A weblog for Pete Ellertsen's mass communications students at Benedictine University Springfield.

Friday, February 12, 2010

COMM 291: Nag, nag, nag (and some mixed metaphors) about your Harold Ross papers ...

Emailed to Pete, Amy and Mike this morning ...

Hi everybody --

We're starting to get submissions trickling in for The Sleepy Weasel, and we'd better clear the decks for action. That means finishing your papers on "Years With Ross" by James Thurber ASAPest (as I'm sure you already know, "ASAP" means as soon as possible and "ASAPest" is old-fashioned wire service talk for even sooner). I'll copy this message to the Mackerel Wrapper blog and link you to the original assignment sheet.

In the meantime, I'll be sending you a specific reading assignment from "The Subversive Copy Editor" very soon. I want you to read a chapter or two before you start editing live copy.

If you have questions, comments or suggestions (within reason!), please don't hesitate to ask. Basically, what all this means is the rubber is about to hit the road.

-- Doc


Here's the permalink to that assignment sheet. And here's the questions again:
... A couple of questions to keep in mind as you read ... and as you write the inevitable 750- to 1,000-word reflective essay on your reading. Post it to your blog when you finish the book, oh, in the next week or two:

-- James Thurber was one of the senior writing/editing people at The New Yorker for a long time when Harold Ross was editor. How did these people work together to get a magazine on the street? What was Ross' management style? What was their attitude toward literature, journalism, business side, in short all the things that go together to get a publication on the street?

-- What can *you* learn from this? Compare what Thurber says about The New Yorker with your experience on a magazine, a paper, a radio station, a fund-raising drive ... any collaborative effort you've been a part of that involves communicating with a public ... and reflect on: (1) what's the same, and what's different; and (2) what specific points can you use in future publication projects (including, of course, The Weasel, The Bulldog and/or projects for an off-campus not-for-profit organization).

-- Thurber is a tricky writer, there's more to him a lot of the time than what's immediately apparent on the surface. And his attitude toward Ross is, well, let's just say it's pretty complicated. But he was also an astute observer of human nature, and he had a gift for summing up a person or a situation with a well-crafted phrase or two. What, if anything, can you learn from reading him that might help you in your own writing?

My advice: Read the book quicky, and read it with these questions in mind. You're not so much savoring the work as mining it for information. (Think strip-mine operator driving a D-9 bulldozer.) ...
And now before I can hit you with any more mixed metaphors, I'll sign off.

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About Me

Springfield (Ill.), United States
I'm a retired English, journalism and cultural studies teacher at Springfield College in Illinois (acquired by Benedictine University and subsequently closed). I coordinate jam sessions for the "Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music" at Clayville Historic Site and the Prairieland Strings dulcimer club, and I sing in the choir and the contemporary praise team at Peace Lutheran Church in Springfield. On Hogfiddle I post links and video clips for our sessions and workshops on the mountain dulcimer (a.k.a. "hog fiddle"), as well as research notes on folklore and cultural studies, hymnody and traditional Anglo-Celtic and Scandinavian music. I also posted assignments and readings in my interdisciplinary humanities classes. The Mackerel Wrapper (now on hiatus), carried assignments and readings for my mass comm. students. I started teaching b/log when I chaired SCI-Benedictine's assessment committee, and reopened it as the privatization of public schools grew increasingly troubling and closer to home.