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These stories will be longer than the preceding stories. Handle them in the same way. If you find more than one theme, again select only the most important of the elements for the lead. Put the others in order of importance and base the body of the story on your priority list.
Instructions: You can either copy and paste these exercises into a text-editing software program (such as Microsoft Word), or you can print them out and work off of the hard copy.
A. Bus
Here is a news release from Jack Nagel, who is the press officer for the state Public Utilities Commission:
The People's Bus Line, Inc., 1320 Torrence Ave., Freeport, owner George W. Hulbert, has filed with the state Public Utilities Commission today a request for permission to operate a route into the downtown area from outlying communities, state PUC chairman Michael McKirdy announced today. Hulbert seeks state approval to operate an unscheduled Monday through Friday service and asserts in his application that "domestic workers needing to reach downtown for trains to the suburbs where they work are not being served by present bus lines." Protests or supporting witnesses will be heard 28 days from the date of the application, at 3 p.m., in the state Executive Office Building. Hulbert submitted with his request a petition bearing 65 signatures of local residents. The petition has a preamble reading: "We the undersigned find it costly to reach commuter lines from our section of the community and support the request of George W. Hulbert for unscheduled bus service in our area."
B. Missing
It is 60 minutes to deadline, and the police reporter of The Freeport News calls in the following notes for you. Write a story:
Billy Joe Appel, 4, 1133 Madison St., was located at 12:30 p.m. at the home of Mrs. Bernice McCoy, 320 Manley St., a friend of Alice Kragler, 16, the babysitter. He disappeared from the Appel home around 9 o'clock last night when the babysitter said she fell asleep looking at TV. He is the son of Alan and Roberta Appel. Police said that after questioning Miss Kragler this morning, she admitted she had wanted "to get even with the Appels for not letting me have my boyfriend visit me when I was babysitting with Billy Joe." She said she called her friend, Mrs. McCoy, 20, and asked her to come and pick up the kid because she had to return home for an emergency and would pick him up in an hour. When McCoy heard the news about the missing child on the radio last night she said she was too frightened to do anything. The Appels say they are happy to have their child back and are not going to file charges against Kragler. Quote from Mrs. Appel: "Alice is a good girl. She just got upset. Those things happen. She loves Billy Joe and would never let anything happen to him." The police say a full report will be turned over to juvenile authorities since there was a violation of the law. Kragler lives with her divorced mother, Bertha. About 20 volunteers turned out last night to search for the child in the woods near the Appel home where the parents thought he might be wandering.
C. Longo
An official of the B.C. Krebs Manufacturing Co. of Freeport calls to tell you of the death from a heart attack in San José, Costa Rica, yesterday of Frank Longo, former personnel manager of the local company, which employs 250. He has prepared the following, which he dictates to you and which you should use as the basis for a story:
Longo was visiting his sister, Mrs. Rose Quintana, who lives in San José and is his only survivor. Longo was 91 and lived at 465 Lief St. He went to work for the firm as a teen-ager after immigrating from Italy. Employed as a janitor, he worked up to inventory clerk within two years. As a clerk, he noticed the painstaking and cumbersome way in which inventory was kept and he devised an automatic system that was so successful it was copied by other large firms and eventually became the established procedure. Business textbooks referred to it as the Longo System, and it was in use until the introduction of the computerized inventory system. Longo never had any formal education that we know of, but he was an omnivorous reader and donated books and funds to the local public library, which he called his high school, college and graduate school. He was made personnel manager at the age of 45 and completely changed the company's hiring system so that it became color-, sex- and age-blind two years later. He retired at 75.
He adds that the company telephoned Quintana at noon to offer assistance. Longo will be buried there tomorrow. She said her brother had been a prudent investor and had an estate of $1.5 million. He left $250,000 to her and the rest to the local public library system.
D. Outage
On a routine check of the sheriff's office 15 minutes before deadline, you are given the following information by the dispatcher:
We got a call from one of our patrol cars about half an hour ago that a car hit a power pole northwest of Freeport and people in the new housing subdivision out there were without electricity for about 45 minutes. I don't know any more than that. Oh, yes—no one was hurt in the accident.
You call the local office of the power and light company and the public information officer tells you:
We have just returned service. It was out from 1:02 to 1:40 p.m. It affected Arden Hills, where we have 250 meters, all residences. All of them were out.
Write a brief story based on the information. (Arden Hills is a new subdivision. It was completed last year.)
E. Elephant
Cyrus Tucek, the director of the Freeport's Newman Zoo, calls to say that they believe Baby, their new acquisition, is pregnant. He says that officials at Baby's previous home encouraged a match between her and Zoltan, a bull elephant, and that the local zoo knew of the nuptials. "Two for the price of one was our hope," Tucek says. "A more positive diagnosis will be available in a month or two. Too bad Daddy can't be here."
F. Goals
A well-known British journalist and critic who appears on television (BBC) is giving the major address at the annual state convention of the Daily Newspaper Association, which is held in conjunction with Newspaper Day at Mallory College. The speaker is Jeffrey St. George. His topic is "Goals for Journalism Education." He will speak at 8 o'clock tonight. Here are some excerpts supplied by the campus press office from the text of his talk which you should use for a story of 300 to 350 words.
Your experiences in this country with public events and public officials have served to develop a sense of responsibility and maturity in your press that is, I believe, unmatched anywhere in the world. This is a positive development for educators who prepare men and women for the media. Let us try to set out some goals for the journalism educator so that he or she may respond to these responsibilities. Clearly, a professional education must give the student skills and a sense of craft. But it is not enough to prepare the student only for the first job. The education must be sufficiently broad and deep so that the underpinnings of a creative and positive life are established. There must be established a commitment to the contemplative as well as the active life, for skills without understanding become as automatic as the water pump.... I do not mean to imply that these aims are visionary. Journalism education in your country is clearly moving in this direction. I should only wish to reinforce the movement. I would suggest a few questions any educator might ask of the program of study he or she is adopting:
Will the curriculum or the course do the following? ________ Will it give the student a sense of purpose and broaden his or her knowledge? ________ Will it deepen his or her interest in ideas, give him or her sufficient materials to think about? ________ Will it free the imagination and develop initiative? Finally, the question whose answer might be the most important of all of these for the journalism student: ________ Will it develop a free and open mind, a journalist free of the biases of the society so that he or she can act independently, intelligently and spontaneously?
In closing, let me emphasize that I do not share the disdain of some educators for the real needs of the editor for young reporters who can spell the words of their mother tongue correctly and who can use a comma and a period with precision. But I do believe that this can hardly be the goal of journalism education. Nor, for that matter, can the education be narrowly conceived as instruction in the technology and the forms and practices of current journalism, which is only a step beyond the rules of grammar, punctuation and spelling. All are essential, of course. To use the words of one of my countrymen, Alfred North Whitehead, "The major aim of education should be an understanding of the insistent present. To do this one must know a great deal of the world and must understand the past in order to know the present."
G. Golfers
You are on the sports desk of the The Freeport News when a call comes in from a journalism student the News hired to cover the state Women's Amateur Golf Meet at the local Woodside Club in which several local women are entered. She dictates the following:
Here's a rundown of first-round play by local women. I also have their local addresses and ages: Mrs. Heidi Levy, 39, 54 Maplewood Ave., shot an 83. Mrs. Anne Downey, 42, 165 Vincent St., 87. Mrs. B. Kroeger, 32, 880 Augusta Ave., 77. Mary Ellen Flynn, 18, Roth Road, 77. Sally Grubbs, 17, Smith Farms, 71. Sally shot a hole-in-one on the seventh hole, and I went over to interview her after her first round. It was the only hole-in-one today, and they say it is the first one on this course by a woman in 35 years since a visiting pro, Sandra Haynie, first did it on the same seventh. Sally is only the second to do it. Sally is a senior at Eisenhower High and is going to go to the University of Missouri. Her mother and father were here and they were pleased as punch. Her dad, Oscar Grubbs, said he gave her a putter when she was three and he says "she never stopped swinging it." She sank it with a four iron on the 145-yard par-three hole. Says Sally: "The ball hit on the front of the green just to the right and the ball rolled smoothly into the cup. It looked good when I hit it, right on the line, but I never thought it would go in." "It's my first since I was seven and played on a kiddie course. My 9-year-old sister, Kay, was here today and she brings me good luck." Sally didn't compete at all last year. This is her first big tourney. The leaders: Terry Pauli, 70; Carol Trucco, 71; Sally Grubbs, 71; Carolyn Oshiro, 72; Janet Bakinski, 73; Maureen Gerson, 75; Tamara Cort, 75; Joan Bodnar, 75; Diane Stark, 76; Tess Walters, 76. The concluding round will be played tomorrow.
Write a 300-word story for the newspaper and a condensed version for www.freenews.com.
H. Wedding
You are the courthouse reporter for an Albuquerque newspaper. One morning you come across this suit among a dozen on file in the courthouse. Write 150 to 200 words. (Mr. and Mrs. Lopez live at 712 Silver Ave., SW.)
