Bob Stepno teaches journalism at the University of Tennessee. In addition to being an interesting guy and the go-to source for the history of electronic journalism and all things newspaper related, he's an innovative teacher who incorporates media websites and blogs into his course work and lectures, and uses his own blogs for class outlines and lecture notes.

This week, one of his lectures is about "online news writing" (and the question of whether there is such a thing), and he posted his lecture notes at his blog. Although it is aimed primarily at his journalism students, this is an excellent opportunity for serious bloggers to benefit from a free crash course in news writing.

Here are his lecture notes, which contain a treasure trove of ideas and exercises on writing style, organization, presentation, and lots more. Well worth bookmarking for future reference.

(Memo to Bob's students: you'd probably do well to read the lecture notes carefully. Your question "Will this be on the test?" is anticipated and answered.)

Now if we could just persuade Bob to develop a "citizen journalist handbook" (maybe he can con his students into doing it as an assignment, heh)...