JOUR 4171:
Capstone: Covering the Arts
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Basic Information
Prerequisites
Course Description
Expected Competencies
Competency Goals
Assignments and Activities
Workload
JOUR 4171: Capstone: Covering the Arts (3 credits)
- A capstone course, limited to 20 students. Students need to know the basics of journalism and to have some familiarity with the performing arts (theater, music, film, dance, etc.)
- Two 90-minute classes a week: Mondays at Murphy Hall and Wednesdays at the Jungle Theater. Occasionally a class may be held "on location."
Prerequisites
- Major status
- JOUR 3004W, JOUR 3101, or permission
Course Description
Jour 4171 (Covering the Arts: Backstage at the Jungle Theater) offers practical experience in writing readable arts-and-entertainment copy (reviews, features, hard news), while providing an inside look at the day-to-day workings of an important arts organization. The goal: to give the aspiring A & E journalist a working knowledge of the field and a realistic first taste of the profession.
Expected Competencies
Students should have taken Jour 1001, Jour 3101 and Jour 3004. All students should know how to write a decent English sentence, should enjoy asking questions and should have a strong curiosity about the way art gets created and marketed in our society.
Competency goals for 4171
Jour 4171 will teach the fundamentals of
Arts reporting
- Getting the facts
- Asking the right questions
- Filtering out the hype
- Finding your lede
- Direct quotes vs. paraphrase
- Fairness and balance
Arts reviewing
- Getting the facts--just as important as in reporting
- Experiencing the event before analyzing it
- What's your lede?
- What's your evidence?
- Praising and blaming
- The importance of tone
The theater process
- Getting the idea--the playwright's role
- Shaping the idea --the director's role
- Personifying the idea--the actor's role
- Visualizing the idea--the designer's role
- Selling the idea--the marketing director's role
- Financing the idea--the development director's role
Assignments and activities
Monday Class--Murphy Hall
A writing workshop. Most assignments will be short (around 500 words.) Students will be encouraged and sometimes required to rewrite. Sample assignments:
- An essay on "The CD (or Movie) That Changed My Life"
- A review of a Jungle Theater production
- A film or pop music review
- A news story about a current arts controversy
- An advance piece on an upcoming arts event
- A "think piece" on a current arts issue
- A review of a book about the performing arts
- A short script based on a fable or nursery tale
Wednesday Class--Jungle Theater
A lecture-demonstration with a Jungle artist or staffer. By the end of the course, every step of the production process will have been covered. We'll also meet leading arts journalists (Chris Hewitt, film critic for the St. Paul Pioneer Press; Kate Sullivan, music editor of LA Weekly.) These sessions will take the form of press conferences, with participation required from each student. Some of these sessions may lead to writing assignments.
Other assignments or activities to complement instruction:
- CLIP FILE: For the first half of the semester, each student will collect examples of good/bad arts writing from the local and national press, to be discussed at the Monday class.
- FINAL PROJECT: Each student will write a 1,000-word interview with a Jungle Theater artist, these to be collected into a little book at the end of the semester; in effect, a group-shot of the theater at the time.
Notes
- TEXTBOOK: None. The instructor will provide weekly readings, but this course cannot be compressed into a book. Missing classes means missing important steps in the argument, and catching-up will be difficult.
- QUIZZES AND EXAMS. An early grammar quiz to determine the student's knowledge of the fundamentals. No midterm exam. A substantial final exam--part essay, part multiple choice. (See last note above.)
Workload
Students work independently through the course and spend time outside class (estimated at least four hours weekly) on three basic tasks: writing, reporting and reading. Time devoted to each will vary from week to week. This might be a typical breakdown:
- Writing (40 percent)
- Newsgathering (35 percent)
- Reading (25 percent)