Journalistic Writing

In this course, we will explore journalism from straight news to narrative longform and hone skills like developing news judgment, finding stories, interviewing, reporting, researching, and understanding and engaging with audiences. For models, we will read from a wide range of newspapers, magazines, and websites. We may consider works ranging from Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah’s Pulitzer Prize–winning profile “A Most American Terrorist: The Making of Dylann Roof'' in GQ, to Adam Serwer’s political commentary for The Atlantic, to Pamela Colloff’s longform exposé of the flawed forensic science of blood splatter analysis in ProPublica. Along the way, students will write a straight news article, a profile, a work of commentary or criticism, and a feature. We will workshop drafts of these major writing assignments as a class, and a final portfolio of revised assignments will be due at the end of the semester.