Guess Whose Back???

Surprisingly I am back! This blog originally started about 5 years ago, when I was convinced I was going to make a statement in the world of fashion. I recently returned to the blog scene for my comm 160 class. I quickly abandoned the blog scene after passing the course. So I guess it is safe to say some way or another I am bonded to the blog for life! Yes, I will be blogging once again. This time it won’t be for the fashion world, or my professor. This time around I am coming back on my own merits.

I would like to formally introduce myself. My name is Monique LeBrun I am currently a junior studying Communication, Marketing, and Social Media at the Pennsylvania State University.  In my spare time I enjoy watching reality tv shows, listening to music and broadcasting my own radio show. Some of my favorite TV shows are the Love and Hip Hop series, Scandal, Being Mary Jane, and most recently How to get away with murder. Some of my favorite music genres include Hip hop and R&B, Rap and Pop Culture. My favorite thing to do in my spare time is to broadcast my own radio show Hip Hop and Heels on BVZ Radio Thursday evenings at 5pm with my co-host Nicole. We talk about any and everything that deals with the entertainment industry.

I would like to make this commitment to you my reader and fellow citizen (globally or nationally) that I will be here weekly to give you one thing! This one thing will be posted weekly on whatever I deem necessary! The world is my ocean and this blog is my oyster! I tend to spread my weekly insights on everything from politics to entertainment news and even a little insight from the courses I take at The Pennsylvania State University. 

Will I Ever Get This Right?

Local Penn State Behrend Student loses hope after 15 weeks of class.

Is that a good enough summary lead?

We have come to the end of the semester! It’s safe to say that I have successfully made it through or not? For some reason week after week in class and on this blog the topic has been………SUMMARY LEADS! For some reason I can’t seem to write a good lead, I can write headlines but not leads, I can write a news story but not a lead? But what is a new story without the first 25-30 words!  After weeks of incorrectly written leads, poorly written leads, and leads weren’t even written to begin with. I hear by announce that my thing of not only for this week, but for this semester is how to write a lead! If I do not learn anything else from my basic news writing course it will be how to write a lead. Hopefully I can remember to include who, what, when, where, why, and how on my last test. May the summary lead writing Gods be with me!

Storytelling

      We finally got to the good stuff. This week in my basic news writing class we reviewed storytelling. For the past 12 or 13 weeks in this course we have been reviewing all of the basics from grammar to writing leads. This was up until a few weeks ago when we were given our first assignment to write a news story on weather in Erie, PA. Yesterday in class we got a better understanding of what it takes to write a good story. After all good stories make great news stories. Or don’t they?

   All stories consist of a beginning middle and end. Each particular component plays a significant role in the story its self.

The Beginning

·         Introduction of characters and conflict (sounds like a lead to me!)

The Middle

·         Unfolding the story or conflict

The End

·         Conclusion or resolution of the conflict

      After reviewing these elements we applied them to regular fairy tales and then news stories. And before the end of class we were all assigned to turn a fairy tale into a new story! I guess a good story does make a great news story after all! Here is my news story on the three little pigs.

On Tuesday Afternoon, three brothers were under the attack which left two houses and the suspect dead. The three little pigs were attacked one by one while in the safety of their home by the big bad wolf. He attacked the first little pig whose house was made out of straw. A neighbor said they heard screams from both the first little pig and the wolf.

“Let me in, let me in, or I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I will blow you house in!  The wolf was screaming at the first little pig, I’m not sure if I heard the first little pig right but I am sure he shouted back not by the hairs of my chinney chin chin. The wolf blew his house down,” says an anonymous neighbor.

The neighbor says that the next thing they heard was a loud crash which sounded like the first little pigs house being destroyed. According to Police officers the first little pigs house was made out of straw and destroyed by the huffing and puffing of the big bad wolf.

“I ran as fast as I could. Fortunately for me I was able to make it to my brother’s house, before the wolf could catch me and eat me up. When I got there he banged on the door again, and screamed let me in let me in or I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house in. Once again I found my brother and I running for our lives he just wouldn’t give up” says the first little pig.

Police on the scene say that the big bad wolf was very a persistent attacker. When He came across the last brother’s brick house even though he could not blow it down still attempted to get in. The big bad wolf climbed up the chimney, and fell into a boiling pot of water to his death. Officials cannot

Erie Isn't The Snowiest City!!

Two weeks ago in class, my professor assigned our first news stories! The topic was Erie PA being labeled the snowiest city by the Golden Snow Globe National Snow Contest. Last week we were all startled to find out that Erie was not the snowiest city anymore; it appeared as though overnight Syracuse NY accumulated about 7 magical inches of snow! Woah, where did that come from? My fellow classmates and I brought it to the attention to our professor in hopes to change the topic of our news story. Sadly the topic stayed the same. But ironically the next day in my metrology class the topic of Erie being the snowiest city with the population of 100,000 people came up again in the same scenario. Apparently the makers of the website for the contest decided to play an April fool’s joke on everyone! Well congratulations Golden Snow Globe You fooled us!

News Value 101

Impact

Timeliness

Prominence

Proximity

Conflict

Weirdness

Currency

These are some of the key elements reporters pay attention to when reporting daily news. Each and every one of these elements has a specific role in news and the creation of leads for articles. The following definitions where given in my basic news writing course earlier this month.

Impact: information has impact, if it affects a lot of people.

Timeliness: information has timeliness if it happened recently which is defined by the publication cycle

Prominence: information has prominence if it involves a well-known person or organization

Proximity: information has proximity if it involves something that happened near by

Conflict: information has conflict if it involves some kind of disagreement between two or more people

Weirdness: information has weirdness if it involves something unusual or strange

Currency: information has weirdness if it involves some general topic a lot of people are already talking about.

When these elements come together, they make great leads and articles. This is another thing to consider this week when writing leads.

No More Caveman Speak In this Class

Writing headlines is just like signing up for Geico auto insurance. It so easy even a cave man can do it. Writing leads on the other hand is a more complex task. Today in my basic news writing course we reviewed how to write a good summary lead. Studies show that after the first 50 words or less of an article, if the reader does not like what they have read will stop reading. If you’re unfamiliar with news or broadcast writing, you might still be wondering what a lead is. It is the first sentence, the second sentence, or the first paragraph in newspaper or magazine. It is also considered to be the most important aspect of an article. At first glance writing a lead can appear to be a simple task but my classmates and I ended up writing headlines with missing articles, and verbs instead of leads. Here are a few tips to writing a good lead.

1.       Make sure the lead contains between 18 to 20 words

2.       Make sure it is a complete sentence. (subject, verb, prepositional phrase etc.)

3.       Include all little words (articles such as “a” “an” “the”)

4.       Include who, what, why, where, when, and how

5.       Reread it out loud

6.       Include all interesting details

7.       Use strong active verbs

8.       Emphasize the correct magnitude of the story

My one thing this week was better said by my professor, “No more cave man speak in this class”

Assignment 7: Copy Edit Article in the Beacon

Assignment 7

 

Article: The Tragedy of Tanning

Writen By Olga Peredery

Copy Edited By Monique LeBrun

“A  tan, whether you get it at the beach, in a bed or through incidental exposure, is a bad news any way you acquire it,” said in an article in Tanning is Not Part of a Healthy Lifestyle.”

Edited

An article in, Tanning is Not Part of a Healthy Lifestyle stated, “A  tan, whether you get it at the beach, in a bed or through incidental exposure, is a bad news any way you acquire it.”

Researchers have proved that the UVA rays from the sun can do damage to the immune system, your eyesight, it also prematurely ages your skin, disrupt skin pigment, cause brown spots and last but not least-cntributes to the development of skin cancer.

Edited

Researchers have proven that the UVA rays from the sun can do damage to your immune system, your eyesight, and your skin. The UVA rays can prematurely age your skin, disrupt skin pigment, and cause brown spots. Lastly sun rays contribute to the development of skin cancer.

Mindfullness Means Full of Mind

          I originally started this blog on BlogSpot in 2010 when I was only a sophomore in high school. As a sophomore in college, I am now revisiting the blog scene again with a new outlook on writing and blogging. Once I learned that I would be writing weekly a blog post in my basic news writing course, I was extremely excited. I had completely forgotten about this BlogSpot account that I had created about 4 years ago. When I attempted to sign up for BlogSpot in order to create this blog, I stumbled across my long lost blog, which at that present moment was named "Fashionista." As I read over my past blog posts, I wanted to go back into time and hit myself with a dictionary, a grammar book, and some common sense. My style of writing 2 years ago appeared as though it came straight from urbandictionary.com.

         In Ben Yagoda's book How Not to Write Bad, Yagoda measures mindfulness, which means to be aware of your writing in terms of what you are writing, why you are writing, and for whom you are writing. An important point he makes in his book is the opposite of mindfulness, which is carelessness. We expanded upon these ideas and concepts Yagoda brings up in his book in my news writing class. We talked about the importance of punctuation and the difference between formal and informal writing. Formal writing is described in my class as standard written English. Standard written English is complex and complete sentences, objectivity, avoidance of slang, and derived from Latin. Informal writing on the other hand, is the blog I created 4 years ago, which did not include or account for punctuation or spelling, and most importantly it included slang. Slang may not always have a negative connotation, but its use is most likely dependent upon who your audience is. Looking back at my old blog post, I can honestly say I was a careless writer, and I did not consider my audience, or my purpose under any circumstances. Fortunately, today I am well aware of both aspects. Although I am not a completely mindful writer yet, I would consider myself far from careless!!!

He watches the office?

He watches the office? I don't!
Are you still confused?
Good.
This week in my class, we reviewed who vs. whom. If you are still scratching your head trying to figure out what I am talking about, let me break it down for you. Have you ever questioned if your using the right form of who? Did you even care to wonder if there is a difference? I know I didn't. Normally I just go with whatever sounds best at the given moment. But this week in class we reviewed when and how to use the proper form of whom. We learned a simple rule to help those of you like me figure out if your using the correct form.

Rule.....
Replace with he or him. If your sentence flows correctly with the pronoun he then the form you want to use is who. If your sentence flows correctly with the pronoun him then the form you want to use is whom.

Isn't that interesting?
Now.
Who watches the office?

Here is a link that shows you how TV show The Office breaks it down for their viewers.

Punctuation and Pronoun Anticedent Agreement Flyers on Campus

 

 

Punctuation Errors

 

 

Missing punctuation

There should be a camma before and

There should not be an apostrophe in Valentines day.

There should not be an apostrophe in Valentines day. 

 Pronoun Anticedent Agreement

The pronoun we is the vague pronoun in the sentence, "We are offering awesome pay..."

The pronoun they is the vague pronoun in this sentence. 

THE SHOUTING TEST

If you had to take a shouting test would you pass with flying colors? The answer to that question would depend on what you're being graded on. If you're being graded on who could shout the loudest then maybe you will stand a chance, but what if you're being graded on your grammar? Today in my basic news class my fellow classmates and I were given the wonderful opportunity to take this test using our own obituaries! As depressing as that sounds it became more comical than I originally imagined it to be. Death can be a very terrifying thought that we tend to shy away from unless we have to deal with it directly. In this case death was the last of my worries. When I was called upon by my professor to read my obituary, I found myself squirming to find and fix my own errors at the last minute as if I had never read it. In the beginning of class our professor briefly explained to us the importance of the shouting test that Ben Yogada talked about in his book How to Not Write Bad: The Most Common Writing Problems and the best ways to avoid them. As we continued on with this exercise my classmates and I learned the importance of training you ear to hear these common mistakes. I can still see my professor standing in front of the classroom pointing to her ear as we each read allowed our assignments. The shouting test can be the determiner of life or death when it comes to grammar, so hopefully the person who writes my obituary reads this blog post! Therefore don't be afraid to read anything aloud. Even if you have to shout it out! My one thing for the week of Jan 21st is don't be afraid to shout!