Follow a professional news source

In this assignment you will explore the professional news source that you chose to follow regularly, to help you learn more about your chosen career community. You will pick one recent news article from that news source, and summarize it for discussion with your peers and in professional situations (like an interview).

Read this first

Amy Mitchell, Mark Jurkowitz, J. Baxter Oliphant And Elisa Shearer, "Americans Who Mainly Get Their News on Social Media Are Less Engaged, Less Knowledgeable Links to an external site.," Pew Research Center (July 30, 2020).

Complete these steps

1. Review the news source you chose to follow that is related to your career community. As we discussed in an earlier assignment, one of the most important ways to learn about a possible career field is to follow the professional news about that field. Your news source doesn't have to match your career community directly; for example, most daily newspapers have sections on "Business," "Health," "Arts," "Technology," etc. that you can follow which will provide news and ideas and opinions related to your broad area of interest.

Start an essay in a new word processing file. After the introductories (your name, your section, your TA, the date), list the career community and news source you chose. (The career community should be the one you chose in a previous assignment.) Put these at the top of the page, below the title.

NOTE: If you did not follow a professional news source in the assignment "Choose a career community," do so now! Revisit that prompt to see how to access news sources without paying for them.

2. Review the recent news. Look back through the previous days or weeks of coverage in your chosen professional news source to get a sense of what the most popular issues have been recently. Determine which themes that are coming up again and again: new technological developments? international trade and exchange? environmental issues? questions over new consumer trends? diversity and inclusion concerns? individual profiles of entrepreneurs?

Write two paragraphs describing the two most common areas of professional reporting that you are seeing right now – stories that are broadly related to your career community – and for each area, suggest why you think that topic is so newsworthy right now.

3. Analyze one particular story. Now choose one particular article to focus on, that you find intriguing or especially important. This article doesn't have to be precisely related to your major or the field you're interested in, but it should be relevant to the kind of work you could imagine yourself doing after college. Look for an article that is more than just a brief report like "this happened today" or "this person said that" – instead, try to find an investigative or analytical article that is a bit longer and has a bit more depth.

List the title, date, and author of this article in your paper, and then write a third paragraph to summarize the content of this news article in detail, as if you were explaining it to a coworker. Make sure to indicate why you find this article interesting or noteworthy of comment – how can knowing this information help you in your chosen field?

4. Check your formatting. Follow these formatting guidelines Download these formatting guidelines.

5. Turn it in. Upload your three-paragraph essay to Canvas to get credit for this assignment. If the article you found was online, include a link to the article in your essay.

Notes on this assignment

• Following the news of your career field can be a powerful tool in a summer job or internship – it demonstrates to your supervisor and coworkers that you're interested in the field, and you can use your knowledge of recent news stories to open up interesting conversations with colleagues in order to get to know them better.
• An awareness of the news in your career field is also a powerful tool for demonstrating your enthusiasm and interest in a job during an interview.

To learn more

• Keep reading (and listening to, and watching) the news!