Popular Culture Journalism (JOUR494): Class recap for Dec. 3 — reviewing the reviewers
Continuing my end-of-semester metaphor — this is what it’s like: Today, however, we turned our attention to the criticism/reviews that students filed this semester. The TV recappers — Heather Jurva, Levi Hunt, Caitlyn Walsh — had to file five, 500-word recaps of consecutive episodes, and did so quite ably. Levi nitpicked “The Walking Dead,” even…
Read MorePopular 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…
Read MoreIn the middle of all this, another TONSIL book giveaway: Eric Deggans! David Von Drehle!
More interesting-looking books have just come out, written by people I know and like. Act quick and you could get a copy for yourself. I’ve purchased TWO copies each of new books by David Von Drehle and Eric Deggans: Deggans, the extremely sharp and prolific TV/media critic for the Tampa Bay Times, is out with…
Read MorePopular Culture Journalism (JOUR494): Class recap for Oct. 29 — What is this REALLY about?
My day never really gets going until I read what Nancy Nall has to say, as well as her regular commenters. Reading her blog has been a daily habit for, gosh, maybe a decade now. Lately, both in class and in the Kaimin critiques on Friday (the student-run paper at the University of Montana), I’ve…
Read MorePopular Culture Journalism (JOUR494): Class recap for Oct. 24 — television without pity
Busy class on Wednesday. We finished up critiquing the personal essay riffs: Dustin on “Lost”; Cody on “The Gong Show” reruns; Ashley on “Supernatural” and boy bands; Allison on “The Office’s” Jim & Pam romance; and Carli on loving the ’80s, even though she missed the ’80s entirely. Good discussions. Then we talked about progress…
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