Chapter 15 reading

Chapter 15 discusses ways to test your draft to recognize problems that your paper has that you may not have identified as being problematic. In doing this it will help produce the best outcome in your final paper. Testing your draft is similar to having someone review your draft except you are having multiple people read your draft in the eyes of the audience expected to actually read your paper. Once you know the feedback from what the book refers to as the "test readers" you will have some idea of how your audience will react to the paper. You will be able to notice what works and what does not work for your reading audience.

In order to make this practice work the best you must make sure that when choosing your testers they are actually people that "represent your target readers." Some ways that I can improve in this area is usually I only have one person review my draft and not always do they represent my target readers. This is something to pay more attention to. I also see how it is important to get feedback from more then 1 person. Multiple test readers means more feedback which in the end will create for a better final paper.

The main goal in using test readers is to figure out whether or not your writing is usable. the book mentions several tests that you can perform. Some that stick out to me are location tests which require the test reader to answer certain questions. This will help determine whether or not your titles and headlines are effective. The Understandability test is when you ask the reader to read paper and then ask questions regarding the paper to see how well the reader understands the paper.

This chapter provides some good ideas on how to determine how usable your paper is before you turn it in for that final grade or to your boss. In the case you are turning it in to your boss, on how this paper will make you look. Knowing these tools will be helpful for future work in class and on the job.

Chapter 14 reading

Chapter 14 talks about drafting and revising your drafts. Once I realized what the chapter was about I thought to myself I really have trouble with my drafts as far as revising myself. Then I read the first section of the chapter and it talked just about that. Normally when I revise my draft the first thing I am looking for are grammatical errors. Although that is extremely important I now realize that the spelling is just a small part of reading your draft. One important point the book makes that I need to focus on is reading it from the readers perspective and if it is usable and easy to understand. Ways to do this are to read the paper aloud. In doing this words or sentences that you trip up on are where you should pay attention. If it is hard for you to say it most likely will be harder for the reader to understand. Another good practice is to as the book refers "let time pass." Meaning that give yourself time so that when you pick up and read you may notice errors you wouldn't have before. I normally always use spell checker but it doesn't always catch everything. Once thing I didn't know about is that you can look to see how much of your language is passive. That was cool, I will have to check it out next time I write a paper.

Once you have your draft, you revise it, then someone else revises it then you prioritize what are the most important changes to make. Knowing who your stakeholders are and how they would think are important to know. For me, the most interesting part about this chapter was the beginning talking about how to revise your own draft and how to be effective in doing it.

In response to Inna's blog on journalism

I also was surprised to find out that the majority of reporters don't write their stories. I really did think that finding the story was the main part and then taking your story and telling it on the news. However, as we found out in class, often times their are other people writing the stories and then the reporters are checking the information for credibility. That is how I understood it.

I think that the hardest part about putting on a news show is deciding what stories to air and not to air. Ethics play a huge role in making these decisions but sometimes it doesn't always have the best outcome. The tough part is that there are always many factors. Having to decide whether or not to air a murder or something and having to think and talk to the family would be hard.

Broadcast Journalism

Last week Jesse Day from Koin news. It was interesting to hear him speak on journalism. Jesse has been in journalism for over five years and does most of his work in producing the 5:30 news. It was interesting to see how much writing he actually does. When I think of the people producing the news I don't normally think there is too much writing involved. In Jesse's case he writes most of the material.

It was also interesting to hear about the ethics and attribution aspects of his business. It is important to know how to protect yourself from defamation. Also determining how and what to write and air about is also important.

There is a lot involved in producing a news show. It seems like things are very fast paced and subject to change at all times.

In response to Son Ngo's post

I agree with you to an extent Son. It is hard for me to watch sometimes because of all the negative things happening. Right when I get to the point where things are going good it really seems like shit is going down all over the world. I have never boycotted it completely but do go through phases. After watching for a period of time, it gets to be so depressive. I cant remember the last time I heard of something positive out of the news. So when it gets to that point I stop watching for a couple weeks. This normally lasts until someone is talking about a what happened on the news today and then I start watching again. I think I just feel like I am missing something. One good thing is that in some cases the news is trying to warn you. For example, the Vancouver car break in. Once lady said she lived on Mill Plain and in a nice area. She never thought her car would get broken into. Once I saw this I was glad because I live close to where all these break in's are happening. Now I know to double check my car is locked and make sure to keep valuables out. I believe I gained something from that story even though it still was a negative story.

T.V. News

I try to watch the news everyday. Normally I watch local news and the NWCN channels. I like to know what is going on where I live and where I used to live. I like to have a sense of what is going on in the world as well. The reason I like the news is because I can catch up on things I haven't heard about. I don't normally get the time to read the newspaper. I normally watch news in the mornings because i can multitask. I wasn't able to catch a KOIN 6 news program on the T.V however I did go to the website and watched some top stories. I noticed that most all topics are about 2-3 minutes long. I would have thought it was longer because they can literally get so much information in that 2-3 minute period. I noticed that they give you a brief recap of what happened, normally ask questions to either sheriff's, witnesses, or people who have been affected due to the topic. Typically they then give you an update at the end with promise for updates when information is released. I watched three top stories. The mount hood rescue, Vancouver car break ins and the deputy who resigned due to sexual misconduct. In all of these stories I was trying to look at how they were talking to their audience. Most felt like they were speaking to you, using factual information. There is lots of Logos used to convince. In the deputy story they actually had records and reports showing viewers sexual remarks were made and whether or not the deputy agreed to those allegations. I was trying to pay attention to passive vs. active voice. It was hard to tell but I know in the Vancouver car break in story it was all about how you can do something to help prevent getting your car broke into. They also used statistics to show this is a increasing problem. I also noticed how fast they are talking which makes sense because they are trying to get a lot out there in a little amount of time.

Response to Gideon on Freelance writing

I liked reading Gideon's blog. It sort of related to me in someways. I never ever thought about myself as a writer either. Writing is probably one of the hardest things for me to do in school. However, after the class, it had me thinking about all the different things a freelancer can write about. If it were something I enjoyed or was interested in it would be fun to write about. But when thinking about writing about topics that are required then it gets more boring. It opens a lot of opportunity on what you can write on. Pretty much whatever you are into and write about, someone, somewhere may want to see your work. It would be cool to write about stuff you love and be able to make some money doing it.

Freelance Writing

The freelancing lecture was pretty interesting. I think that writing your own material and then selling it to someone else is an awesome way to write. If I were a writer, I would be all over it. I was also surprised to see how common freelance writing is. A lot of magazines use freelancers. It was also cool to see all the work done by our professor. Pretty impressive! I think this is a cool way to get your work out there and your pretty much in business for yourself. Just like any other business it takes a lot of hard work and self motivation. I didn't pick out a publication for class that day but I was at work this weekend reading the monthly newsletter, the Supplement, and at the end there was a section asking for people to send in new ideas or things they would like to see in upcoming issues. All the contact information was there so I thought I would look into it. I talked to my boss and she thought it would be cool. We talked of some cool ideas and I think I might actually try to submit it.