Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Articles that Drive Me Nuts

So, I know I'm not the best journalist and never will be, but I have taken a course over it, read a lot of newspaper articles, and learned what's good and bad writing. I feel bad for this, but I feel inclined to rip peoples articles apart when I know they're horribly written.

I learned about the blog that the Basic Writing for the Media class is doing this semester a few weeks ago, but just started reading recently. I know not to expect that everyone's going to be a writing genius or master the skill after this one course, but I still expect students to attend class and actually learn. It's almost the end of the semester and students are still writing articles like they would have if it were the first week of the semester.

Students are misinformed and use assumptions as sources for their articles. I still find spelling mistakes throughout the piece and the horrible continual usage of "she said"/"he said".

For example: http://basicwritng2010.blogspot.com/2010/10/wilson-renovation-equals-reopening.html

The title alone annoys me enough. There is not a single paragraph in this entire article that does not use the word "said". When someone has a continuous thought, there's no need to separate it into three different paragraphs. The overall flow of the article is so choppy and I find it hard to follow. I'm annoyed at the sources she chose to use as well. You are told in the course to use at least four source and I only found three in hers. I was especially frustrated with the fact that she used a Resident Assistant as main information about Housing's plans. Employed as a Resident Assistant this previous year, I have learned that as an RA, you don't always know everything about Housing and their plans for campus. The author of this article should have found someone else higher up to use as a source for some of this information, maybe Tammie Willis who is Assistant Director of Residential Life and Education or maybe even Randy Shelton, interim Director of Housing.

I even read another article that stated an event was a yearly event, even though I know this is the first year they've done the event. They were basically copying an extremely similar event that my fraternity has been hosting yearly for at least 5 years now.

So, maybe I'm just rude, but things like this really drive me nuts.
There are still some other articles that have been well written and are highly interesting, so you should still take a look at the blog.