You will be writing an approximately 500-word-long “Standard Story,” using Sarah Cohen’s list. This means you could choose

• a budget, like the Massachusetts state budget or the Smith budget
• a weather event, like the supposedly forthcoming storm
• a ranking, like the US News and World Report College Rankings or the TIOBE programming language rankings
• another standard story you vett with me!

As always, I’d like your story to include all the standard journalistic elements:

• Headline
• Byline
• Lede (soft or hard)
• Nutgraph
• Exposition
• Conclusion, which hopefully wraps back around to the beginning of your story
• Word count

Considerations:

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