The Craft of Research

Graduation day, and I have great expectations for my former students Erica Butler, Dan Chung, Michael Cohen, Liza Eckert, Spencer Freeman, Danny Gold, Katie Honan, Suyeon Kim, Kerri MacDonald, Eugenia Miranda, David Montalvo, Khristina Narizhnaya, Vish Persaud, Lisa Riordan Seville, Matt Robinson, Sam Roudman, Jordan Shakeshaft, Andrea Swalec and Joe Tacopino.  A few quick shout outs…

Lisa, you’re still the one and only to ever get a perfect score on “the quiz.”

Matt, I’m still using your enterprise story as the model for how students should do it.

And Katie, awesome speech!  As a fellow connoisseur of deprecating humor, I know you’ll appreciate it when I say I hope nobody in the Class of 2011 paid more than a buck-fifty for your beat memo. 😉

Now everyone please take Dean Shepard’s advice and GO FOR IT!!!!

Dean Steve Shepard’s remarks at the Class of 2010’s commencement ceremony from CUNY Grad School of Journalism on Vimeo.

Katie Honan’s remarks at the Class of 2010’s commencement ceremony from CUNY Grad School of Journalism on Vimeo.

The quiz results are in and I would call the class performance “typical.”  Five of you made me “happy” by scoring in double digits.  Most of the rest at least passed by scoring 7 or better.  But a few of you clearly need work on your research skills.  I’m always happy to help; all you need to do is ask.  Believe me, I hate giving poor grades as much as anyone hates receiving them.  When you fail, we both fail.  On the bright side, school is the place to learn your weaknesses so you can address them without terrible consequences.  Especially in the first semester.

Among the high scorers, special kudos to Yudith Ho, the only one to correctly point out that my brother is not enrolled in any political party.  It wasn’t a trick question, but I wasn’t going to pick a Democrat or Republican, where you could just guess and have a decent chance of getting the right answer.  Once you figured out his birthday and his county, all you had to do was go here.

Congratulations also to the few who knew to use Access World News for the Staten Island Advance question and Associations Unlimited for the Habitat for Humanity question.  It didn’t surprise me those were among the “harder” queries.  For whatever reason, students seem not to make sufficient use of the premium databases the school makes available, even the higher-profile ones like Nexis and Factiva.  However, a lot of you did know to use ReferenceUSA for the corporate sales volume question, so that was good (…although maybe it was because I assured there would be a RefUSA question on the quiz).

The biggest surprise (and disappointment) was that not many knew where to go for the 1996 New York Times web headlines, especially since we had just reviewed the Wayback Machine the previous week, so it should have been fresh in mind.  I would have expected that to be one of the quicker and easier questions on the quiz.

Apparently, the easiest questions were the ones on Prue’s web site, the sex offenders and the police precinct crime stats.  Almost all of you got credit on those.  The last of the three should have been easy though, given that you already had to do it for the CD beat memo.

So that’s all, folks.  Enjoy your holiday break.  I may be back with some of you next semester; ya never know.  If not, just remember, ARE YOU SURE? and SAYS WHO?

And WHO DAT?!?! (LOL)

First, another reminder…

On Tuesday morning, you will have a final research quiz.  You will be tested on your knowledge of topics discussed in class, as well as handout/blog resources that may or may not have been discussed in class.  It will be one hour in duration and “open blog.”  Short answer format, typically requiring you to find facts and figures.  No essays.  No multiple choice.  No trick questions.  NO MAKE UPS!

I also want to emphasize that you shouldn’t be fooled into thinking “open blog” makes the quiz a breeze.  As I said this week, there’s a “beat the clock” element factored into it, so you don’t want to waste time hunting around for resources.  Familiarize yourself with my blog posts and handouts beforehand!

Second, I want to highly recommend the January Academy courses being taught by Barbara Gray and Barbara Oliver on 1/3 and 1/18 respectively.  Getting all the research knowledge you can from as many pros as you can here at school will serve you well when you graduate.