CMS 4500: Presentation

Students will give a formal, 8-10 minute speech, analyzing a recent news article published in a major national newspaper (e.g. the New York Times, the Guardian, the Standard, the Mail and Guardian). The article must have appeared between April 31, 2016, and May 1, 2017.

The speech will link the article to the terms and concepts presented by our textbook, other assigned readings/screenings, and class discussions.

Each student must find and “claim” a unique article. To claim an article, students should post the article’s title, newspaper, and URL to the “Presentations” Discussion forum in Georgia View. (Of course, different newspapers often cover the same story, and follow-up articles are often written about the same event. If a student chooses to present on events already claimed by another speaker, he or she must make new connections between the story and our class material.)

Speakers are required to create a one-page study guide for the speech and post it as an attachment to the “Presentations” Discussion forum in Georgia View. You may also choose to use presentation slides (e.g. PowerPoint) and audiovisual evidence (e.g. YouTube). Please remember that this evidence should supplement rather than dominate your presentation.

Business attire is required. For men, this means a tie and a suit or jacket/slacks. Women do not need to wear a suit, but they should dress professionally.

The speech will be evaluated using the Speaking Criteria.

Extra Credit

You can earn up to five points extra credit on your speech by completing the following. To earn full credit, these steps must be completed at least one week before the date of your presentation.

  1. Create a Twitter account if you do not already have one. Your name must be included on the account’s profile page. (If for some reason you do not want to use your real name, let me know and I will give you a pseudonym.)
  2. Tweet a link to your story from your Twitter account. (To conserve your 140 characters, you may want to use a link shorten-er like bitly.)
  3. Include in the tweet a concrete explanation of the story’s relevance to our class.
  4. Important: Include the #cms4500 hash tag in your tweet.

Remember that (4) is crucial, and it’s also hard: doing everything else and linking your story to our class material—all in 140 characters or less—will take some careful writing and editing. The clearer the link, the better your grade for this assignment. The post below demonstrates the kind of explicit link that I am expecting.