You will be assigned on a Tuesday to do News Blurbals, a summary of the news of the week. The week runs from the Tuesday you are assigned it to the following Monday -- 7 days.

Your guide for doing Blurbals will be Slate.com's "Today's Papers." The purpose is to help students who may not be following the news a brief way to know what was important on the front pages of major papers.

Immediately upon assignment go to http://www.slate.com/?id=3944&cp=1649 and look for Tuesday's "Today's Papers." Choose "print" on the left side and print it out. Read it carefully. The first two paragraphs generally tell you what the top U.S. newspapers have decided are the main stories for that day. Go then to two of those newspapers and print out those stories (You will have to establish accounts with the nytimes.com and washingtonpost.com, etc. to do that. NOTE: The Wall Street Journal requires a payment; therefore, ignore the WSJ. The other sites--NYT, WP, LAT, USAToday-- are free.)

When it comes time on Sunday to write Blurbals, you will have collected six copies of "Today's Papers" and 12 \ stories that were the top stories of the week. Study what you have. Select what you think was the most important story for the week. In 100 words summarize that story. 

You should then write five more blurbals that are each 60-80 words long.

When you write, you should summarize in your own words, not plagiarize or copy. 

Write headlines for each story. The top headline should be two lines, each line consisting of about 16 letters or spaces. The headlines for each of the smaller stories should be about 40 letters or spaces long.