JOUR 3173W: Magazine Writing
View this Course Profile in PDF
Basic Information
Prerequisites
Course Description
Expected Competencies
Competency Goals
Assignments and Activities
Workload
JOUR 3173W: Magazine Writing (3 credits)
- Multi-section course.
- Lecture twice a week.
Prerequisites
- Major status
- JOUR 3004W and JOUR 3101
Course Description
Jour 3173 is an entry-level magazine writing course, which is usually the first contact students in the journalism program will have with magazines. Students will learn how magazines operate, how to develop magazine stories and how to market and write for a variety of magazine formats aimed at specific magazine audiences. Students are encouraged to think critically about the differences between magazines and newspapers in audience, writing style, reporting expectations, makeup, mission and ethics. An emphasis is also placed on critiquing award-winning magazine work as well as the students’ own writing produced for the class.
Expected Competencies
Students enrolling in 3173 should have taken 3101 as a prerequisite.
Students should come in with the following skills:
- A thorough understanding of news writing and a basic understanding of the reporting required for news features.
- Competent writing skills, including the use of proper grammar, mechanics, and a sense of narrative writing.
- A thorough familiarity with AP style.
Competency goals for 3173W
The course is designed to teach and coach students in the following skills:
- Analyzing the content and images in a magazine to understand its audience and generate compelling story ideas to fit with its editorial platform.
- Interviewing and writing in a range of magazine formats, including “front-of-the-book department piece, essay, service piece, profile and features for specific magazines.
- Conducting in-depth interviews for profile and feature article assignments.
- Mapping out a “story plan” of whom to interview and what kind of reporting is needed to develop the story.
- Writing effective query letters, with proper formatting, that land assignments.
- Understanding how magazines are structured and what editors expect from writers.
- Using resources, including the Writer’s Market, to learn the fundamentals of the magazine business – including sheer number and distribution of magazines along with the varying policies about writer’s guidelines and payment.
Assignments and activities
Writing assignments
- A 300-word front-of-the-book department piece.
- A 500-word reported essay, which recounts a personal experience but also sets it in a larger reported context.
- A 600-word service piece – a how-to or travel article – suitable for a particular magazine’s audience.
- A 1,000-word profile suitable for a particular magazine’s audience. This requires at least one face-to-face meeting with the subject and calls to secondary sources familiar with the subject.
- A 2,500-word, multi-source feature article suitable for a particular magazine’s audience.
Other assignments and activities to complement instruction:
- Analysis of a magazine news stand – built in class from covers – to determine different visions, audiences, article content and writing tone and style.
- Development of one story idea pitched for three different magazines.
- Development of three story leads each written for three different magazines.
- Presentation of an interview or a research project with a magazine writer or editor.
- A submitted query letter to an existing magazine that proposes a story idea. The letters will be sent.
- A fact check of a classmate’s service piece or profile, checking names, addresses, phone numbers, details and quotes.
- Development of a portfolio to present to instructor at the end of class.
Workload
Students work independently through the course and spend time outside class (estimated at least six hours weekly) on three basic tasks:
- Reading, including course books and magazines
- Writing all stories or assignments
- Reporting, including interviews and fact-gathering
Although the balance of that workload will change as assignments begin and end, overall the workload is as follows:
- Reading: 30 percent
- Reporting: 40 percent
- Writing: 30 percent