Lesson 1

Media for People

• A training program for teaching post graduates all over Iraq skills of professional journalism in eight months.

News must be:

• Interesting to readers

• Not known by readers

What makes the news:

• an event relating to Timescale or distance

• Big impact on readers

• Abnormal (dog bites man or man bites dog)

• Celebrities

• Negativities, (to have a big house is not news; but when ur burns then is news)

• Continuity: (if a teacher hit student in a school; a week later another student is beaten, then is news)

• Personalization; seeing stories in term of people (to report about the war in Iraq through a butcher’s or a teacher’s daily life

• The best

• Conflicts

• Quirks

• Science research and discovery

• Human interest: housing, taxes, health, weather, dust, drought.

• Wine drinkers are slimmer/healthier/cleverer than those who drink beer and spirits

• Women spend an average of £31,000 on shoes in a lifetime

• Ready-made salads are too salty

• Drivers want more traffic police

• Libraries risk becoming relics