Whether your audience is newspaper readers, magazine browsers, television viewers, web surfers or book buyers, you need to know how to write clearly, concisely, and with style. Good writing is grounded in critical thinking, extensive research and comprehensive reporting, and that's what this class will teach you how to do. The only way to learn is by doing, and you do lots with New York City as your classroom. You will cover a myriad of topics from 9/11 memorials, to tourist traps, to Halloween business, to election issues, to the New York City marathon, to holiday rituals. You'll also do several "ridealongs" with police, night court judges and assorted characters, journalists, marathon runners, and politicians. The goal is to give you a full range of research, reporting and writing experiences, with more than 20 assignments. Books include Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, The Girls on the Van by Beth Harpaz and On Writing Well by William Zinsser. The class is open to first-semester graduate students only.

This is a professional course, concentrating on the basics of the craft of journalism — coming up with an idea, getting it approved, reporting the facts, organizing the material and writing the story. Students will spend a lot of time looking for story ideas, and pitching them — a critical part of the real-world newsroom experience. Perhaps the biggest emphasis of the class will be on the most important part of journalism: gathering the facts. Students will have many reporting exercises during in-class drill sessions, but will also do a great deal of "live" street reporting. We will rely much more on primary sources — original documents, and especially what people tell us — rather than secondary sources that are better suited for the background that sends us to primary sources.

In drills and in the stories produced outside of class, students will learn the classic styles of organizing and writing, and will begin learning what works best for them on different types of stories. We'll read and analyze many examples of the day's news, looking at what works, what doesn't and why. We'll look at what gets covered, what doesn't, and the impact of both. The ethics of journalism will be a constant undercurrent for all our work and discussions.

In addition to exercises produced during drill sessions, students will do a number of street-reporting assignments. Possible story ideas might cover some aspect of a city agency, the courts, police, the arts, culture, business and sports. The story assignments are not merely drills; goal is to produce stories that can be published.

This class aims to lay the foundation for a career in journalism, extremely challenging but extremely stimulating, with the focus always on best practices for the communications professional in the 21st century.

It will be our challenge to hone the fundamentals of reporting and writing - from interviewing and developing sources to identifying the story, to gaining a mastery and confidence in our command of structure. The ability to find a story, to get to the small and large details, and to present it cogently and with power and grace, is critical, perhaps more in these times than in any other. We will be industrious and agile in our use of research materials and sources. As we go, we will also find ways to push the boundaries, to breathe personality and passion into our work. We will use that passion not at the expense of the people and issues in your stories, but to make them more real. Through the managing of beats, numerous field assignments, both daily and longer-term, and in-class drills, we will learn to report and write clearly and yet with sophistication. With distance and with humanity. With directness and with subtlety. As journalists and as people who bring a sense of caring to our subjects, we will understand fundamentally that the bedrock of strong writing is knowledge and ideas, and that these in turn are rooted in expert reporting. We will be devoted to these objectives.

This class is your newsroom. You will learn to research, pitch story ideas, find the right angles, hit the streets and write it up on deadline. You will use this incredible city, rich with culture, diversity, money and power, to learn and practice your skills. There will be numerous opportunities to get out in the city and cover news. We will cover events, but we will always be looking for the twist that makes it different, that makes our work the best read in town. We will hunt for news in neighborhoods, city hall, police stations and anywhere else we can find it. There will be news quizzes and "Newscheck" where each one of you will have to pick a story out of the front pages of The New York Times and lead the class in a discussion of it. We will have journalists come to our newsroom and tell us what life is like on the job. Ultimately journalism is about people, their stories and the government and services that enable them to live their lives. This class is about finding your voice and embracing the community you cover with passion, respect and understanding. In the process you will strengthen you skills in the fundamentals of journalism.

Nonfiction is grounded in solid reporting. It is the backbone of worthy journalism and the source of your authority as a writer. Conversely, good reporting must be carried in the arms of lucid prose. You will learn these skills in this class. We will cover each step in producing a news story: developing and pitching ideas, researching and interviewing, writing, editing and re-writing. We'll read and discuss good journalism, including Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, and talk with New York writers and editors. Research: You will learn to tap a variety of documentary sources—not just Google. Reporting: You will talk to strangers and work the phone. Be prepared to go out on the streets at night and on weekends. Be ready to approach voters, cops and a man dressed as Jacqueline Kennedy in the Halloween Parade. Jamaican livery drivers, Chinese restaurant workers, Dominican barbers. Distracted political operatives and C-List TV actors. Writing: First, you will meet deadlines; second, you will learn from your mistakes; third, you will become a maniac for revision. Finally: You will endure a weekly News Quiz, which will mostly be based on The New York Times with a couple of fun questions from The Onion. Your humorous answers will be collected in a recap and shared with your classmates. These recaps are a Comedy Riot. But please don't call the police—The Quiz is harmless.

Students will develop the skills to edit news stories and write headlines and photo captions with attention to libel, news value, fairness, grammar and style under deadline pressure. Students will also become familiar with page layout and design. Students will develop better writing skills by becoming familiar with what good editors expect from writers. They will also learn what writers should expect from editors. Students will edit stories and write headlines with deadlines and space limits to create the atmosphere of a newspaper on deadline. The professor will critique the work according to professional standards. Drills will include style and areas such as thoroughness of reporting, accuracy, wordiness, spelling, grammar, fairness, taste and libel. Stories from various sources, including the textbook, news wire services and reporters of the New York Times, will be used for editing. Every class will include a current events quiz. The final project will be the production of page one of a daily newspaper. The assignment will include selecting stories and photos, laying out the page, editing the stories and writing headlines and captions.

Although the First Amendment appears on its face to prohibit any governmental restrictions on the press, the U.S. Supreme Court in fact balances free and open expression against other vital interests of society. This course begins by examining the struggle against seditious libel (the crime of criticizing government or its officials) that was not won in this country until the landmark decision in New York Times v. Sullivan in 1964. Students will examine freedom of the press through the prism of a rich variety of contemporary conflicts, including libel, newsgathering problems, the right of privacy, prior restraint, and the conflict between free press and fair trial. Readings include a The First Amendment and the Fourth Estate; Make No Law by Anthony Lewis, The Unwanted Gaze by Jeffrey Rosen, and Origins of the Bill of Rights by Leonard Levy. Students write five papers during the semester.

This course offers through the case method a critical examination of current and recurring ethical and legal issues in journalism. Areas covered include reporting practices, roles of editors and executives, conflict of interest, sources, defamation and privacy, criminal justice and national security.

In this class we will examine issues surrounding ethics in journalism, including print, the Web, radio and television. Over the past decade, there has been growing disenchantment with "the media." One study found that between 1985 and 2002, public confidence in the accuracy of newspapers fell from 80 percent to 59 percent with a corresponding decline in readership. Consolidation in the news business means five corporations control what we read, hear and watch, and this has tremendous impact on how we think. Media critics can't seem to agree on whether there is a liberal bias or a sharp conservative slant to journalism. Scandals like Stephen Glass (The New Republic), Jayson Blair (The New York Times) and Jack Kelley (USA Today) have rocked the profession. The proliferation of cable news channels and shows has resulted in more outlets than ever chasing a shrinking viewership and led to an explosion in punditry, where the lines between fact and opinion get blurrier by the minute. Meanwhile, greater numbers of people (about 15%) are getting their information from the Internet, both from traditional publishers with an online presence and wild and wooly blogs. All of this together contributes to a news culture more interested in being first than being right. By delving into case studies, reading books and articles that take a hard look at the decision makers and the editorial choices they make, discussing current ethical dilemmas in media (they pop up all the time), and doing your own reporting and writing on the subject, you will learn how to examine the news critically as a consumer of media, and (hopefully) make ethical choices as a journalist.

This course attempts to gain perspective on the way media evolve, particularly in their journalistic uses, by studying the history of forms of communication: from writing to television. It then challenges students to use this perspective and perhaps further the development of contemporary news media, by experimenting with journalism that employs new styles or techniques or tackles new subjects. Readings will range from Plato to Sontag to Kundera. Assignments may wander into video or digital forms as well as print, though no previous experience with these media is required. A willingness to rethink and reinvent is required.

A special section of the department's standard survey of non-fiction literature in English from John Milton to John McPhee...and beyond. This is a section for writers who want to learn the technique of "deep reading," sometimes called explication de text, a method of teasing out the literary technique, literary devices and secrets of syntax and language that make great writing great. Students who have taken this course report that it changes forever the way they read and look at text, any text. This is a section for students who want to learn to read like a writer, think like a writer, see the world through a writer's eyes. It is a classic seminar, a lively and animated discussion of non-fiction literature led by student seminar leaders following protocols set by the instructor. There are five graded "explications," short analyses of sections of text. (The instructor has written a 30-page guide to explication that makes this practice both painless and profitable.) The final is a 2,000-word paper. And there is an optional final for extra credit, a five-minute "oral" final to be delivered in a gallery at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The reading are collected in a coursepack. Two additional books, Whitman's Memoranda During the War, and Hersey's Hiroshima, are also required.

A special section of the department's standard survey of non-fiction literature in English from John Milton to John McPhee...and beyond. This is a section for writers who want to learn the technique of "deep reading," sometimes called explication de text, a method of teasing out the literary technique, literary devices and secrets of syntax and language that make great writing great. Students who have taken this course report that it changes forever the way they read and look at text, any text. This is a section for students who want to learn to read like a writer, think like a writer, see the world through a writer's eyes. It is a classic seminar, a lively and animated discussion of non-fiction literature led by student seminar leaders following protocols set by the instructor. There are five graded "explications," short analyses of sections of text. (The instructor has written a 30-page guide to explication that makes this practice both painless and profitable.) The final is a 2,000-word paper. And there is an optional final for extra credit, a five-minute "oral" final to be delivered in a gallery at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The reading are collected in a coursepack. Two additional books, Whitman's Memoranda During the War, and Hersey's Hiroshima, are also required.

Note: Seminar is open to first semester GIR students

This seminar will consider the tradition of women cultural critics in England and America, tracing its development through the work of critics including Rebecca West, Mary McCarthy, Joan Didion and Janet Malcolm, and concluding with contemporary debates about sexual politics. Through close readings of their works, the seminar will explore the stylistic innovations of these writers; the different ways, delicate, subtle, blunt, in which politics inform their writing; and the various tactics, polemical, whimsical, intimate, that these critics employ. We will pay particular attention to the use of the personal voice in cultural criticism, that is, the balance of lived experience and ideas, in its most literary and debased forms. We will also touch on the ways in which these writers have influenced or informed each other's work. There will be one final paper: either a critical essay on one or more of the writers we have studied, or an original piece of cultural criticism.

This beginning course introduces students to field reporting. Students learn to develop story ideas, write to picture, structure a story and conduct interviews and shoot and edit. Beat assignments cover a variety of topics in the neighborhoods of New York. As the course develops, detailed script analysis is combined with in-depth discussions of the completed pieces. Students work in teams of 2-3. They use small DV cameras, linear and non-linear editing systems.

Writing, Research & Reporting I: BER is designed to teach the basic skills you'll need to write news stories for business publications. You'll learn everything from how to write on a daily (or even hourly) deadline for newspapers and wire services to penning short pieces for magazines. The emphasis will be on learning by doing, with regular reporting and writing assignments inside and outside of class. We'll workshop your stories in class, dissect current media coverage, take field trips to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Conference Board and New York Stock Exchange, and analyze the merit and structure of good (and bad) news stories. You'll be expected to stay abreast of the news, and to read The New York Times and Wall Street Journal regularly, as well as a number of business magazines (Fortune, Forbes, BusinessWeek, etc.) and websites. By the end of the semester, you should be able to write snappy ledes and smart nut grafs in your sleep—the first step in becoming a first rate journalist—and have the requisite skills to write tight, informative business stories. (Note: WRII covers longer magazine features.) In addition, we'll be working closely with the Internship Director to prepare you for landing a quality internship.

This is the basic reporting, research and journalistic writing class for CRC students, which involves a balance of short- and long-term reporting assignments and intensive rewriting.

The primary purpose of this course is to inculcate habits of thinking that are vital to informed and intelligent cultural reporting and criticism. This does not mean that students will be taught "theories" of cultural writing, which they can then apply to their "practice." Rather, the point is that your thought process-as you write a piece, as you prepare to write it, or even before that, as you go through your daily life in a world full of potential subject matter-is an integral part of your work as a writer. We all carry on some kind of conversation with ourselves, and with the people we know, about the culture we live in. As writers, however, our task is to self-consciously translate that private conversation into a public one that connects with readers. In this course I ask you to address two questions that bear on this translation. One is historical: what has been said in the cultural conversation before you came to it? To find your place in the conversation (just as you would have to do if you joined a roomful of people talking) you will need to grapple with cultural issues and debates that go back half a century-debates about the nature of art and criticism, technology and mass media, high culture versus mass culture, art and politics, social groups and cultural difference. The second question is personal: what experiences, ideas, emotions, and prejudices do you bring to the conversation? While conventional news writers are simply expected to put their own attitudes aside, cultural journalists must be conscious of their standpoint and its impact on their observation and judgment. Your credibility and the power of your literary voice depend a good deal on your ability to develop this capacity for self-reflection.

This is a course in reading and writing criticism. Our goal is to introduce ourselves to some of the best cultural critics (mainly of the 20th century); chart the ways in which the nature of 20th-century criticism — and art — have changed; investigate some of the major questions that preoccupy contemporary critics (especially the nature of modernism/postmodernism, high and low culture, irony and sincerity, and the culture wars); and begin to master some forms of critical writing. The paradox of how to develop a critical voice without writing directly about oneself will be explored. Among the critics we'll study are James Agee, Pauline Kael, John Berger, George Orwell, Gilbert Seldes, Susan Sontag, Lionel Trilling, Greil Marcus, Albert Murray, Norman Mailer and Wendy Steiner.

This is the department's standard graduate introductory writing and reporting course, mutated to form the foundation for the rest of the editorial sequence in the Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP). It has two purposes: 1) To teach you the rudiments of news gathering and writing under realistic deadline conditions, and 2) To introduce you to the culture of American journalism in its various forms, including the precepts of the First Amendment and the concept of a free press that goes back at least to Milton's Areopagitica of 1644. Open to first semester SHERP students only.

This course will introduce you to the world of science journalism by looking at scientific topics that are at the cutting-edge of current research and also have profound implications for the way we live. In other words, they are the raw material for great journalism. As you immerse yourselves in some challenging areas of current science, you will read the work of highly accomplished researchers and journalists, and will also hear from them directly in class. Our goal throughout will be to understand and adopt the processes that the best science journalists use when they cover controversial science. You will learn how journalists interact with scientists, conduct research, organize information and write stories. Just as importantly, you will be sharpening your analytical skills by writing almost every week for the new SHERP webzine. You'll be covering an assigned beat, and will be following the peer-reviewed journals and other sources to stay on top of the news as it happens. If all goes well, you won't just be covering science news, you'll be breaking it. Open to first semester SHERP students only.

This course aims to give SHERP students a historical and literary context for science journalism, and will also introduce them to crucial concepts in statistics, probability and data analysis. The course will be rigorous, with an extensive reading list tracing the development of science journalism and examining the science journalist's role in society. There will also be heavy usage of problem sets and writing assignments aimed at showing students how to recognize "good science" and it's opposite. Open to first semester SHERP students only.

This is a course in reading and writing social criticism. First, it is a reading course in which you will work through some of the fundamental texts and issues in social criticism. Second, it is a writing course, in which you will use these critics to help you develop your own critical sensibility. Third, it is a thinking course, in which we will examine the role of the critic in society. What is social criticism? Why write it in the first place? Where do critics find their principles? Writing Assignments. You will write four 1000-1200 word pieces, at least two of which must be an original piece of social criticism on whatever topic you like, as long as it is "in the spirit" of one of the critics we are reading. The others may be a critical appraisal of that week's critic. Each critic makes an argument, so you must, too. Readings: Michael Walzer's The Company of Critics, Tom Paine's Common Sense, Zola's J'Accuse, Julien Benda's The Treason of the Intellectuals, and essays by George Orwell, Randolph Bourne, Ralph Ellison, Eric Schlosser, Barbara Ehrenreich, Kate Millett, Tom Frank, Patricia Williams, James Baldwin, Lincoln Steffens and others.

The NYU Portfolio Program is designed to educate journalists in a way that is both conservative and revolutionary: Conservative in that it emphasizes knowledge of various journalistic traditions, basic literary skills, and practical outcomes (aka getting published) and revolutionary in that we are going to pursue these goals without primary emphasis on the "boot-camp" model ("skills" courses, "content" courses, etc.) that has dominated journalism education for the last half century. By invitation, we encourage and enable a select group of students to use their NYU Journalism Department experience to develop a coherent, sophisticated body of work.

This will be a third-semester graduate writing and reporting class in which students will read the great works of muckraking and social justice through the country's history, to include journalists who are doing this work today. We will write several journalism pieces, each longer and more difficult than the one before, that, based on facts, will express a point of view and, it would be hoped, illustrate a wrong or wrongs in America. This is not an editorial writing class or a personal essay class, but a class of journalism. We will not seek to be objective; we will, however, seek to be truthful—that is, where the facts take us—and be fair. Students must be interviewed by Professor Serrin to gain admittance to the class. The final piece will a piece of some 2,500-3,000 words or more that will explore in depth, with extensive research, readings, and reporting, a single subject (in other words, a thesis). Class size will be limited to 12-15 students, Readings will include Muckraking: The Journalism That Changed America, by William and Judith Serrin, and other books and pieces to be selected by the professor, and which include such works as How the Other Half Lives, by Jacob Riis, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair The Other America by Michael Harrington, Night Comes to the Cumberlands, by Harry M. Caudill , A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr, Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, and Homestead: The Glory and Tragedy of an American Steel Town by William Serrin.

During his or her a career, a journalist will be called upon often to pen a "take out," a story whose length is shy of a magazine treatise but longer than a simple feature. Such stories are the staple of Sunday front pages—narratives, trends, profiles, issue examinations—and some of the most satisfying work a journalist can do. Tapping all the skills acquired to date, students will execute several such "big" stories, with an emphasis on sharp themes, tight organization, elegant writing and detectable voice.

This course teaches the methods and disciplines of investigative journalism through a class project focused on the way municipal government works in New York City. Students will become familiar with how to approach investigative reporting as an intellectual exercise as well as learning how to approach it from a skills level involving searching for information through the court system, governmental agencies, regulatory agencies, Freedom of Information requests, state, local and federal hearings, law enforcement, the legal and academic communities, as well as many other sources. Students will learn how to approach, organize and analyze complex data from electronic and human sources. In the end, the goal will be to use a reporter's greatest asset his or her feet to tell the compelling stories of New Yorkers affected, for better or for worse, by city government. Each student will take one part of the project, the goal being to teach a strong narrative writing approach to the stories as well as to get students involved in the daily lives of ordinary citizens and the people entrusted with serving them. An ethical approach to investigative reporting will be stressed, and guest lecturers will take students through case studies and a variety of investigative stories as well as current issues facing investigative reporters.

This course will focus on forms of arts journalism and issues in arts reporting though reading and research and on the ground investigation. Students will engage in their own arts reporting by selecting a cultural institution to investigate and report, and by writing a book review and a final paper of their own devising.

This workshop will focus on public intellectuals in the twentieth century, and speculate on their future in the twenty-first. Topics will include: the challenges of making difficult ideas relevant to mass audiences; the role of intellectuals in political debate and mass movements; the distinction between pundit and public intellectual; the perils and opportunities of working outside of traditional disciplines; applications of sometimes arcane scientific discovery to everyday life; and the impact of the web and the blogosphere on today's intellectual life. Students will be required to write one long profile of a living intellectual, in addition to two short papers responding to the readings and class discussion. Readings from Benda, Orwell, Gramsci, Chomsky, Said, Dawkins, Wilson, Hitchens.

In an era of culture war, holy war, and technological revolution, religion, in the true, broad sense, permeates at least half the stories in the news. Iraq, Iran, Israel—we know those are religion stories. George W. Bush is a religion story. Stem cell research and gay marriage and school vouchers are religion stories, although not at all limited to the narrow pro and con set of beliefs with which they are typically framed. The question of race in America is infused with God. News stories about sex are more often than not also stories about faith; stories about violence implicitly revolve around ideas of godlessness.

In "Journalism Faces Faith," we'll use the insights of media criticism combined with a study of a variety of approaches to magazine writing to inform our own production of several short pieces and a long narrative essay. Our beat will be "faith," the vague term used by reporters embarrassed of words like "religion," "doctrine," and "dogma"; what Paul, speaking of faith in the New Testament, called "evidence of things not seen"; that which we sometimes dismiss as supernatural, irrational, extra-rational. We'll investigate the ways in which journalism confronts belief and the ways in which it makes the peculiarities of beliefs presentable in the public sphere. "Belief" itself—another term that we'll interrogate—is not required for this course.

This workshop covers the essentials of writing for magazines. In addition to reading and discussing articles from a variety of publications, students will write two or three stories of their own. We'll explore the complete process of getting your articles in print. This includes: generating ideas, writing query letters, working with editors, conducting research and interviews, organizing features, and revising drafts. We'll also look at how magazine writers establish a niche and expand their stories into books.

What makes a magazine profile grab you from the first paragraph—and keep you interested for 5,000 words? How do you get story subjects to co-operate and give you enough time to get behind the public veneer, whether it's a politician, a movie star, a business leader, or an ordinary person caught in the middle of an extraordinary situation? What are the different narrative ways to tell a story and make the person come alive on the page? The goal of this course is to learn the basic rules of profile writing, and also how and when to break them. The emphasis will be on writing a series of profiles of different types and lengths, from a 500-word person-in-the-news story to a write-around without co-operation from the subject to a full-fledged richly-textured portrait. Unlike covering most breaking news, writing a magazine profile offers the opportunity to display a distinctive authorial voice and to project attitude in the give-and-take with your subject. We will read and analyze current profiles on the newsstand, as well as collections of magazine work from such greats as Tom Wolfe to "The Woman at the Washington Zoo" by Marjorie Williams. Guest speakers will include major magazine writers, and hopefully, a profile subject who can talk about the experience of being profiled by different writers.

Great stories are shaped by fantastically talented and often reckless writers and reporters working at the height of their craft. In this class, we will study how world-shaking historical events and ordinary, everyday experience alike can be crafted into original journalistic narratives. We will concentrate on the writer’s angle of approach to the subject - his or her “voice” - which is made more or less convincing through his or her control over language and the depth and range of the reporting.

This class will attempt to further your designs on journalistic greatness by offering you an intimate acquaintance with the reigning masters of the narrative form and by encouraging you to write your own stuff. You will also enjoy visits from enlivening and informative guests from Harper’s, The New Yorker and other high-class venues, who can answer any questions you might have about reporting and editing, and who will help you shape your ideas with an eye towards publishing your work.

We have several objectives in this class this semester. One is to finish your long piece. The other is to produce a short piece for our Election Special. You will work in groups of 2 for the election stories and then report live from various locations on election night as a follow-up to your reports. We will discuss this in class tonight and you will pitch stories on 9/21. This is very much a workshop class. You will present your work during the various stages of production—developing your story, reviewing your raw tapes, scripts and rough-cuts during class. Each of you will develop a schedule with deadlines for both stories and submit this by 9/28. During class, I will also bring in tapes to discuss that will stimulate discussion of form and content. Classes may run past 8:00 PM as we get more involved in story development so please don't schedule yourself too tightly on Wednesdays. Before you edit your election pieces, I will conduct an AVID session to give you some shortcuts. If you want to work on FCP, you have access to the 504 A computers, but you will compete with all the other students for time on those machines. Our final class is Dec 14. From past experience, that is not enough time to view all projects so I suggest we also meet on the 15th. We can meet in the afternoon as well since formal classes are over on the 14th. If you need the time, we could also have our last meeting on 12/19. Please do not schedule airline tickets before then. We will also pick a date in early February for your film festival screening. We normally have it on a Saturday, be we could try for a Friday. Please choose from Jan 28 or Feb 4. Parents and friends, of course, are invited.

The class will be a deep exploration into the documentary impulse, examining not only why stories get told, but also how we might inspire new ways of telling them. We will explore the ways in which sounds, images, music—and words—can be freed from the boundaries and formulas of tradition in order to become better tools of the imagination. We'll try and slow down the speed of thought in order to better understand how it works; then try and speed it up so that it works even better.

Students must be willing to challenge their own assumptions and question the prevailing conventions of network and cable television storytelling. They must be willing to experiment; to play. To try something they've never done before. To loosen old habits and open themselves to new ways of seeing, shooting, editingS in the end, new ways of thinking. Let's try and spell an "image" wrong for a change.

Designed for journalists, this course will encourage a diversity of voices, interests, and intentions—a community of people who are willing to create a working environment that allows for a cross-fertilization of our mutual affinities, interests, aptitudes and aspirations. Part workshop and part production course, the course will utilize a series of innovative homework assignments, group exercises and in-class critiques designed to open up new and alternate ways of reframing the world through visual metaphor and temporal sound architecture.

Business reporting, perhaps more than any other specialized field of journalism requires a working knowledge of the law. That includes not just the language and intent of laws, but also the legal system within which the written word is interpreted, adjudicated and given meaning. This class will provide an overview of the fields of law you will most likely need to understand as reporters. In addition, you will become familiar with the roles of the courts and lawyers, as well as methods of legal research, all necessary to understanding the American system of jurisprudence as it applies to business and economic reporting. By the end of the term, students will be expected to know how to cover a court case; where to find legal precedent for a judges decision; how to analyze a Supreme Court decision; and how to get what you need from lawyers, witnesses and other players in the legal system. Students will complete four or five writing assignments. Readings include Covering the Courts: A Handbook for Journalists; Storm Center: The Supreme Court in American Politics; Conspiracy of Fools; The Deal of the Century: The Breakup of AT&T; and Business Law.

Students in this third-semester course will use all the skills and knowledge they've acquired in the program to produce their own business publication. Under the guidance of an instructor, they will assign, write, and edit the articles that will appear in the publication.

What are the key political events of the 20th century? And how did journalists—those on the spot, and those who reflected on subsequent events—write about these events? This class is predicated on two ideas: that historical knowledge is necessary for any journalist (and any citizen); and that journalists—far from simply writing the "first draft" of history—have, throughout the last century, created works of lasting literary, moral, intellectual and historical resonance. This seminar will focus explicitly on extraordinary political events that made, and changed, the life of the past century, and that created the world we inhabit now. Throughout the term we will return to certain questions, including the changing nature of violence; the tension between nationalism and universalism; and the emergence of disputed concepts such as "crimes against humanity." The events and situations we'll study we'll study include the Russian Revolution. the Spanish Civil War, World War II and the Holocaust, the Iranian Revolution, the Israel-Palestine conflict, the fall of the Soviet Union, the transition from apartheid in South Africa, the military dictatorships of Latin America, the war in Bosnia, and the crisis in Iraq.

This seminar will consider the tradition of women cultural critics in England and America, tracing its development through the work of critics including Rebecca West, Mary McCarthy, Joan Didion and Janet Malcolm, and concluding with contemporary debates about sexual politics. Through close readings of their works, the seminar will explore the stylistic innovations of these writers; the different ways, delicate, subtle, blunt, in which politics inform their writing; and the various tactics, polemical, whimsical, intimate, that these critics employ. We will pay particular attention to the use of the personal voice in cultural criticism, that is, the balance of lived experience and ideas, in its most literary and debased forms. We will also touch on the ways in which these writers have influenced or informed each other's work. There will be one final paper: either a critical essay on one or more of the writers we have studied, or an original piece of cultural criticism.

This advanced SHERP class is intended to give a realistic preview of life as a working science journalist. We will explore the process step by step, from finding a story idea to pitching it to surviving the editing process to making sure the final product is accurate, clear and compelling. We will also look at science journalism from the editor's point of view. Open to third semester SHERP students only.

The aim of this advanced course, a capstone of the SERP sequence, is to teach you to produce sophisticated stories on environmental topics. By the time you finish, you should be able to smoothly incorporate all of the important elements of an environmental story: data analysis, expert opinion, real people impact, and descriptive writing -into a finished product that's good enough to be accepted by a major newspaper or magazine. Writing is the focus of the course, but we'll also spend some time getting grounded in the basics of environmental science and environmental issues. This course is open only to SHERP students, although the instructor may make exceptions in the unusual circumstance that space is available. Open to third semester SHERP students only.

SHERP Internship class.

Fieldwork: GAIR, CRC and Joint Degree students.