Lindsay Simpson, Out of Class Assignment, Poynter NewsU

I watched a NewsU webinar for my out of class assignment, Using History to Write Sports. Alex Wolff taught the class and focused on finding interesting news pieces from something that happened a long time ago. He mentioned that a lot of editors like to use anniversaries to find stories. He also cited the importance of still photos to digging up these stories. He showed a couple of still photos to the class and talked about writing articles about those photos. He mentioned that when he was talking with the primary sources, he would show them a picture of themselves at that particular event (or just of the event itself) to evoke their memories and emotion.

I liked watching this webinar, I think Wolff had a lot of very good things to say about finding interesting articles out of things that have already happened. Most importantly, I am glad I had this assignment because now I know what kinds of resources are available on the Poynter website. This is a tool that I will absolutely take advantage of going forward. It is pretty cool to watch a class taught by someone whose work I have read many years.

Since my out of class activity wasn't very interactive and I didn't have an opportunity to photograph things, I decided to take a screenshot of me watching Alex Wolff!