2025 - Spring

Advanced Reporting: New York Characters (Print/Online track)

Course Number: JOUR-UA 301.001

Day & Time: Thu | 10:00 AM – 1:40 PM

Location: 20 Cooper Square, Room 743

Syllabus: Download

Prerequisites: The Beat JOUR-UA 201 (Print sections)

New York City pulsates with constant change, driven by people who push boundaries, experiment with ideas, inspire creativity. In this long-form writing course, you’ll learn how to report on one of the most fascinating aspects of New York: its gorgeously diverse people. You’ll be immersing yourself in your chosen beat all semester, so it’s best if you’re passionate (or at least very curious) about it—i.e. New Yorkers in the arts, in politics, religion, sports, education, fashion, business, food, media, health care, criminal justice and on and on. Your “New York Characters” may be “regular folks” or luminaries, born-and-bred New Yorkers, recent transplants and/or members of immigrant communities.

We will tell these stories using long-form narrative, aka storytelling, applying the writing devices of fiction to nonfiction. A narrative lets the story unfold through plot, scene, dialogue, character, and action. A narrative also develops a theme and, though the author’s voice, a relationship with the audience.

To help with both research and story ideas, students will choose a subculture as a beat. We’ll put a spin on the traditional profile in several ways. As Malcolm Gladwell noted, a profile is “not so much about the individual as about the world that he or she inhabits, the ‘subculture.’” So beyond the people, we’ll explore communities and cultural milieus to allow for deeper meaning and sophisticated long-form narrative-writing techniques.

The writing assignments will include a Q&A, a 1,000-word news feature, a journalist case study, and a 3,000-word capstone for the journalism major. Students will also complete mini-assignments as well as classroom exercises to inspire creativity and stretch the writing muscle.