Course Introduction

Sig Gissler
[email protected]
(212) 854-3869
Office hours: M 3-6pm, T 10am-2pm
Office location: 604A
Carla Baranauckas
[email protected]
[email protected]
212-556-1256
Office hours: By phone (Please avoid calling on W and R until after 6pm)
Class Meetings:
MTW 9am-6pm


 

OBJECTIVES AND PHILOSOPHY
Under deadline conditions in the crucible of New York City, you will learn by doing. You will develop and hone reporting and writing skills over a range of news and feature stories. As you improve your craft, you will delve into substance, such as race, crime, politics. You will sharpen news judgment, street smarts, ethical sensitivity. You will learn teamwork. Your teachers are committed to helping you succeed. However, ultimately, your education is your responsibility. In fact, a good journalist embraces a lifetime of self-directed learning.

ORGANIZATION
You will practice deadline writing in the lab but spend most of your time on the street -- in neighborhoods, on news runs. Think shoe leather and Metrocard. Each of you will cover an ethnically diverse neighborhood, cultivate a neighborhood beat, do enterprise stories off your beat. Think story idea. Other assignments, sometimes off the AP daybook, will take you elsewhere in New York, such as City Hall or Police Plaza. As the course evolves, longer, more complex stories will be assigned as homework taking several days or longer. Those stories will include a substantial profile and an "enterprise" project (which may be linked to your master's project).