JOMC 390 – Business News Wire
Fall 2016, 3 credits

Instructor: Professor Chris Roush, 211 Carroll

Phone: 962-4092 (office); 903-8574 (home); 593-3921 (cell)

E-mail:

Office hours: 9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. on Monday, Wednesday; 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., and 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursday. Other times by appointment.

The class will meet at a time determined by the students.

Objectives: To develop a business news website providing real-time news from SEC filings to media organizations.

Program of study: Students will be part of a small team of business journalism majors working together to launch a business news website that will become the basis for a capstone course for business journalism majors in Spring 2017 called “Business News Wire.”

This independent study will:

1.Launch a website that contains breaking news about North Carolina public companies based on their SEC filings;

2.Create templates for those stories so that the content can be quickly written and downloaded to the site;

3.Market the content to interested media organizations in North Carolina;

4.Develop a daily email alert system that sends out daily a budget of stories available to North Carolina media organizations;

5.Hold a presentation at the end of the semester to present the wire service and its content to North Carolina media organizations.

Students will be graded based on:

1.Quality of work;

2.Ability to work as a team;

3.Ease at determining how to use Sqoop.com to find stories;

4.Number of stories produced;

5.Amount of stories picked up by media organizations.

Stories will include:

1.8-K materially important events happening in public North Carolina companies;

2.Insider buying and selling;

3.Quarterly earnings;

4.Companies filing to sell additional shares;

5.Executive compensation;

6.Buying and selling of stock by major shareholders;

7.Regional economic data such as unemployment;

8.Form D filings for private companies

9.Patent and trademark applications.

Setting up Sqoop.com:

1. Go to sqoop.com and create an account.

2. Under search, click on “Search in your current location.”

3. Under name, enter “North Carolina.”

4. Under state, enter “NC.”

5. Click the green “save” button.

6. In the left-hand column, click all of the SEC filings except for

“Insiders 3/4/5.”

7. Click the green “Save Search” button.

8. Add a title to the search.

9. Under “Alert settings,” add how many times a day you want to receive the email.

10. Click “save.”

You will now get alerts of SEC filings from North Carolina companies.

Other:

  1. Each student will be responsible for covering the SEC filings of one large company (More than $10 billion market cap.)
  2. Each student will be required to write three stories a week in the website. Students are free to write more. The more you write, the more opportunities you have to get picked up by the media.
  3. At the end of each story, add the tagline, “This story is from the North Carolina Business News Wire, a service of UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Media and Journalism.”
  4. Each student will be responsible for writing a story template for a different type of story and sharing those with the other students. (We will write at least eight different types of stories this semester.)
  5. Each student will email me when their stories are in the website to let me know to edit/approve them.

Stories:

  1. Each story must include the town or city where the company is headquartered.
  2. Each story must include a sentence describing what the company does.
  3. Each story must include the company’s current stock price, if publicly traded.
  4. Your byline will be your first and last name followed by “NC Biz News Wire” underneath.
  5. Each story must include a link to the SEC filing.

Teamwork exercises:

Week One:

Team One will develop a list of media contacts to send daily email of story budget

Team Two will build the email platform

Team Three will build Twitter/Facebook and other social media

Each student writes one story for the wire using Sqoop.

Week Two:

Team One will write and distribute introductory email

Team Two will develop website format, such as stories on home page, company pages, stock ticker.

Team Three will install and test bot to automatically feed social media

Each student writes two stories for the wire using Sqoop.

Week Three through Nine:

All teams will write three stories per person using Sqoop.

Week 10 through 14:

Team One will explore writing stories on analyst upgrades and downgrades

Team Two will explore viability of using Automated Insights software to write programmed stories

Team Three will explore writing stories on patent and trademark applications

Week 15:

All teams will present to media

NOTE:

Speed is a necessary component to running a business wire service. People make investment and business decisions based on what they read every day. We will explore how speed plays a part in the North Carolina Business News Wire throughout the semester.

Honor Code:

I expect that each student will conduct himself or herself within the guidelines of the University honor system ( All academic work should be done with the high levels of honesty and integrity that this University demands. You are expected to produce your own work in this class. If you have any questions about your responsibility or your instructor’s responsibility as a faculty member under the Honor Code, please see the course instructor or Senior Associate Dean Charlie Tuggle, or you may speak with a representative of the Student Attorney Office or the Office of the Dean of Students.

Seeking Help:

If you need individual assistance, it’s your responsibility to meet with the instructor. If you are serious about wanting to improve your performance in the course, the time to seek help is as soon as you are aware of the problem – whether the problem is difficulty with course material, a disability, or an illness.

Diversity:

The University’s policy on Prohibiting Harassment and Discrimination is outlined in the 2011-2012 Undergraduate Bulletin UNC is committed to providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for all members of our community and does not discriminate in offering access to its educational programs and activities on the basis of age, gender, race, color, national origin, religion, creed, disability, veteran’s status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.

Special Accommodations:

If you require special accommodations to attend or participate in this course, please let the instructor know as soon as possible. If you need information about disabilities visit the Department of Disability Services website at

This course teaches the following ACEJMC values:

  • Demonstrate an understanding of professional ethical principles and work ethically in pursuit of truth, accuracy, fairness and diversity;
  • Think critically, creatively and independently;
  • Conduct research and evaluate information by methods appropriate to the communications professions in which they work;
  • Write correctly and clearly in forms and styles appropriate for the communications professions, audiences and purposes they serve;
  • Critically evaluate their own work and that of others for accuracy and fairness, clarity, appropriate style and grammatical correctness;
  • Apply basic numerical and statistical concepts.