Author:
Emily Jensen did a fine job of reporting on the intensive team-taught courses in journalistic writing and theory that Occidental is offering for the first time this academic year. I would, however, like to offer three small clarifications:
I suspect that first year student Anahid Yahjian, who called the team approach to ENGW-285 “awesome,” will rue the day she fretted that there may not be enough feedback on her and other students’ writing. As the semester progresses, the team instructors will be ripping into students’ writing assignments in class and working with me to help students rethink and rewrite their work by email-a process now commonplace for editors and writers worldwide.
The all-star team of instructors assembled for the fall semester does include many Los Angeles Times reporters and editors (including five Pulitzer winners) but also web journalists unaffiliated with the Times-and the non-Timesian ranks will grow in the spring’s narrative journalism class as top magazine writers and editors and other media professionals offer their writing guidance and journalistic expertise.
I’m an adjunct professor at Oxy-have been for 10 fulfilling years.
On Friday, September 28 I participated in a conference at UC Berkeley: Covering California: Media, Community and Democracy. Few of the government, academic, non-profit and media leaders attending this day-long event expressed much doubt that journalism (and hence democracy) is at a crossroads-perhaps a crisis point. I think Occidental has an important opportunity to trail blaze a new way for liberal arts colleges to prepare students to participate in and fully understand modern media.
Bob Sipchen (Adjunct Professor of English Writing)
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