Author
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 was filed to me.)
Although I didn’t plan it this way, it worked out nicely that Monday’s critique session in class was the day Alice Thorpe came to visit Journalism 494. Alice is the mother of Anthony Pollner, the Montana alum in whose memory all of this happens. She came from New York for her annual trip to visit the J-school, the students, and hear the Pollner professor’s big lecture. We were delighted to see her.
We spent the entire class period Wednesday doing roundtable critiques of the reported essays. For the handful of you reading this blog way outside of room 301, this is where we’re mostly going to have to leave you out of the fun. When it comes to this part of the process, what happens in room 301 stays in room 301.
I split the class into two groups last week: Group A read all of the essays in Group B; and Group B read A. They were encouraged to mark them up like crazy. For the critique sessions, I put the essays in random order. We spent roughly six minutes on each — and we still have a few left to do on Monday, before we try to figure out George Trow.