For your first journalistic writing assignment, you will be creating a “one-number story.” This is a short piece (250-500 words, which is about 1-2 pages double-spaced) that focuses on one number. A maximum, a mean, a percent change, etc. You will probably have more than one numeral in the story, because you will want to contextualize your number, but the focus should be on one small conclusion.

We will be using the Massachusetts education data (data dictionary). You may want to narrow your analysis to think about a particular town, a particular type of school, etc. Make a copy of the spreadsheet in your own Drive directory to work with.

You may want to consider using some google spreadsheet operations, like sorting and filtering data, using statistics like average (mean), median, max, etc., and pivot tables (a way to summarize by groups).

You should keep track of the operations you have done somewhere (maybe in a separate sheet of your document, in a text document, etc). This is important for your work so you can back up your statements with evidence. When you speak to your “editor” (in this class, me or a peer), you may need to justify your claims.

Elements:

• Headline
• Byline
• Lede (soft or hard)
• Nutgraph
• Exposition
• Word count

Considerations:

• Accuracy
• Context of data
• Spelling and grammar
• Clarity of writing