名古屋外国語大学論集

第7号

2020年7月

ArticleDeveloping a Course in Journalistic Writing for
NUFS Students
Henry TROY

Journalistic writing is a recently-introduced course which third-year students
have the option of selecting. The course is one of several writing classes students
may choose from in the Department for British and American Studies (DBAS)
of Nagoya University of Foreign Studies (NUFS). This paper outlines the
background to the course development, the content of the course itself, and theoutcomes from the first year of its introduction. In addition, the future development of the course is discussed.

1. Course context
Previously, English writing courses for third-year NUFS students focused only
on academic writing. However, from the 2019/20 academic year, students were
given a choice of several writing styles. As well as academic writing, theseincluded thesis writing, business writing, creative writing, and the focus of
this paper: journalistic writing. The aim was to increase student motivation forwriting by giving them more control over which style they attempted, and also
to expose students to a greater range of writing techniques.

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NUFS students have had some limited opportunities to engage with journalism.
There is a newspaper club which since 2018 has produced an English language
paper called The NUFS Times (Chunichi Shimbun, 2018). There was also aJapan Times exhibition held at the university in 2019, which displayed editionsof the paper dating back to its founding in 1897 (Kojima, 2019). Nevertheless,becoming a journalist is clearly not a common goal of those attending thisuniversity, illustrated by the fact that none of the 34 students who took this new
course indicated that was their intended career path.
However, the are several reasons why the course can still be of great benefit to
NUFS students. First, there is evidence that there are motivational benefits tohaving more choice of what one writes about and studies (Anderson, 2016). It
is self-evident that students who are able to select their own topics and sample
different writing styles are more likely to enjoy the process than those cornered
for four years into the strict framework of academic writing. It has also beenargued that the specific skills learned by doing journalistic writing can benefit
individuals besides those who wish to make it their career. Being able to write
news stories will “benefit them (students) all of their lives, whether or not theydecide to make a living as a journalist” according to Climenhaga (2009, p. 4),
while Hanna (in Grundy et al., 2012) similarly makes the case that “universities
are essential in the transmission of the skills and public service values of investigative journalism” (p. 168). Writing news articles and composing an investigative piece comprise the two most important projects of the course implemented,
with each serving as the main, final project of each semester. Clearly some ofthe other projects undertaken, such as writing a blog, a review, or an opinion
piece, would have applications that the students could utilise in their everyday
lives both when using social media or consuming English-language news. A
sceptic may suggest that given the students are unlikely to be able to produce
high-quality journalistic writing in Japanese, let alone in English, the course has
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Developing a Course in Journalistic Writing for NUFS Students ■little value apart from novelty. However, I would counter such assertions byquoting Synge (2010), who argues that “just because your English isn’t perfect,
it doesn’t mean that you won’t make a good journalist” (p. 58–59).
One can also make the case that studying and practising journalism has a wider
significance than just the practical skills that can be acquired. It is no exaggeration to say that journalism is in a state of crisis. Media organisations havereacted to the digital revolution by either embracing it, partly adapting to it, orcompletely ignoring it. Whatever each organisation has tried, it has resulted in
the decline of the industry as people refuse to now pay to consume news they
can just as easily get online for free (Curran in Franklin, 2011; Fowler, 2015).
With less money in journalism, there has been a rise in fake news, as media withless time and money to invest in in-depth coverage inadequately investigate
stories before reporting them, or citizen journalism allows the general public
to post stories online and spread them almost at will. The accuracy of news has
decreased, and so too has public trust in the media, which has dropped to all-timelows (Ingram, 2018; Meade, 2018). It has therefore become the responsibilityof every educated citizen to be able to disseminate fact from fiction, and that
requires some studying of journalism itself. Kovach and Rosentiel (2014) are
two who argue for this kind of education in journalism for all. As they put it,“the first step...has to be developing a means of letting those who made up thatmarket finally see how the sausage is made - how do we do our work and what
informs our decisions” (p. 292). This may be even more important for Japanese
students. The news in Japan is heavily managed through its “press clubs”, withnews almost always coming directly from official sources, and only shared withthose who are members of these clubs (Hargreaves, 2014). Despite this, there
is a lack of knowledge among many Japanese people about how their media
functions compared with other countries, and so once more education on how
journalism is supposed to work could be of great benefit.
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Of course, I am not so arrogant as to believe a two-semester course in Journalistic
Writing can somehow help to spark a revolution in which the Japanese public
become more active in how they scrutinise the news. Nevertheless, I believe
engaging in such a course can allow participants to become better writers, consumers, and critics of the news media. After all, my own degree in Journalism
acquired from the University of Stirling did that for me.

2. Objectives
1.  ‌This course aims to introduce the students to a variety of styles ofjournalistic writing, focusing especially on those that they themselves
may find useful or be exposed to in their daily lives. To this end, they
will produce six different works of journalistic writing over the courseof two semesters.
2.  ‌The students will also be educated more widely in the field of journalism,
including the introduction of commonly-used journalistic terminology.
3.  ‌The course aims to motivate the students by giving them more control
over the topics they choose to write about, and by allowing them to work
both individually and collaboratively on different projects.

3. Course content
3.1 Structure
The course is divided into two one-semester courses, each of which follows thesame basic structure. The semester starts with two introductory lessons which
establish a foundation for the students by studying key terminology (e.g. reporter,
bias, media), basic journalistic concepts (e.g. objectivity vs. subjectivity) and an
overview of the various types of journalistic writing.
Each semester has three projects for the students to complete. The first two202

Developing a Course in Journalistic Writing for NUFS Students ■projects are smaller, requiring just 400 words for each, while the final project ispartly collaborative and requires about 800 words from each student. These word
lengths are typical of articles in journalism (Synge, 2010). As with most writing
courses at NUFS, the students produce three drafts for each paper, with the firstdraft being peer reviewed, the second being checked by the teacher, and the final
draft being the one that is graded. This is also representative of the number ofdrafts produced when professional journalists write their stories (Synge, 2010).
The basic course structure is illustrated in Table 1.
Table 1
Semester 1
Lessons 1–2:
Introduction to Journalistic Writing
Lessons 3–5:
Project 1 - Interview
Lessons 6–8:
Project 2 - Blog
Lessons 9–14:
Project 3 - News Articles
Lesson 15:
Review
Semester 2
Lessons 1–2:
Introduction to Journalistic Writing
Lessons 3–5
Project 1 - Review
Lessons 6–8:
Project 2 - Opinion Piece
Lessons 9–14:
Project 3 - Investigative Piece
Lesson 15:
Review

•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

key vocabulary
journalistic writing styles
work individually
about 400 words
worth 20% of final grade
work individually
about 400 words
worth 20% of final grade‌work both individually and collaboratively
about 800 words
worth 40% of final grade
course review and feedback

•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

key vocabulary
journalistic writing styles
work individually
about 400 words
worth 20% of final grade
work individually
about 400 words
worth 20% of final grade
work both individually and collaboratively
about 400 words
worth 40% of final grade
course review and feedback2033.2 Projects
All of the projects started with a lesson introducing the area of focus and related
terminology, followed by a class on how to write in that journalistic style, andthen the undertaking of the project itself. The first drafts were due in the third
lesson, in which peer review was conducted, then the second drafts a week later,
before the final drafts would be due two weeks after that (as the week in between
had the teacher returning the students’ edited second drafts).

3.2.1 Interview
Interviewing, “one of the key tasks of journalism” (Climenhaga, 2009, p. 126),
was the first project. It was chosen to be first because being able to conduct aninterview would be a useful skill for students in later projects as well, and it wasconsidered a fairly gentle introduction to journalistic writing as interviews tend
to be something the students have done before. Interview writing usually has a
specific structure, with the writing alternating between direct or indirect quotes(direct are preferable) and contextual information or interviewer observations.
The students were given a written example of an interview write-up and asked
to find someone interesting to conduct an interview with. One complication waswhether to allow the students to do the interview in Japanese or not. In the end,
I compromised and said that the interview should be done in English, but that if
the interviewee could not understand a question, then some Japanese would beallowed. Directions on how to conduct and write an interview were based on theadvice of Climenhaga (2009) and Smith (2010). This included instructions suchas doing research on the interviewee or topic beforehand, starting the interview
with an easy question, recording the interview (with permission), taking notes
during the interview and starting and ending the interview write-up with the mostinteresting quotes from the interviewee.

204Developing a Course in Journalistic Writing for NUFS Students ■3.2.2 Blog
Given that so many journalists now blog both on microblogging sites like
Twitter, more in-depth blog sites like WordPress, or their news sites’ own web
page, this was the project perhaps most relevant to the students’ everyday lives.
Journalists now routinely use Twitter in particular (Bossio, 2017; Hermida inFranklin, 2011), and this has also led to a more personalised style of journalistic
reporting. It was decided that the students would do a more personal blog, rather
than one reporting on news, for this writing project. This was done to prevent too
much overlap with the news articles writing style, but also because it allows formore detailed writing. It is also true that journalism also covers personal featurearticles, under which blogging would fall.
The students were shown blogs on WordPress to illustrate how they should be
written. Unlike many of the other writing projects, a great deal of flexibility
was allowed in terms of writing style and content, as blogs come in a variety ofshapes and sizes. The students had the option of writing a personal diary-style
blog, or a piece of writing about something they have an interest in or are an
expert on. The students were also required to write a comment on three otherstudents’ blogs. This was to simulate the real-life comments many bloggers
receive when they post.

3.2.3 News Articles
The news articles project had the students working in groups of three or four. In
these groups, the students had to produce a short newspaper, with each student
responsible for one page, and three articles on each page. Two of each page’s
articles would be about 200 words in length, while the third would be the main
article at around 400 words, for a total of approximately 800 words. They werealso required to have a picture with a caption on each page.

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The students were taught about the Inverted Pyramid, which is almost always
the recommended structure for news articles (Climenhaga, 2009; Grundy et al.,2012; Smith, 2010). This involves starting with the most important information;
what happened, who was involved, where and when it happened, how it happened, and why it happened; before continuing with progressively less importantdetails of the story. Short paragraphs are common, and presentation should aim
most of all for clarity, accuracy and conciseness (Smith, 2010).
The collaborative part of the project had two elements. First, the students had
to decide together what type of newspaper they were producing. For example,
would all the articles be about local and NUFS-related news, or would thisinstead focus on national and international news? Second, the students had todecide together what topics each of their pages would have. It was a requirement
to have the first page containing headline news, but the other two or three pages
could be on entertainment, politics, sports, or any other type of news that iscommonly produced in newspapers. However, it was a further requirement that
all articles be hard news, meaning that the stories must be related to current,
recent or upcoming events (Climenhaga, 2009). This was done to prevent overlap
with writing styles practised in other projects.

3.2.4 Review
Online reviews can have enormous influence on consumers. Reviews on sites
like TripAdvisor, RottenTomatoes and Amazon can be the difference between
success and failure for a business or publication. According to a 2016 survey,
97% of customers take online reviews into account before buying something(Fan & Fuel, 2017). Moreover, the survey results also show that consumers
overwhelmingly read reviews in detail rather than just relying on the overall
aggregated score. Some 94% of respondents said they read online reviews rather
than just check ratings, while 73% said detailed reviews had more impact on206

Developing a Course in Journalistic Writing for NUFS Students ■their view of the product or company than their aggregated score (Fan & Fuel,
2017). Finally, underlining the impact even one review can have, 35% said thatjust one negative review could persuade them not to buy a product or service(Fan & Fuel, 2017).
With all this in mind, the project of writing a review was one of the most relevantto the students. Since a review needs to be both informative and evaluative(Synge, 2010), students were encouraged to prioritise both in their writing. The
students could choose to review any type of product or service, but film reviews
proved to be the most popular. Other products reviewed included a women-only
hotel, five types of bottled green tea, and the album of an alternative rock band.
The students were encouraged to review something that was new for them, rather
than a familiar item such as a film they had already seen several times. It was also
recommended not to choose something they were already a fan of. Although thestructure of the review could be somewhat flexible, the students had to include astar rating (out of five) for the item, their overall opinion, justification for theirview and sufficient information on the item without revealing spoilers.

3.2.5 Opinion Piece
People express their opinion in written form all the time. This is now mostly
done concisely via online media such as Facebook and Twitter, but being able
to present one’s view persuasively and eloquently in English is still of value.
The journalistic opinion piece is of course more detailed than a person’s Twitter
outburst, but both share a similarity in strength of feeling. Opinion writers tend
not to shrink from controversial topics or views; in fact, these are often preferred(Synge, 2010). The goal is to stir up debate as much as persuade the reader thatyour view is the correct one.
The opinion piece (op-ed) project, therefore, encouraged students to choose
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a topic in which their opinion went against the perceived majority view.
The justification for the writer’s opinion should be a mix of both factual andemotional reasoning. The style should also reflect the writer (Synge, 2010), so
less instruction was given in exactly how the piece should be written, althoughagain the students were provided with example op-eds. The views expressedby students were for the most part appropriately strong, including that there isa bias in all aspects of Japanese society toward good-looking people, that cramschools should be abolished, and that those over the age of 65 should be banned
from driving.

3.2.6 Investigative Piece
Arguing the case that being able to do investigative writing is relevant toJapanese university students not studying journalism is less easy than it is forreview or blog writing. However, investigative journalism is, I would argue,
extremely important for any democracy, and so what it lacks in practicalrelevance it makes up for in potential impact. As Diane Dakers (2018) puts it“investigative journalism is a critical component to the freedom of expression”.
This type of journalism is a check on the rich and powerful in society, and has
played a major role in bringing down all kinds of corrupt elites from Presidents(e.g. Nixon) to major corporations (e.g. Enron). With the various financial issues
facing news media already mentioned, investigative journalism has been one theareas to suffer the most. The practice requires a great amount of resources withno guarantee of uncovering something significant, and often requires months oreven years of research before producing results, so many media organizations
have scaled back their funding for investigative journalism (de Burgh, 2008).
Nevertheless, it is exactly this kind of detailed research that can allow students
to question more, learn more and uncover more about the people and institutions
that control many aspects of their lives.

208Developing a Course in Journalistic Writing for NUFS Students ■Given the potential legal implications of investigating celebrities or major
companies, the students were discouraged from doing that kind of investigation.
To ensure the students could do an appropriate investigation without getting
themselves into trouble, a choice of research topics was given for them to choose
from. These included an investigation into food packaging standards in Japanand around the world, a survey to identify any gender differences or similarities
in views on romantic relationships, and research into whether people base theirviews on other countries’ people mostly on stereotypes, factual evidence, or
personal experience. The students did their investigation in groups of three orfour, with each member choosing a different aspect of their chosen topic to write
about. For example, having done a survey of 100 students with respect to theirviews on romantic relationships, one student might write an overall summaryof the results, another might interview two students with opposing views andwrite about their responses in greater depth, the third member may look at how
the views expressed compare with historical views and the final person could
contrast the results with similar surveys undertaken in other countries. Althoughsome overlap was allowed between the articles, the students were encouraged tocompare their articles to ensure they each presented different information which
supported and complemented the main investigation.

3.3 Additional content
Additional activities were occasionally added to lessons in order to break up thecourse and provide greater variety. These included a “fact vs opinion” activity,
inspired by the one proposed by Smith (2010). In this activity, the students are
given a list of sentences, and have to identify which are stating facts and which
are opinion, or whether any are a mix of the two. This is followed by discussion
questions. I also created a “real or fake news?” PowerPoint, which allowed
the students to try and decipher whether each news story presented was trueor fictional. The students were then encouraged themselves to research two
209unbelievable-but-true news stories, as well as create one of their own which iscompletely false. They then presented these stories to their group members, who
after an interrogation could guess which story was false. Finally, there was anactivity introducing journalistic ethics to the students, and a review quiz.

3.4 Grading
There was a different rubric for each project, although certain aspects remained
consistent for each. One of these was grammar and vocabulary, with 20% of theirscore allocated for this in all projects. As with other forms of writing, accurate
use of words and syntax is important in journalistic writing (Grundy et al., 2012).
Research, involving the use of relevant sources and their correct presentationin the writing, also represented 20% of the overall score in all projects but one.
This is again a key part of journalistic writing (Synge, 2010). The exception was
the blog project, which instead allocated this 20% to the comments written by
students on the blogs of others in the class, since research need not be an essential
part of good blog writing. Another fifth of the overall grade was assigned towriting style. Since the style of writing varied depending on the project, this justmeant that their style and formatting was appropriate for that particular form ofjournalistic writing. Content took up another 20% of the total score, with “collaboration” being added as a supplementary part of this segment for the news
article and investigating writing projects. The final fifth of the student’s grades
was allocated to formatting, title and structure.

4. OutcomesSome quantifiable data was taken after the first implementation of this course.
The main source of useful data on the students’ impression of the course could beseen in the feedback forms they completed at the end of the semester. Comparedwith those who took the previous advanced writing course the year before, almost
all questions received an increase in positive responses. Table 2 illustrates the210

Developing a Course in Journalistic Writing for NUFS Students ■Table 2
Survey statement

I’m satisfied with the classoverall.
I tried to attend this classevery time.
I attended this class with
passion.
I was able to do writing
more actively because ofthis class.
This class was very
interesting.
Through this class, myEnglish abilities improved.

Average of student
responses in 2018–19
Advanced Writing class

Average of student
responses in 2019–20
Journalistic Writing class

4.4

4.4

3.3

4.0

4.3

4.5

4.4

4.6

4.2

4.4

4.3

4.5

responses of students to some of the questions on the feedback questionnaire,with 5 indicating a statement was completely true, 1 completely untrue, and 2–4
the varying levels in between. There were 24 students who responded to thesurvey in the 2018–19 class, and 27 who answered from the 2019–20 class. Allof the statements were originally written in Japanese, and have been translated.
These descriptive statistics show there was a small increase in student satisfaction in all categories. The greatest rise was in the students’ motivation to attend
class, while the only statement not to record an increase was overall satisfaction
with the course, which remained unchanged but still high at 4.4. The highaverage of responses suggests the students were happy with the course andtheir learning from it, and were marginally more fulfilled than they were forthe 2018–19 course. It is worth noting that since the maximum score was 5 foreach question, very high increases were impossible as most of the averages werealready above 4 for the course the year before. Therefore, even small increases
indicate there was some significant improvement in student satisfaction. The
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survey did not ask the students to give reasons for their answers, so it is unclear
whether the rise was caused by the ability of students to choose the writing course
themselves, the content of the course, or other factors.
As well as the survey results, intuitive analysis of the student reactions to theclass showed a clear preference for it over the previous one in academic writing,and the same conclusion was made by the other teacher of this course, David
Townsend. The students actively engaged with the topics in many of the projects,
and the classes were more active with greater discussion. Moreover, the work
produced was often of a surprisingly high standard. The op-eds and blogs inparticular were frequently written very effectively. The news articles and investigative pieces presented the greatest challenges for the students, and the qualityof the writing varied significantly. Nevertheless, it is necessary for the students
to be challenged into writing outside of their comfort zone. As with all forms ofwriting, the students that applied themselves the most produced the best work.
The course can also be evaluated to some extent from the work the students
produced. All of the students were able to complete every project, and thus nostudents failed the class in either semester. This is in contrast to the academic
writing course I taught third-year students the year before. Moreover, the students were asked at the end of the course to discuss their thoughts on each of the
projects undertaken. Most students identified review and blog writing as theirfavourite projects, and investigative and news articles as their least preferred.
This was perhaps to be expected as the latter two required the greatest amount ofwork, and reviews and blogs are the two that students identified that they interact
with the most in their daily lives.
Some areas of the course could be improved. One is to make the blogs online
instead of just printing out drafts from Microsoft Word. This would give the212Developing a Course in Journalistic Writing for NUFS Students ■students an opportunity to write a blog that they could continue if they wished
to after the conclusion of the course. Therefore, WordPress will be used by thestudents to write their blogs from the 2020/21 academic year. Second, a textbook
for the course would be of more benefit than the various handouts currently given
to the students over the course period. Since this will not be possible for at leasta year, in the short-term all documents for the course will be made available
online in order to reduce the number of individual papers required. Finally, somecollaboration with the NUFS Times for the news article project, with the potentialof some student articles being published in the paper, may increase the feelingof achievement for some students.
Going forward, the course will need to be updated each year to stay current,
as journalism is constantly evolving. There is also the possibility for further
research on the effectiveness of the course, and at the end of the second year
since its introduction I will conduct more in-depth surveys of student views of the
program. Teacher feedback on the course is also ongoing and extremely useful,and it is hoped that this paper may result in more of it. It is my belief that thischange in the third-year writing program to include various elective styles ofwriting can be very beneficial to the students, both in terms of their enjoymentof the process and the applicable skills acquired.

Acknowledgement
The course benefited greatly from the input of another journalism major teachingat NUFS: David Townsend. He provided many of the source materials on which
the course was based, and also gave feedback on the class materials I created.

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