Students will create a web Log (blog) and write analyses professional writing of 1,000 words each of: (a) a newspaper feature story, (b) a magazine feature, (c) a piece of public affairs reporting and (d) an opinion or op-ed piece on the blog.
This is our opinion piece ... it's not at all like your standard editorial, that harumphs around about some political issue and comes to some kind of conclusion. For that, you can go to the State Journal-Register, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Trib, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch or any other newspaper in the land. I like this one much better. It's by Julia O'Malley, who writes a general interest column in the Anchorage Daily News. (We're reading another column of hers, a feature story.) And it follows a different model.
When I started newspapering, somebody told me the perfect editorial would go kind of like this: "Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. The conclusion is obvious." O'Malley's is kind of like that, except she doesn't come right out and state a conclusion.
Even so, her conclusion is obvious.
Well, maybe.
O'Malley's column describes a time she got thrown out of a political rally. Read it and tell me what you think. In 1,000 well-chosen words on your blog. Analyze it in the same terms you did her feature story. Be thinking about Donald Murry's "little green book that won't go away" and ask yourself these questions:
- What does Murray mean by "craft?" What do you mean by it? How does "craft" differ from "art?" How does O'Malley's column show art? And craftsmanship?
- What is the relationship between the craft of reporting and of writing? To Murray? What might O'Malley say about it? How well reported is her column? What does she gain from being on the scene?
- Does O'Malley state a conclusion? What would you say is the overall conclusion you get from reading her story? Would it strengthen or weaken the column if she came right out and said it?
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