Text of Email I Just Sent the Class

An optical illusion. Square A is exactly the same shade of grey as square B. See demonstration. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Attached is a sample Big Story. At the end is an outline. On the outline is a statement of theme. For Tuesday I want you give me a paragraph stating the theme of your Big Story *based on what you now know*. Preface it with, "At the moment I anticipate that this will be the theme of my story."

Of course, like a scientist, in your reporting you will explore all those things that contradict your possible theme. At the end of the reporting process, you will almost certainly have to rewrite your theme.

From the livescience blog:

The basic idea of a hypothesis is that there is no pre-determined outcome. For a hypothesis to be termed a scientific hypothesis, it has to be something that can be supported or refuted through carefully crafted experimentation or observation. This is called falsifiability and testability, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Your Big Story will not be a scientific hypothesis in the narrow sense. But it can be a way of focusing your reporting and, perhaps, of discovering if you have a bias regarding your story that might distort your reporting.

Poking around on the web looking for definitions of hypothesis, I found one of particular interest. One possible definition of hypothesis is:

Educated Guess