February 18, 2010
Jim Iovino is the web editor for NBC News4/WRC.
GRADED EXERCISE: In the comments section below, add the three things you learned from Jim Iovino’s presentation on Thursday Feb. 18. Deadline is 30 minutes before class on Thursday Feb. 25. No exceptions!
27 Comments | 
3 things, Comm371 | 
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Posted by Steve Klein
February 16, 2010
I'll be checking out all your comments about my tovarich, Nate Ewell!
Nate Ewell is in his seventh season with the Washington Capitals, his fifth leading the team’s media relations efforts. Washington has earned the Dick Dillman Award as the top media relations staff in the NHL’s Eastern Conference each of the last three years. Ewell, who is the co-founder and co-owner of InsideCollegeHockey.com, was a writer and researcher for NBC Sports at the 2002 and 2006 Winter Olympic Games.
Nate joined the Capitals after spending four years in the sports information department at Michigan State University, working primarily with the hockey team. Ewell is a 1996 graduate of Princeton University, where he worked in the athletic communications office and was the sports editor of The Daily Princetonian.
GRADED EXERCISE: In the comments section below, add the three things you learned from Nate Ewell‘s presentation on Tuesday Feb. 16. Deadline is 30 minutes before class on Tuesday Feb. 23. No exceptions!
22 Comments | 3 things, Comm371 | Permalink
Posted by Steve Klein
February 16, 2010
USA Today's Jeff Zillgitt
Your comment must be posted by 30 minutes before the Tuesday Feb. 23 class. You must include the URL of the column or blog item so that others can read it, too. Let me know if you have any questions.
USA Today reporter Jeff Zillgitt is reporting and Tweeting from the luge and bobsled track in Whistler, B.C. Our own Ryan Harty is following Zillgitt. Zilli is a former student of mine at Michigan State; I hired him as a part-timer at the Lansing State Journal when I was sports editor there, then brought him to USA Today when I was online sports editor in 1995.
21 Comments | 3 things, Comm371 | Permalink
Posted by Steve Klein
February 10, 2010
To my disappointment, and likely to some of yours, too, I saw many of the same errors (especially comma faults and compound adjectives), five factual errors (compared to one in your sports autobiographies), and some very poorly crafted sentences.
Whatever happened to CRAFT every sentence?
Whatever happened to reread, revise, rewrite and proofread (far too many typos)?
The average grade for this assignment dropped from 86 to 75 (thanks, in part, to three assignments that weren’t turned in compared to one).
That’s not good enough.
If you didn’t attach your sports autobiography as instructed, you lost one full grade.
Oh — there was one absolutely superb story. It got an A+/100. I’m keeping it. The story demonstrated critical thinking and taught me something. Thank you.
The common errors:
- Once again, comma faults.
- Once again, if you start a sentence with a dependent phrase, the dependent phrase must be followed by a comma.
- Once again, if you use a non-essential phrase, like this, you must set it off from the rest of the sentence with commas.
- Once again, compound adjectives, which describe nouns, must be hyphenated. The problem, I believe, is that many of you don’t understand parts of speech and don’t recognize adjectives and nouns. Sad, but true. Examples of compound adjectives: three-consecutive championships; drug-related story; first-ever Super Bowl; last-minute comebacks; all-time leader; single-game scoring; highest-paid player; 11th-seeded GMU; No. 1-seed Connecticut.
- Misuse of “orphan quotes.” Don’t use them.
- Overuse of sentence fragments. Don’t overdo it.
- Wordiness. This results from a lack of rereading and revising your story.
- Using the wrong word. If you don’t reread, you won’t eliminate wordiness.
- Don’t write “needless to say.” It’s needless to say.
- Don’t write “I think.” What you write is what you think.
- If you don’t know how to punctuate, don’t write compound sentences.
- Avoid long, run-on sentences. Learn the beauty of the simple declarative sentence: subject-verb-object.
- Sports are an active pursuit. Good sports writing demands the active voice. Avoid the passive voice.
- Far too many ambiguous pronouns. A pronoun is a euphemism. Unless the pronoun replaces the immediately preceding noun, it is ambiguous. You gotta know your parts of speech to fix this.
- When did swimming, an Olympic sport, become a “fringe sport”?
- If you quote someone, and you didn’t talk to the source yourself, you must credit the source of the quote (i.e., Phelps said to the Associated Press). If you don’t, it’s plagiarism.
- Words like “netted” and “exploded” are euphemisms.
- Pronouns stand in — poorly — for other words. Avoid prounouns (see: pronouns). Pronouns weaken your writing.
- Missing words indicate a lack of proofreading.
- Don’t start a sentence with a numeral or a year.
- The phrase “never looked back” is a cliché.
- A team can take a 3-0 lead in games, NOT an 0-3 lead.
- Factual errors included confusing the writer Tim Donahue with the referee Tim Donaghy; stating the average Olympic medal performance per athlete is 1-to-2; misspelling Plaxico Burress; misspelling Shaquille O’Neal.
1 Comment | Comm371, Common Errors, sports | Permalink
Posted by Steve Klein
February 9, 2010
The Boston Globe's Bob Ryan does it all.
Your comment must be posted by 30 minutes before the Tuesday Feb. 16 class. You must include the URL of the column or blog item so that others can read it, too. Let me know if you have any questions.
Pictured above: Boston Globe sports writer, columnist, blogger and all-around media star Bob Ryan has worked for the newspaper since 1969. His cross-platform work is being followed this semester by Sarah Kate Traynham.
33 Comments | Bob Ryan, columnists, Comm371 | Tagged: columnists | Permalink
Posted by Steve Klein
February 2, 2010
Check out this story by Alan Goldenbach.
Alan Goldenbach is a feature writer and high school sports reporter for the Washington Post.
GRADED EXERCISE: In the comments section below, add the three things you learned from Alan Goldenbach’s presentation on Feb. 4. Deadline is 30 minutes before class on Tuesday Feb. 9. No exceptions!
Photo story link.
29 Comments | 3 things, Comm371 | Tagged: Alan Goldenbach | Permalink
Posted by Steve Klein
February 2, 2010
Bengals receiver Chad Ochocinco has thousands of fans following him on social-networking sites.
Your comment must be posted by 30 minutes before the Tuesday Feb. 9 class. You must include the URL of the column or blog item so that others can read it, too. Let me know if you have any questions.
Pictured above: Joe Russo should find this an interesting week to follow the Tweets of Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chad Ochocinco at the Super Bowl. And check out the OCNN Network.
27 Comments | columnists, Comm371, sports | Tagged: Chad Ochocinco, social media, Super Bowl | Permalink
Posted by Steve Klein
Your comment must be posted by 30 minutes before the Tuesday March 2 class. You must include the URL of the column or blog item so that others can read it, too. Let me know if you have any questions.