News Story Assignment

Assignment Overview

We’ve all read news stories reporting the findings of a recent piece of scholarship. Perhaps we are most familiar with stories that tout research that claims some health benefit from food (“Study Shows Broccoli May Prevent Cancer!”), but these stories may also summarize the findings of humanities and social science research relevant to this class.

For this assignment, you will play the role of the reporter and compose a medium-length (600-900 word) news story summarizing the key findings of a public web project or scholarly publication found on the list of DH Projects I have provided. Your story should be written for an educated general audience, and should explain both what the research in question found, and what the implications of these findings for the reader are.

The research you report on should be connected to your own final project. Completing your news story will help you better understand this research and prepare to build on it or challenge it in your own project. In addition, you will post your News Story to the class blog and lead a class discussion based on your News Story. These discussions will allow us to work collectively as a class to review the larger field of research as we begin our final projects.

Model News Stories

Here are some News Stories that report on DH Projects relevant to our class. You can use these stories as models as you compose your own:

• “Reading by the Numbers: When Big Data Meets Literature”
• “Women better represented in Victorian novels than modern, finds study”
• “O Revelations! Letters, Once Banned, Flesh Out Willa Cather”
• “Mapping the Republic of Letters: Using modern technology to understand a network of eighteenth-century thinkers.”

Instructions and Requirements

Your news story should:

• Be 600-900 words long
• Report on the findings of one of the public web projects or a publication in one of the scholarly journals listed on the DH Projects list of the class website
• Clearly explain the key findings of this project or publication (in your own words) for an educated general audience
• Clearly explain what you think the larger implications of the project or publication’s findings are
• Use a clear, professional but attention-grabbing headline
• Begin with a clear, professional but attention grabbing introduction paragraph that lays out the key findings of the article
• Include multiple, focused body paragraphs developing on these main ideas
• Use language and grammar appropriate to a professional news publication
• Use quotation marks and reporting words (e.g. [NAME] writes, [NAME] claims, etc) to mark re-use of the exact words of others in your article

For the purposes of this assignment, I will divide the class into two “groups.” These groups are not expected to work together, this is an individual assignment. Rather, groups simply serve to stagger the due dates for News articles, spreading them out so we can more easily read them together.

Write your 600-900 word draft article and post it to our class blog site by the due date listed for your “group” below:

• FALL 2021 GROUPS AND DATES TBD

Responding to Your Classmates

During the week when you aren’t posting your news story, please post at least two comments on your classmates’ posts, explaining what you learned about DH methods and topics from their post. This discussion replaces the video assignment originally included in the syllabus.

Evaluation

News stories will be evaluated using the rubric on the next page.

Criteria	Exceeds Expectations	Meets Expectations	Needs Improvement	Unacceptable
Key Findings	The news story elegantly summarizes the key findings of the book or article. The findings are presented in a way that is clear, and enjoyable to read.	The news story clearly, if somewhat mechanically, summarizes the key findings of the book or article.	The news story attempts to summarize the key findings of the book or article, but some points may be missing or unclear.	The reader does not understand the key points of the book or article after completing the news story.
Implications	The news story clearly gives your insightful interpretation of the implications of the key findings of the book or article, connecting these findings to larger social structures via creative connections to class ideas and themes.	The news story clearly gives your interpretation of the implications of the key findings of the book or article, connecting these findings to larger social structures via some connections to class ideas and themes.	The news story gives some sense of your interpretation of the larger implications of the findings of the book or article, and makes some attempt to connect these findings to class ideas and themes.	The news story does not engage in any meaningful way with the larger social implications of the book or article’s finding.
Style	The news story is written in clear, professional language that is appropriate to a major news publication, while still being engaging to read.	The news story is written in clear, professional language that is appropriate to a major news publication.	The news story is written in clear language, but some grammar errors or usage mistakes undercut the sense of a professional writer.	The news story is unclear and difficult to read due to significant grammar and usage errors.
Relevance	The book or article connects to class reading and themes in a robust and interesting way.	The book or article is connected to the larger humanities and social-science study of online rhetoric.	The book or article is only loosely connected to the larger humanities and social-science study of online rhetoric.	The book or article is not relevant to class ideas and themes in any meaningful way.