Teaching literary journalism: Intentional meandering in the literary journalism classroom

Current Narratives, Dec 2014

What makes the literary journalism classroom a particularly creative one is the permission to experiment. It is an opportunity towards the end of a degree program to rethink core ideas about journalism, core ideas about writing, core ideas about ethics and core ideas about how to bring all these ideas into alignment. This is the unique pedagogical value of literary journalism. It is one of the few areas of journalism that takes both the world and the personal immensely seriously. The symbolic and the factual, emotion and observation, the tangible and the intangible all jut up against one another. So it becomes one of the few opportunities within the journalism curriculum where the deeply personal – who am I and how do I express what is unique and important to me – is given space.

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Teaching literary journalism: Intentional meandering in the literary journalism classroom

O'Donnell, Marcus, Teaching literary journalism: Intentional meandering in the literary journalism classroom, Current Narratives Teaching literar y journalism: Intentional meandering in the literar y journalism classroom Marcus O'Donnell 0 Recommended Citation 0 University of Wollongong - Teaching literary journalism: Intentional meandering in the literary journalism classroom Abstract What makes the literary journalism classroom a particularly creative one is the permission to experiment. It is an opportunity towards the end of a degree program to rethink core ideas about journalism, core ideas about writing, core ideas about ethics and core ideas about how to bring all these ideas into alignment. This is the unique pedagogical value of literary journalism. It is one of the few areas of journalism that takes both the world and the personal immensely seriously. The symbolic and the factual, emotion and observation, the tangible and the intangible all jut up against one another. So it becomes one of the few opportunities within the journalism curriculum where the deeply personal – who am I and how do I express what is unique and important to me – is given space. This journal article is available in Current Narratives: http://ro.uow.edu.au/currentnarratives/vol1/iss4/5 Intentional meandering in the literary journalism classroom Marcus O’Donnell University of Wollongong1 ABSTRACT: What makes the literary journalism classroom a particularly creative one is the permission to experiment. It is an opportunity towards the end of a degree program to rethink core ideas about journalism, core ideas about writing, core ideas about ethics and core ideas about how to bring all these ideas into alignment. This is the unique pedagogical value of literary journalism. It is one of the few areas of journalism that takes both the world and the personal immensely seriously. The symbolic and the factual, emotion and observation, the tangible and the intangible all jut up against one another. So it becomes one of the few opportunities within the journalism curriculum where the deeply personal – who am I and how do I express what is unique and important to me – is given space. I have taught classes in Literary Journalism since 2008 and although the classes have varied from year to year – I have changed both the texts and the approach a number of times – often I get the comment: “Thanks so much for this subject, it’s one of the best I’ve ever done.” I don’t take this as a tribute to my particular teaching style – although I try to make the classes as diverse, interesting and interactive as possible – it seems to reflect something about the subject itself. As a final year elective, my students are primed in both positive and negative ways for a subject like literary journalism. They have undergone pretty rigorous training in coming up with story ideas, and writing and producing all kinds of journalism to deadline. So they are starting to feel at home with the craft. But they also come with a set of parameters that we teach them: journalism is a balanced investigation of facts, keep yourself out of the story, include both sides of the story, include multiple authoritative sources. They have a lot of other people’s voices in their head every time they sit down to write. So I usually begin the first class by saying that this subject will be particularly challenging because they will have to draw on all of the skills they have accumulated so far yet they will have to put to one side many of the common assumptions they have been taught about what makes ‘good’ journalism. Strangely, it’s the multimedia subjects we teach, where students produce three minute slideshows that combine evocative images and layered audio, that provide the best training for the production of literary journalism. In these pieces students have to find an emotional center for their story and they have to think about the combination of different story layers, the way it builds through juxtaposition and accumulation rather than through a chronology of fact. I often think of literary journalism as the “journalism of moments”. Think of the way John Hersey keeps coming back to markers of time and space as he narrates those crucial moments after Hiroshima’s devastating “noiseless flash”. Think of the way Helen Garner’s recent In the House of Grief returns again and again to ponder that critical moment when a father drove with                                                                                                                 1 M arcus  O’Donnell  is  a  senior  lecture  in  journalism  on  seconda  sm e snentior  scholar  to  the   Learning  Teaching  and  Curriculum  Unit,  University  of  Wollon.g o Cnogntact     his three sons off a bridge. Or think of the multiple juxtaposed moments – the micro stories – accumulated over nine years that Rebecca Solnit assembles in Savage Grace, her exploration of the Nevada Test Site and Yosemite National Par (...truncated)


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Marcus O'Donnell. Teaching literary journalism: Intentional meandering in the literary journalism classroom, Current Narratives, 2014, Volume 1, Issue 4,