Information on your Midterm Exam
During Week 8 you will take your Midterm Exam. Your midterm is your opportunity to find out how well you have been absorbing the material in the lessons, and whether you have benefited from my comments on your PR writing. It is the first important grade you will receive in this class, and the first time you will be expected to write on a tight deadline.
How do you take the midterm online? Easy. You email me with a start time, telling when you can devote 2-4 hours to writing a press release. Your start time can be on either Monday or Tuesday, April 5-6. At the agreed-upon start time, I will email you midterm information, including the necessary data for a press release, and basic instructions. The exam will cover Lesson One through Lesson Six. You take the exam -- the writing of a message planner and press release, plus two delayed leads -- and email it back to me by the finish time within four hours of when I emailed it to you. By the way, you get more time than my in-class students, because I appreciate that it takes longer to deal with the technology. You may need only two hours to accomplish everything, as often the case in the classroom. Be sure you schedule a time for Monday or Tuesday: For each day you are late taking the exam, your grade will be reduced by five points. I will email you the exam factsheet. Using the information I send you, you will prepare the following
You have already had an opportunity to study the Press Release Checklist, and you know "How I Grade a Press Release" from the information you found in the "Examples" link (some of which is reprinted below). In the lesson material you have all you need to do a thorough self-edit of your work. Self-editing is very important to your success as a PR writer, and in an online course it's especially necessary. When I grade your midterm, I give about 25 percent weight to the Message Planner. The Writing Process is one of the most important objectives of this course, and if you have skimped on the Key Ideas, or skated on the organization of paragraphs, or missed the point on the angle or message or 5 W's, that will affect your grade -- usually by one grade point (a "B" turns into a "C") -- or more. Grading the press release itself is a matter of looking at five main elements. Grading written papers is less scientific than teachers like to admit. Here is what I use as a guide to evaluating your press release.
and it's key to the success of your PR strategy
and it's what you need to make your story news
poor organization = unreadable copy
read newspapers so news style becomes natural
misspellings = automatic drop of one grade point Take a look at your press release drafts with these points in mind. How does your work compare? What can be improved? clarified? made stonger? You must learn to be your own best editor, and by now you should be clear on what I'm looking for in an effective press release.
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