The paper: this will be due at the end of the semester. It should be a paper of 700 to 1,000 words focusing on such topics as important figures in the history of broadcast journalism, changes and/or trends in broadcast and online journalism, current topics of interest in broadcast and online journalism, and so on. Please discuss your paper topic with me by the midterm of the semester. I'm calling it a paper but it can be written as you would an article for the Centurion. Include plenty of background information from the Internet and, where appropriate, you can interview experts or scholars about your topic.

Here's an example of one student's paper.

Howard K. Smith: A Forefather of Modern Broadcast Journalism

            While he might not be as well known as his journalist mentor, Edward R. Murrow, Howard K. Smith is just as responsible for major changes and innovations in broadcast journalism during his time and since. Like his mentor, Smith was one of the first “anchormen” that the country looked to, not just for news, but for their opinions on the news, a trend that has become the predominant method of disseminating news to this day. Smith is, in all regards, a renegade in his impact on broadcast journalism and news media.

As one of The Murrow Boys, he was a war correspondent with Murrow and a team of journalists who would all go on to have successful careers in their own right. With his team of reporters, Smith was present in Germany during the final days of the Third Reich’s fall. He was also one of the main journalists covering the Battle of the Bulge and the Nuremberg trials after the war. Smith’s in-depth coverage of those events, , like Murrow’s, gave Americans a clear picture of the horrors and atrocities taking place in Nazi Germany. Smith was also one of the only American journalists to interview the leaders of the Nazi Party, including Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, and Adolf Hitler himself. These interviews gave Americans and the world a close-up look at the people responsible for the country that almost took over the world. Smith’s ability to ask questions no one else was asking made it possible for him to show what the Nazis were actually doing during World War II.

His war broadcasts were just the beginning of his long career; after joining CBS after the war, Smith went on to interview then-presidential nominee Richard Nixon and gave the country an in-depth look at the man whose political life seemed to be taking a nose-dive. He also interviewed John F. Kennedy and moderated the debates between the two, where Kennedy came out the victor and Nixon seemed like he would never have another chance at winning the presidency.

After his interviews with the presidential hopeful, Smith’s relationship with Nixon found a renewed interest in the public eye when, after joining ABC, Smith broadcast a series of talks between National Review founder and conservative intellectual William F. Buckley and liberal novelist Gore Vidal, who argued not just on the politics of the country at the time, but the social climate that they were living in. With Smith curating the discussions, Americans got a chance to see two people who embodied two completely opposite points of view argue over the presidential hopefuls and the times they lived in, with Smith even having to calm the two normally dull individuals when push almost came to shove at one of the last debates.

These debates, where Smith asked the two questions on race relations, gay rights, and freedom of speech, became the foundation for the future political broadcasting; pitting two people from opposite sides of the spectrum against one another. Most mainstream news outlets have copied this method for debates and it has shaped the way people talk about politics - including presidential politics to this day. Most recently this was exemplified in the debates between now-president Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

When war broke out in Vietnam, America was suffering casualties in a war many people felt we shouldn’t be in. Smith, however, became a vocal supporter of sending even more troops and became an anchor whose personal opinions shaped how he delivered the news. In a fashion similar to Murrow’s attacks on Joseph McCarthy, Smith attacked the anti-war movement by saying that if we failed to control the situation in Vietnam, Communism would come to our front door. This was a major turning point in how politics and personal opinion made their way into mainstream news.

While he might not be as remembered or celebrated as Edward Murrow, Howard Smith can be remembered for his major contributions to the worlds of broadcast journalism and news media, which he shaped by bringing personal opinion and politics more into the limelight with the news.