Excellent questions for Grant last week. A lot of what he discussed applies to your work. Think bigger. Incorporate themes. Focus on texture and specifics to differentiate your story and make it stick with readers. And, of course, that it’s harder to be simple than complicated. It was also telling how he finds material – book titles, “dicking around” in archives, snippets. That’s why it’s so important for you to make sure your work stands out. Get readers in the door, then bring them along with your reporting and storytelling.
Week 13:
We’re down to the final three classes. No doubt your workload and stress level is creeping up as we finish the semester. Take good care of yourselves and, when it comes to this class, consider it a place to have fun with your writing and work. As you prepare your drafts for Monday, don’t be afraid to be creative. Break out of your usual mold. And, as we’ve talked about so much, tell me a story. Beginning, middle, end. Characters. Scenes. Action. I don’t want pieces “about” something. I want stories about people doing something.
Your assignment: File a draft, or a partial draft, by Monday at 5 PM. If you’ve only got 1,000 words, that’s fine. If your project is visual, with audio (like Todd), do your best to include audio (or a written script) and order your photos. We’ll be talking about your stories in class and we may be live-editing some of them (I will ask you first, to make sure you’re OK with this). Those who file on time will get the benefit of the guest editor.
Our guest for the class is Owen Good. He’s a classmate of mine, from Columbia J-School, and will be able to provide a valuable perspective on the market, considering how varied his career has been, from newspapers to Gawker and Vox. He’ll be focusing in this class on the edit before the edit. This is the crucial, insanely valuable peer edit you get (and give). Professional editors at publications have their own restrictions and goals: short on time, needs to fill, worrying about clicks, etc. The peer edit is someone you trust who can encourage you, steer you a different direction, or, as Grant Thompson put it, “call you on your bullshit.” Owen will discuss ways to do it, how to communicate, and what to look for. Then we’ll be going over examples. You’ll likely take a lot away from the Berkeley J-School but in the end, the relationships with your classmates may well be the most valuable. Here’s how to best help them (and yourselves).
Background on Owen:
Owen is a second-generation newspaper journalist whose mother and father met at The Daily Tar Heel in the late 1960s. His father, Rebel Good, published the newspaper in his hometown, The Tribune of Elkin N.C. from 1978 to 2007. Owen was practically raised in that newspaper, beginning as a 7-year-old paperboy, writing for it as young as age 13 and editing its television and comics sections. His parents are voracious readers and sharp judges of writing quality. Surviving their edits of his work as a teenager gave him the eye he has today.
Owen graduated North Carolina State University in 1995 after working four years for its student newspaper. His postgraduate jobs included stints with The Daily News of Jacksonville, N.C. as its military affairs correspondent, covering Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, and for The Daily Star of Oneonta, N.Y., as the writer in its Cooperstown Bureau, the county seat and home to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. In 1999, Owen enrolled at The Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University and graduated in 2000.
His later assignments included The Associated Press in its Washington, D.C. bureau and the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News of Denver, Colo. In 2008 he was hired as the part-time weekend editor of Kotaku, the video game publication of what was then Gawker Media. That eventually became a full-time staff job, bringing with it a readership of some 2.5 million monthly unique visitors. He moved to Vox Media’s Polygon in the same role, as a weekend editor, general assignment writer, and sports columnist, in 2014, where he reaches roughly the same readership.
If you’d like to read some of his work:
Here, Owen found a way to write about DACA via video games
Here is an early Rocky Mountain News story with a human touch
A personal essay about an old friendship
Storytelling Through Sports 