Students and teachers alike at Miami Beach Senior High have been affected by textbook delays.This issue is most likely a result from budget cuts.Budget cuts have been affecting everything from teacher’s salaries to overpopulation in the classrooms and it seems that lack of textbooks have fallen into the mix.”They’re[the school board] isn’t giving the school enough money to do our job so we’re going to do the best with what we have says Ms.Robins who is in charge of textbooks.”A fair majority of students have to carry their books to and from class.”"It’s so frustrating that i have to carry heavy books all day.A lot of my friends have to carry books too” says
Freshman Natalie Mendez.The textbook delays may have also been due to increased enrollment.”When your talking about textbooks,it’s a combination of increased enrollment ,we had about 200 extra kids we didn’t expect to come through the door,and we have no money” says Ms.Robins.So how do students get their work done? :Since there aren’t enough books for everybody,a lot of people have to share and sometimes we have to wait until people finish so we can do our work” says sophomore Heather Strully.So how do this year’s textbook delays compare to last year?”They’re taking a lot longer to get books this year” says Heather.When asked for closing statements,Natalie said “They should get more books delivered to the school”.And Ms.Robins said “If the department chairs prioritize which classes need textbooks the most,than they should be submitting orders to us.Only time will tell if this issue gets resolved.
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great job!
So before I get into the specifics that Mr. Weiss wanted us to fix, NEVER write things like “when asked” or what the question you asked was. These things are unneeded in the article. The quotes are used to provide information or an opinion, you don’t want your interview to be your article. But don’t worry, it’s a mistake that many people make.
now onto some key things:
1. LEDE: “most likely” should not be used here, you can say that textbook delays are due to budget cuts (if that is the only reason, please make sure that if there are other reasons to include them in your article). Furthermore, you should really make sure that the subject of your article should appear within the first three words of your lead. With that in mind, try to reword your LEDE so that “textbook delays” (or another way to say that) appears in the beginning of your LEDE.
STRUCTURE: On extremely important thing to remember for any article is what is called the “inverted pyramid”. This means that the most important facts appear at the beginning of the article, and the less important parts (e.g. and opinion by an unimportant person) appears at the end. For example: Robin’s quote regarding department chairs should be further up in the article.
OBJECTIVITY: I’m not sure exactly which heading this would go into, but phrases like “in the mix” and “most likely” and “fair majority” should not be in your article. Remember that you are writing a news article. Therefore everything you say must be either backed up by a statistic or attributed to a specific person. Which leads me to the next topic…
ATTRIBUTION: Whenever you give a quote, you must attribute it. There are many ways to do this. You don’t always have to put what was said in quotes. You can say “According to” and then summarize the quote. This can be extremely helpful when you have quotes that aren’t as interesting or do not sound great. Also, each quote goes in a separate paragraph (that’s just a little tidbit)
The way to attribute correctly may look like this:
“They’re[the school board] isn’t giving the school enough money to do our job so we’re going to do the best with what we have,” explained Jodie Robins, Assistant Principal in charge of textbooks.
or you could make it a middle attribution:
“They’re[the school board] isn’t giving the school enough money to do our jobs,” explained Jodie Robins, Assistant Principal in charge of textbooks, “so we’re going to do the best with what we have.”
BTW: make sure you have quotes from teachers, they are the ones with the issue, so make sure you get their opinion! Also a way to make sure you become more objective is to interview students of different ages and genders. When you attribute a quote the person’s full name, if student include age and grade, if teacher or administrator specify the subject or what they are in charge of. Never refer to anyone in an article as “Ms.” “Mr.” or “Mrs.” refer to them by their full name, if a quote by them appears later in the article refer to the person by just their last name.