2017 - Fall

WRRII – GloJo

Course Number: JOUR-GA 1022.001

Day & Time: Wednesday, 9:00am-12:00pm

Location: 652

In WRR I, your focus was news reporting, “the backbone of every type of journalism,” to quote Professor Borst. You spent a good deal of time on the basics – on research methods, sourcing, interview technique, note-taking, story organization, grammar, style and deadlines, tapping the resources of this great city all the while. The downbeat was accurate and evocative reporting, solid research and reporting and lively, well-organized stories. Ethics, cultural awareness, news judgment, analytical skills development and other reporting considerations especially important in the global sphere figured heavily, as did your introduction to multimedia skills. In WRR II, we’ll have two alternating drumbeats meant to deepen, amplify, and enhance the skills you will need as working professionals. More work on all of the above plus a new heavy emphasis on voice and originality, analysis, descriptive acuity, long-form structure and exquisite narrative technique in both short turnaround and longer deadline assignments.

We will work in a rhythm of reading from the greats, story assignment workshops, rewrite, exercises and a big emphasis on your thesis. We will write on themes, starting with a UN-related piece timed to the heightened interest of the General Assembly, and we will end with a deep dive into the “biography of a building” for Bedford + Bowery. In between we will pick themes that give you great latitude, as these two assignments will, in making your choice of what to pursue.

This is our conceit: We are correspondents based in New York City who cover the city as foreign correspondents do, for farther flung locales. That could mean as a national reporter or as a reporter for a publication in another country or as someone with a global perspective. It’s the most basic notion of foreign corresponding: making the place you are reporting from come alive in a truthful, factual, engaging way to those who cannot be there or do not know it.

Open to GloJo students only.