Overview – Covering Silicon Valley

Business and technology make for fascinating stories and morality tales. To help readers understand how businesses succeed or fail and new innovations work, requires reporting, writing and technical skills that get beyond the corporate news release. In this course, students will learn business basics and how to write about technology by focusing on companies in Stanford's back yard. Students will identify trends, new products and trigger events that break news, as well as cover quarterly earnings reports, analyze public records, and write about key industry players. We'll also explore the venture capital money machine that fuels both Wall Street and Silicon Valley's entrepreneurial culture. To remove the "fear factor" we will look at a wide range of technology coverage and review business basics, including how to understand financial documents and Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Guest speakers will add to the discussion. Note that the guest lineup may change due to schedules.

Course Format

The course will be conducted as a seminar. Students will be expected to lead class discussions and come to class having completed the readings. Expect pop quizzes on readings.

Class Goals

In this class you will:

Assignments

Students will select a local public company to cover and be graded on five assignments of between 500 and 1,200 words. The first story will be based on an earnings report; the second the Joint Venture Silicon Valley conference. The third story will bed on a document. The fourth assignment will be a breaking news story based on a Stanford Entrepreneurship Week event. For the final project – conducted in cooperation with The Wall Street Journal, students will create an enterprise or multi-media story about their company.

Professional Journalism Disclosure

When interviewing anyone, on or off campus, you need to properly identify yourself as "a student reporter writing both an in-class assignment and a public story that could be published by major media outlets via The Peninsula Press." Make sure every subject understands at the outset that his or her words could appear in any one of our major media partners: KQED, The Bay Citizen, The San Francisco Chronicle.

Style & Format

All assignments must be double-spaced and turned in via email by deadline - prior to class. Every assignment must include the following: YOUR NAME.STORY#, as follows: grimes.story#1. grimes.story#1.rewrite; grimes.story#2., etc. We will follow AP Style. Students will upload their stories to the Graduate Journalism Program's website: http://peninsulapress.com

Deadlines

Grading

Final grades will be determined on a point system as follows: (100-96 = A; 95-90 = A-; 89-86 = B+; 85-81 = B; 80-78 = B-; 77-75 = C+; 74-66 = C; 65-61 = C-, etc.) Stories will be graded based on the following: Quality and appropriateness of ledes/nut graphs/kickers; breadth and depth of reporting (including the number of interviews); organization, grammar and spelling; critical thinking; news value; timeliness; and quality of writing. Assignments will be evaluated as a group. Students may rewrite their stories once to improve their grade. Since we will run the class like a newsroom, participation counts, and, of course, the Honor Code applies. Class begins promptly and late work will not be accepted. If you must miss class, you must inform the instructor well in advance, otherwise it will impact your grade. To be clear: No-shows will lose points.

Grades:

Required Readings

Schedule

View the Class Schedule for weekly guests, assignments and readings.