The Thrill of the Story
I’ve been teaching journalism at NYU since 2005. I’m an adjunct there, and I usually teach one or two courses a year. It’s one of the most professionally gratifying things I do. Nothing pleases me more than when a student gets that rush of excitement from a story he or she is working on for class. Of course teaching them the tools of the trade is essential, but above all I want my students to fall in love with journalism. Or at least have an affair with it in my class. So last week, a student said something that was music to my ears:
I hate nature but I love this class
The course I taught this semester was titled, Hidden New York: Where the Wild Things Are. (I was fortunate in that I was allowed to design the theme, which I briefly wrote about here several months ago.) It’s an Advanced Reporting class, and most of the students seemed to really enjoy it. It also delights me that a student who otherwise could care less about ecological and sustainability topics actually liked learning about them. I think that’s because I had the students immerse themselves in two of their major assignments. And I let them choose what caught their interest.
For example, the student who “hates nature” became a “freegan” for two weeks and wrote a hilarious and well-reported story on a fairly new subculture. Another student became a beekeeper. Others took up composting, (all-weather) surfing, birding, among other ventures, to explore facets of nature and sustainability in an urban landscape. Most of them seemed to have a blast. I also had them set up a blog and they did a great job with that, as well.
Today’s the last day of class, so that means pizza and the obligatory wrap-up of the semester’s main take-away lessons. Roughly half of my students are graduating in December, which means the next chapter of their lives is about to begin.
Here’s hoping they continue to be as adventuresome and open-minded as they were in this class.
How’s Pale Male and his brood doing these days?
Wow. Sounds like you have a lot of very interesting, intelligent, students with diverse experiences and huge amounts of imagination and opinion, with differing amounts of education, science education, and knowledge.
Do you have some tips on what you do to them to turn them into unbiased, objective, neutral reporters??
(Does any of that apply to the process in which lawyers who spend years defending one side suddenly become unbiased, objective, neutral judges?)
Francis, funny you should ask. Our first class field trip was to see Pale Male in Central Park, where he graced us with his presence.
Also, Marie Winn, author of Red Tails in Love, met with the class on the field trip and enthralled us with stories of her colorful career in journalism. She was terrific.
I find those “I was a <fill in the blank>for a week articles particularly annoying. Even worse is when they become a book: “I went slumming with the workers at Walmart overnight, and now I’ll share the secrets of working-class people with their betters.”
Sorry – this inevitably leads to trite, superficial commentary on the topic.
Kieth:
There is a useful resource for Journalism at the FrontLine Club website. They hold regular events, some in combination with the BBC School of Journalism, which they thoughfully video and back available online. There are about 200+ such 60-90 minute pieces available.
Here is one dealing with “Data skills and techniques for journalists”:
http://frontlineclub.com/events/2010/09/on-the-media-data-skills-and-techniques-for-journalists.html
Another dealing with the impact of the internet on revenue models etc.
“Google: friend or foe for news publishers?
http://frontlineclub.com/events/2010/08/google-friend-or-foe-for-news-publishers.html
Others deal with the tragic decline in foriegn correspondents, twitter sourcing, citizen journalism; the requirement to video with one hand, snap with another, blog with your toes and tweet loudly whilst being shot at. The club inherits a concentration on foreign conflict and photogernalism from its foundation as a independent source of content bureau.
They may not all be rivetting but just to have groups of jouranlists discussing the the craft is helpful for the lay-person e.g. for me; and as the audience has a sizable representation of journalists it should be of interest to people in the trade.
Alex
Alex,
Thanks for the links. The profession is being transformed, that’s for sure, and all this is something we talk a lot about in journalism classes.
Personally, I preach the glass is half full philosophy, that today’s students are in the vanguard of a revolution, and that they should view it as an opportunity to help remake the industry so journalism can still thrive.
Kieth:
The Frontlineclub is not well indexed but one can google:
site:frontlineclub.com/events/ subjectof interest viddler
you may get video or just audio or sometimes not much at all.
or
video google:
site:viddler.com frontline club subjectof interest
to get just videos.
subjectofinterest has useful coverage for: journalism afghanistan iraq economics climate hiv/aids guantanamo obama wikileeks
plus much more.
Some of the content is about the subject but the focus is on the craft of journalism. So it might not be of interest many casual watchers. I for my sins have watched most or all of the video content. I have an interest in the making of news, the writing of history, and particularly manufacture of propaganda.
Journalism is I think having its “Cambrian Explosion” moment. I think there is cause for much optimism but it is a winners and losers, evolve or wither game. So much is going on, so many challenges. We have the immediacy of the communications pulling one way but the awesome retention of information creating opportunities for richness of context and histoircal value at the same time and the burden that goes with this, producing long-tailed ephemera. Much remains to be done on the technology, I should like to see “smart links” (links to content not url) so that archival retrieval is optimised.
For those interested enough to read this far, Frontline Television News was founded by:
Rory Peck (1956-1993) killed Russia
Nicholas della Casa (1960-1991) killed Northern Iraq
Vaughan Smith
Peter Jouvenal
Vaughan Smith survived somewhat miraculously and founded the Frontline Club.
Alex