2025 - Spring

Methods and Practice: Spirit and Soul: Storytelling Magic

Course Number: JOUR-UA 202, section 2

Day & Time: Fri | 12:20 PM – 4:00 PM

Location: 20 Cooper Square, room 700

Prerequisites: Journalistic Inquiry: The Written Word JOUR-UA 101

This class is designed to improve your ability to write in first person. We focus on placing you in the right mental place to find the details that will tell your story and hold the reader. We write longhand. No computers. No cell phones. Pencil and yellow letter-sized paper only. Please be on time. Bring a jacket and a metrocard. The city, and your personal past, is your laboratory. Good writing is all about finding the details that will show, not tell, the event to the reader. You are always fighting gravity, always fighting the reader who will click away and tune you out. There will be some reading aloud in class. There will be no bloodlettings. If you’re willing to fail, you will be successful. If you’re already a journalistic success, this isn’t the class for you. Remember, writing is the act of continually failing at excellence, and uniformity is the ceiling against which great writing will forever bump. The midterm and final will be your writing. Before each class, you will be expected to read excerpts from “A Nietzsche Reader” (Penguin) translated by R. J. Hollingdale and from Gary Smith’s “Going Deep” (Sports Illustrated Books).

Notes: Counts as an elective for the journalism major and both journalism minors.

Questions? Email undergraduate.journalism@nyu.edu.