“Teaching Business Journalism - Organizing Your Course" from Reynolds Week 2016 by Pam Luecke

1. Organizing your course
Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism
January 2016
Pam Luecke, Washington and Lee University, lueckep@wlu.edu

2. What we’ll cover
 One course or two?
 “Must” topics
 Optional or occasional topics
 Picking a text book
 Organizing a syllabus
 Number and type of assignments
 Grading
 Outside resources

3. My assumptions
 Purpose of course
 Specialty reporting
 Aimed at journalism students
 Students have little or no business background

4. One course or two?
 Topics fit fairly well into two courses
 Business
 Economics and financial markets
 If two is not practical, can easily work as one
 How much student interest is there?
 How often will you be able to teach a specialty course?
 Will you admit non-journalism majors?

5. “Must” topics
 Reading financial statements
 Regulatory agencies
 Economic indicators
 Federal Reserve
 Non-profits
 Stocks and bonds
 Common story types
 IPOs
 Mergers
 Earnings
 Stock market
 Company profile

6. Optional topics
 Retailing
 Real estate
 Banking
 Globalization
 Politics and business
 Business media
 Labor and worklife
 Consumers

7. Picking a text
 Textbooks
 Show Me the Money – Chris Roush
 New York Times Reader – Mark Tatge
 Little Book of Economics – Greg Ip
 Wall Street Journal
 Non-textbooks
 The Everything Store, Brad Stone
 Boomerang, Michael Lewis
 Movies
 Social Network
 Too Big to Fail

8. Assignments
 How many journalistic stories?
 At least six “short” stories (500-800 words)
 One “long” story (1500-2000 words)
 At least one multimedia assignment
 Collectively, have stories count for at least half the grade

9. Organizing a syllabus
 Your contract with the student
 The more detailed, the better!
 Deadlines, accuracy, attendance, plagiarism, participation
 Block design
 Arc of the term; build to a culminating activity
 Spend one to two weeks per topic
 Relate an assignment to each topic
 Not all assignments have to be journalistic stories
 Memos
 Posters, handouts, oral presentations, debates, competitions

10. Other assignments
 Exams?
 Midterm is good idea
 Frontload quantitative material into the term
 Final? I prefer a long-form story that draws on all the skills
learned
 Essay
 Possibly on the non-textbook
 Could be on a timely topic (e.g. raising minimum wage)
 Survey of business and economic media
 Quizzes?

11. Constructing assignments
 Relate assignment to topics discussed in class
 Require students to get off campus
 Hypothetical activities
 Deadline exercises
 Students “hear” in different ways
• Hand out written instructions
• Explain in class
• Post on your online course site (if you use one)

12. Grading
 Make your grading criteria clear
 Rubrics
 Enforce deadlines
 Fact errors?
 Two tiers depending on students’ backgrounds?
 Be tougher first half of the term
 Reward progress and improvement
 Class participation?

13. My typical breakdown
 Written assignments (5 percent each) 30
 Final story 20
 Midterm (10 percent) 10
 Essay 5
 Quizzes 5
 Participation and professionalism 10
 Other assignments 20

14. Outside resources
 Speakers
 A few add interest to the class
 Too many can break your cadence
 Prepare students for speaker and insist they ask questions
 Relate visit to an assignment if possible
 Skype is 80 percent as good as in person
 Easier to get people to say “yes”
 Campus speakers from other departments
 Look for ones that relate to your class
 Require attendance at one or more
 Assign a “speech” story?

15. Outside resources
 Field trips
 Great if you can find a common time
 Visit a factory
 Visit a Fed branch
 Visit a news organization
 Intramural activities
 Mock press conference with a PR or business communications class
 Contribute to department’s news website or student publications

16. Rinse and repeat
 Update topics and assignments each term
 Mix fundamentals with topics from the headlines
 Watch for current movies and business books
 Build bridges to other departments on campus
 Questions?
 Pam Luecke, Washington and Lee University
 lueckep@wlu.edu
 (540) 458-8435
 @PamLuecke