2016 - Summer

The Beat: NYC Neighborhoods (5/24 – 7/21)

Course Number: JOUR-UA 201-001

Day & Time: TWR 12:00pm - 2:00pm

Location: 20 Cooper Square

Instructor: Frank Flaherty

Albert Class Number: 2977

An example to make this course concrete: You are sauntering along a street in Bushwick, on the way to meet a friend at a gastro pub, when you see a bookstore – except it’s no ordinary bookstore. You see a witch’s cauldron in the window, as well as an ad for an “alchemy workshop” and a sign for the resident tarot card reader. Turns out this is an occult bookstore – a fine subject for a fascinating profile. In this course, we will scout out the rich story possibilities in various New York neighborhoods like Bushwick – the Lower East Side, the East Village, Williamsburg, Greenpoint and more.  Thinking hard about what makes for rich articles, we will select one such neighborhood for each student, who will essentially become the correspondent for that place. Each student will steep himself or herself in that community, researching its past, walking its streets, interviewing its inhabitants and then mine its nooks and crannies for feature stories, profiles and trend pieces. The search for stories won’t be hard. These places brim with endless tales, from the dramatic “donut wars” in Greenpoint, to the amazing planetarium at the Lower East Side Girls’ Club, to the regular influx of “crusties” — nomadic youth – into  the East Village each summer. As a bonus, the class will be tied closely to NYMag.com’s Bedford + Bowery, so that students will have the opportunity to publish their papers on that popular site if they satisfy its standards.