Mini Assignments #2

  
     
 

The Assignment

To write a five-minute audio feature for a general interest audience aged 20 - 45 based on one of the interviews linked below.

Although this assignment asks you only to integrate commentary and interview material, it still practices valuable skills for using the spoken word in writing for multimedia, particularly informational and educational multimedia.

On almost all occasions when you need to use the spoken word, you will be integrating those words with other, complementary elements. This assignment should help you to balance spoken word that carries a narrative line (a narrator or commentator) with ancillary material that enriches the spoken work.

  
     
 

Objectives of the assignment

  • to apply the basic principles of news writing in a new medium
  • to practice writing for the voice
  • to understand the function of commentary and interview raw material within an audio feature
  • to learn to write into and out of interview material
  • to blend commentary and raw material into a compelling story
  • to use precise, relevant detail to convey your story to your chosen audience
  • to create closure for your reader at the end of the story

What you need to do

1) Choose the subject of your feature after reading/listening to the interviews linked below.

2) Decide on the theme you are going to follow in the feature (you don't have time to include everything your subject discussed in such a short piece so you must concentrate on one angle ). Then identify your hook, the one idea that will capture your audience's attention and drag it into your report.

3) Using the traditional radio script format we discussed in class, write your script as if your feature were going to be broadcast on NPR's All Things Considered.

4) Write the script for your own voice, as if you were going to be the reporter recording it for transmission.

Potential subjects

Maire MacEntee, Irish Poet
Sadako Ogata, UN High Commissioner for Refugees.(March 1999)
Mark Danner: On Writing (journalist for the New Yorker)
John Searle: Philosophy and the Habits of Critical Thinking
Christopher Patten, last Governor-general of Hong Kong
Frank Rhodes, educationalist, discussing change in the American college

  
     
 
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Lesley Smith
Spring 2001

New Century College
in the
College of Arts and Sciences
George Mason University