Goebel likes 'get-to-the-point' style, sidebars

In an effort to bring true high school journalism to a textbook, authors John Reque, Susan Hathaway Tantillo, Judy Babb, Melissa McIntosh and Bryan Denham--all former or current publications advisers--have created the Course book Introduction to Journalism. The Nextext (a division of McDougall Littell) course book provides concise chapters on critical areas of journalism: law and ethics, news and news writing, interviewing, quoting, in-depth reporting, style, features, editorials, columns and reviews, sports writing, photojournalism, production and design of yearbook, newspaper and magazines and even broadcast journalism. It's a complete course. Each chapter contains several entry points on each page, numerous sidebars, infographics and artwork, vocabulary, models of the journalistic element or writing covered in the chapter, checklists and advice from or stories about real press persona. The book is lightweight and compact. Its cost is inexpensive, especially compared to the other journalism textbooks approved by the state. Lastly, adopters of the books receive free access to these support materials on the Internet: additional background for teaching each lesson, study guides and worksheets to print out, online quizzes with immediate feedback, bibliographies to help with students' research projects and links to related websites.

Camille Goebel, New Albany adviser, joins a panel of IHSPA officers and advisers who are reviewing the recent state adopted journalism texts.

These are just the facts about the book. This book offers so much more. It's obvious that journalists wrote the text for journalists. They have a much clearer understanding of what needs to be covered in a beginning journalism course than any other textbook writer would. For example, in the interview section, one of the helpful sidebars deals with whether to allow a source to see a story pre-publication. This situation comes up often in a high school setting, which means that a textbook that deals with handling this situation obviously was written by people familiar with handling it correctly. And that is just one example. Another bonus, the lessons are presented in easy-to-understand, get-to-the-point style, which students tend to appreciate more than the excruciating, eye-watering, lengthy lessons in most textbooks. Plus, since the lessons are shorter, an adviser can opt to use the course book as a reference rather than as a textbook, which would be great for staff members. Also, the models provided in most textbooks don't relate to anything students would write in a high school paper. The examples provided in Introduction to Journalism came from actual award-winning publications, and are usually the award-winning pieces themselves. The one downside to Introduction to Journalism would have to be its lack of color. Only the cover is in color, and even at that, it isn't extremely attractive. But, color and cover aside, the book itself is clearly the best of any on the Indiana approved journalism textbooks list and would prove itself useful to advisers and students alike.