By Michael J. Jordan, Visiting Professor, Renmin University of China

Our first course assignment – which generated this batch of stories – was to spotlight any News story on campus.

However, as I instructed the students, do NOT produce your story as if for the campus newspaper – for a local, “insider” audience. Instead, as if for a global news agency, aiming for that “smart, curious, international audience.”

This story teaches the core fundamentals of preparation, fact-gathering, interviewing and effective writing, which, as I told our Student-Journalists, “You’ll need for any career.”

With this assignment, each two-member team reports on ANY scheduled event. But in choosing which one, the event must first catch their eye as interesting. Then, their wider challenge: identify why exactly it may be interesting to the audience.

In doing so, try to “connect the dots” between this one event or incident, and what it reveals about the “Big Picture” of that issue within China, and Chinese society, itself.

For this story, interview at least two sources: an organizer and a participant.