 9 (This is a combination assignment with a practice TTTS interview.)
Final Feature Progress Report in Blog style: Saturday, October 30
Rough Draft Finished and ready for peer-review by Monday, December 6
Final Due Date: Wednesday, December 15
As you get to know Rexburg, Idaho Falls and the surrounding communities better through living here and doing a few first reporting assignments, I want you to pick a magazine-style Feature Story topic to work on. This is a major part of your grade and former students have actually used this work to obtain employment, so this is serious! (COVID-19 Adjustment: Pick a story that impacts our local area, but since you can do Zoom/Skype/WhatsApp/etc. interviews, experiment with connecting the story to other parts of the country. We had some great interviews from New York City, Portland, Oregon and other parts last semester, so… don’t restrict yourself geographically for interviews and research.)
First: Pick a publication you want to target for your article. Is it the Scroll? An online outlet? A local newspaper? A magazine? Whether you actually pitch this to them in the end or not is up to you. But find out who your audience is first, and write to them. This should all be written in AP style, regardless.
Second: Understand that you will need to take at least 3 well-composed pictures for this project. These MUST be pictures that YOU take. COVID-19 ADJUSTMENTS: You make ask people you interview for pictures, and you must get their permission to use them. You can also use press kits from companies. Get the original photographer’s name and the company’s permission to use the photos in your story. You will need a two-sentence caption about each picture and finish with photo credit like this: “Photo by [Your Name]”. You can do amazing things with phone cameras, so don’t worry about tracking down a professional camera for this. If you have one, great. Use it. If not, your phone camera is fine if you pay attention to composition.
Third: The total length of your final feature article should be between 1,100 and 1,200. No more, no less. I do not count titles, subheads, captions or sidebars in this word count.
What you will turn in:
A well-composed Google Doc done with some effort on the layout (my main concern is the writing, but please try to dress this up a bit with some basic design elements).
At least 3 photographs (you must take them yourself or get permission and photo credit from original photographer -no stock photography!) with 2-sentence captions with each photo.
You will be required to interview at least 5 people. Usually, I want at least 3 of these to be in person, but during a pandemic, it’s fine if they’re all Zoom or whatever video conferencing tool the interviewee prefers. Try to get as visual as possible, if you cannot safely interview someone in person with good social distancing/mask guidelines. I do not want you to risk your health, the health of your roommates, friends or family because of this. So, find out what works for your source: Zoom? Skype? Google Meetings? FaceTime? WhatsApp? Marco Polo? Whatever your source feels the most comfortable with and would be willing to use to show you around their space or their part in the story, use that. We will talk more about this during interview week.
You will need at least 7 research sources for this assignment. Start with the library and look for .org / .gov / .edu type sources, as well as established publications and journals.
Adhere to strict journalistic integrity and guidelines. Be objective, research thoroughly and don’t make stuff up. It’s dishonest.
Plagiarism = a big, fat zero on this assignment, and in the class. So, just don’t.
A grammatically clean, typo-free and AP-style work of fabulous, sparkly awesomeness.
This is not an essay, a marketing piece, a press release or a means to promote one idea over another. You must be objective, present all sides and keep your opinion out of it!

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