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)