To Iraq and back...the Woodruff report

If, like me, you missed last night's special report by ABC News Correspondent Bob Woodruff, To Iraq and Back: Bob Woodruff Reports, you can still catch it online.

In an email to JMC faculty, Prof. Bob Rucker calls it "a truly remarkable and moving special report."

He continued, "This is absolutely GREAT television reporting...definitely EMMY Award caliber. It is also very very emotional TV. It's difficult not to tear up and cry when you see what Woodruff and some Iraqi war veterans went through, and now face as life-long battles for survival."

To watch the video, go to http://abcnews.go.com/ and click on Bob Woodruff links on the main page, or click on this direct link: http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=2909190.

(Cross-posted on McCunications)

PR 191 gets a blog!

It's the start of a new semester...so it must be time for a new blog.

This one is for students in my section of PR 191 -- Strategic Writing for Public Relations, a class offered at the School of Journalism and Mass Communications (JMC) at San Jose State University.

You can check out the PR 191 home page at http://jmcweb.sjsu.edu/mccune/191/191.html.

Here are direct links to the syllabus, class schedule and descriptions of class projects and assignments.

As part of this class, I've asked my students to follow one or two PR or media-related blogs this semester. They'll also work at developing their "editing eyes" through an assignment called "Copy Edit the World" (many thanks to Frank E. Fee Jr. of UNC-Chapel Hill for this exercise, which he shared through AEJMC's GIFT Program).

Periodically, I'll pose a question on this blog for my students to consider and write about. Here's the first one: What brings you to public relations?