Only a Matter of Opinion?

CREDITS

The authors of this site would like to recognize the following people and cite the following resources in the development of this site.

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Student writers, professional columnists, editorial cartoonists and editors, all were most supportive in offering suggestions and contributing work to be included on this site.

Columnists James Kilpatrick, Bob Rosenblatt and Dorothy Gilliam provided columns to use as models. We hold these bylined writers in awe for their years of excellent prose and with gratitude for being so approachable. We thank Mary Suggett of Universal Press Syndicate for arranging copyright permission to reprint the Kilpatrick column.

We appreciate editorial cartoonists Alan Gardner and Chip Beck for their contributions to scholastic journalism as well as to our project.

We thank editorial writers Mark Genrich and Guy MacMillan; Cora B. Everett, NCEW executive secretary; and members of the board at The National Conference of Editorial Writers for generous support. Retired Denver Post Editorial Page Editor Bill Hosakawa took time to write a special message to our viewers.

Fellow teachers and publications advisers Alan Weintraut, Anne Roberts, Jane Everest, and Jan Iredale shared lesson plans to broaden the scope of what we wrote.

H. L. Mencken scholar Marion Elizabeth Rodgers spent hours in conversation and lecture bringing Mencken and his works to life. All teachers should be so engaging.

The Newseum is a tremendous resource for journalism students and educators. Newseum Managing Editor Eric Newton readily shared his experience as a Pulitzer Prize-winning editor and enthralled us with his research in the history of news for the Newseum's News History Gazette. Judith Hines, Newseum education director, who has supported scholastic journalism for many years, delighted that we would try this Internet approach. The Freedom Forum should receive the gratitude of journalism teachers and publications advisers for their support of First Amendment study and scholastic journalism.

We thank Journalism Education Association Curriculum Development Chair Kathleen Zwiebel in advance for promoting this "new textbook" and encouraging Journalism Education Association members to use this site.

Newspaper in Education professionals and friends Stella Jackmon and Margaret Kaplow at The Washington Post encouraged Carol Lange as each day ended too quickly. Every journalism teacher should establish such supportive relationships.

Our students through over 75 combined years of instruction have helped us to hone what we have shared with you. It is for them we stay in the classrooms, hoping to make them more confident writers and better citizens. We thank students Michael Bond, Sean Dobbs, Michael Groenert, Adam Grossi, Steve Pak, Susannah Rosenblatt, and Joseph Wagovich for sharing their writing with you. An extra "thank you" goes to Adam Grossi, an accomplished artist as well as writer who shared with us his published editorial cartoons.

The focus of "Only a Matter of Opinion?" resulted from conversation one evening in Birmingham, Alabama, in the home of Tom and Diane Weber. We are grateful to the Alabama Scholastic Press Association and Monica Hill for inviting Ron Bennett and Carol Lange to speak in Spring 1999 at their state convention. Bennett, Lange and Weber have been friends and colleagues since the summer of 1988 when DJNF brought them together with 12 other journalism teacher/advisers to create an intensive journalistic writing curriculum.

The teachers on the team are most grateful that Xian Ke, then a senior at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, agreed to be our technology expert and became our model of diligence. We remain in awe of her talent and expertise.

And a final word. "Only a Matter of Opinion?" would not have been created without the "missionary" work of Don Hyatt, computer systems laboratory director at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. It was he who informed the faculty of the existence of ThinkQuest for Teachers and he who personally encouraged Lange and Ke to participate. His dedication to students, his integrity as a person and his devotion to education are a tribute to the ThinkQuest goals.

 

 

REFERENCES

Altman, Robert and William Vesterman. Writing Day-By-Day. Harper & Row: New York, 1987. Out of Print.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. Third Edition. 1992.

Axelrod, R. & Cooper, C. "Proposal." Reading Critically, Writing Well: A Reader and Guide. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987. 393-468.

Brill's Content. Corrections policy. September 1999.

Dillard, Annie. The Writing Life. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1989. pages 58-59.

Editorial Excellence. Rockville, Md.: National Conference of Editorial Writers. Volume I. Out of Print.

-----. Rockville, Md.: National Conference of Editorial Writers. Volume II. Out of Print.

Fry, Don, and others ed. Best Newspaper Writing. Poynter Institute for Media Studies (in conjunction with the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Miscellaneous volumes. 1987-1997.

"Go Ahead, Laugh." Journal-Bulletin Writing Program. Online. 10 Oct. 1997 www.projo.com.

Gray, Ed. "Name That Fallacy." U.S. Airways Attaché. April 1999.

Hertzberg, Hendrik. "Big Mike," The New Yorker. May 24, 1999.

Holman, C. Hugh. A Handbook to Literature, fourth edition, Bobbs- Merrill Educational Publishing, 1980.

Levin G.; Damrosh, Dean, Eds. "Age of Pope." Adventures in English literature: Heritage Edition. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 1980. 326-327.

Mok, Harry. "Asian Americans Rising above Stereotypes after a Century of Progress." Chicago Tribune Online. 4 Aug. 1999. http://www.chicagotribune.com/

Newton, Eric, ed. News History Gazette. U.S.: The Freedom Forum. 1977. A wonderful oversize collection of the history of news as can be viewed at the Newseum in Arlington, Va.

Rodgers, Marion Elizabeth, ed. The Impossible H. L. Mencken: A Selection of His Best Newspaper Stories. New York: Doubleday. 1991.

Scanlan, Christopher, Ed. How I Wrote the Story. 2nd ed. Providence, RI: Providence Journal Co.

Shapiro, Walter. "Profile: Prolific Purveyor of Punditry." Time - The Weekly Newsmagazine - 1990, 12 Feb. 1990. CD ROM. 1994.

Shipp, E. R. "We Made Mistakes," The Washington Post. Outlook B6. August 8, 1999.

Siegel, Robert, Ed. The NPR Interviews 1994. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1994.

Sloan, W. David, and Laird B. Anderson. Pulitzer Prize Editorials: America's Best Editorial Writing 1917-1993. 2nd ed. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1994.

Smith, C.K. (1968, November). "Toward a Participatory Rhetoric: Teaching Swift's 'Modest Proposal.'" College English. November 1968: 135-143.

Strunk, William, Jr. and E. B. White. The Elements of Style. New York: The Macmillan Company.

The Top 100 Works of Journalism in the United States in the 20th Century. New York: NYU Department of Journalism, July 20, 1999.

Women Pulitzer Prize Winners in Journalism. July 20, 1999.

 

 

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