2018 - Spring

The Beat: Covering Millennials (print track)

Course Number: JOUR-UA 201.001

Day & Time: Thur 9:30am-1:10pm

Location: 20 Cooper Square, room 655

Saturday Night kicked off the a recent fall season with “The Millennials,” a parody poking fun at the supposedly self-obsessed, entitled members of “Generation Me.” SNL joined in a common lament: What’s the matter with kids today?

The answer is there’s nothing wrong with the 75 million young adults born between 1981 and 2000. They simply approach life, work, love, friends and family differently than the older generations.

In “Covering Millennials,” we will explore all those different aspects of millennial life with assignments, readings and speakers. From the #me too to “emerging adults,” millennials have become a hot topic in both the media and academia: moving back home after graduation, postponing the traditional markers of adulthood, not settling for just any job, wanting work-life balance, spending money on experiences not stuff, looking for love (or a hookup), living online and more.

Students will cover these generational issues in a wide range of feature-style pieces from a q&a to a long-form narrative. The work will be published on the class website http://genyu.net/.

We will also pitch pieces to outside publications. In the past, several class assignments were published including one by a student who went on a “technology diet” and another’s lament about her mother wanting to friending her on Facebook.

Prof. Mary W. Quigley writes a nationally published weekly blog about millennials.