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Welcome to the first step in creating your own Capstone Project.
We're going to talk a little bit about some of the things you need to do
along the way.
First of all, it's very important that you don't freak out.
And what I mean by this is,
this is going to take a little bit of trial and error.
So, please forgive yourself.
It's the end product that matters.
The process is sometimes messy, a little bit ugly.
But guess what?
The best journalism, it's all about creating the best final product,
the very best news report that you can possibly do.
We're going to help you do that.
So, in order to kick this off, you need to think about what I want to do.
What is my news report going to be about?
Simply put, that's going to be your choice.
We can't tell you what to do because we're so
honored that our learners come from around the world.
The best suggestion we have for you is the following.
Pick something local, because you're going to need to do
something that you have access to, so if you pick something kind of outlandish,
like I'm going to do an interview with the Pope, or I'm going to talk to
Justin Bieber, or I'm going to get an exclusive interview with Ronaldo.
Those are great Ideas,
but if you can't execute them, they're just that, they're ideas.
We want you to pick something practical, something real.
The style of the news report that you're going to create for
your final Capstone Project is going to take one of two forms.
It can either be hard news, and
we've talked about this previously in the courses about what hard news is, and
just to refresh you, we also will have a video about choosing news topics.
But also, a quick little reminder right now, hard news are serious topics.
So, issues that face your community, crime, schools,
taxes, things that are of public interest.
Or you can do what we call feature.
And again, we'll provide some refreshers in here if you've forgotten what a feature
is, but a feature is a profile on a person, a thing, an event.
Again, picking something local is crucial because you need to do interviews,
you need to do news gathering.
So, having it around you will make it a little bit easier and
also give you a better experience.
We'd like to remind you too that ethical conduct throughout this Capstone
is not only encouraged, but it is mandatory.
Your interviews must be real.
Your facts must be real.
So please put yourself in a position where you can have access to things
that will enable you to be the very best you can be.
So good luck picking your topic, and
we can't wait to see what you're going to choose for your Capstone.
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