Posts Tagged ‘Pollner professor’
Thank you
My semester as the T. Anthony Pollner professor at the University of Montana’s School of Journalism has been one of the best things that’s ever happened to me. (Yes, ever.) Thank you students, faculty, Kaimin staff and especially Carol Van Valkenburg. And, miles away but often in our thoughts, Alice Thorpe, Ben Pollner and friends…
Read MorePopular Culture Journalism (JOUR494): Class recap for Dec. 13 — The final critiques
We were up before dawn on Thursday to meet one last time for a group critique of the final stories. The professor worked hard not to get verklempt, but that got exponentially more difficult when he was presented with this amazing poster (above), a gift from the class, designed by Carli Krueger. It’s a graphic…
Read MorePopular Culture Journalism (JOUR494): Class recap for Dec. 5 — life is long
Wednesday was our last official class, which I set aside for just general gabbing and pre-goodbyes. Any questions? Any advice I can give? Anything? I was prepared to just tell them what a real joy it’s been to be here in Montana and work with them, and, once that was done, let class out early…
Read MorePopular 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. 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 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…
Read MorePopular Culture Journalism (JOUR494): Class recap for Oct. 22 — personal essay critiques
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…
Read MorePopular Culture Journalism (JOUR494): Class recap for Oct. 17 — How they did that scene story
We spent most of Wednesday’s class period talking about the five scene stories I assigned for readings. These are each different kinds of scene stories, and I want the students to keep these handy as they work on their own scene stories, due Nov. 7. The first one is a ride-along (literally), as Dan Zak…
Read More