Archive for November 2012
Popular Culture Journalism (JOUR494): Class recap for Nov. 28 — Emergency landings
Mayday! Jour494 is circling for a landing. And the pilot is losing consciousness. And the wing is on fire. No, wait, both wings are on fire! Which is to say that some people are still trying to find a story to write for their final assignment. The only good news is that there are no…
Read MorePopular Culture Journalism (JOUR494): Class recap for Nov. 26 — name of dog, brand of beer
On Monday, we finished up critiquing the Nov. 7 scene stories. For my general diagnoses of these stories as a whole, please see the Nov. 19 recap. Meanwhile, here are excerpts from the three stories that I liked best, and why. (I haven’t fixed anything — the copy you’ll read here is exactly as it…
Read MorePopular Culture Journalism (JOUR494): Class recap for Nov. 19 — scene story critiques
On Monday we went around our beautiful circular wooden classroom table and began critiquing the scene stories that were filed Nov. 7. Some of the stories have been published in the Kaimin once the writers filed to me first: Dustin Askim’s story on the campus Belegarth scene grew a little in word-count and became a…
Read MorePopular Culture Journalism (JOUR494): Class recap for Nov. 14 — Won’t you be my neighbor?
We spent a fair amount of time Wednesday discussing Tom Junod’s 8,100-word profile of Mister Rogers. It ran 14 (!!) years ago in Esquire and it’s still one of those pieces that makes me tear up. It’s beautifully constructed. Its paragraphs are dense but many of its sentences are deliberately simple, mirroring Fred Rogers’s way…
Read MorePopular Culture Journalism (JOUR494): Class recaps for Nov. 5 and 7 — Weingarten week!
Sorry for the delay in recapping. You can tell that the semester has reached the frenzy point here at the School of Journalism. My crew in the Pollner seminar (aka this class) is spread so thin that you can hear the knives clanking in their mayonnaise jars; just being around them makes me vicariously exhausted.…
Read MorePopular Culture Journalism (JOUR494): Class recap for Oct. 31 — Shaggs’ own thing
Last Wednesday’s class was more of a had-to-be-there thing. As we move into reading and talking about long (or sometimes just long-ish) narratives, our class sessions are becoming more and more like a book group. (Without wine and Trader Joe’s-style nosh, alas.) We wonder “how’d she get that?” and try to think of answers. We…
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