Dear students,

Welcome to the Graduate School of Journalism! This is an exciting time to be in journalism and in a journalism school. We want you to come out of your year here with the understanding that a dynamic press is key to a free, open and just society. You will learn that the power to inform comes with tremendous responsibilities. And we will hold you to high ethical and professional standards.

In the process, you'll be compelled to get out your comfort zone, to question your assumptions and to be skeptical of what people say and do. You will also be working harder than you’ve ever been. We teach by doing, and you will be committing acts of journalism while you are here. Expect to be out reporting from Week One and learning what it takes to be a professional journalist in the 21st Century.

We expect you to gather and present facts with care and accuracy. We will teach you how to use various reporting tools, but journalism is more than just pushing buttons on a computer or camera. It is also about informing citizens and holding the powerful to account. So be prepared to test your limits. We expect a lot from you, but we know that we will learn from you as well.

To help you plan your schedule, you will find links to the fall course offerings below. Note that the schedule for students accepted into the general M.S. program differs slightly from those accepted into the Stabile and documentary concentrations, and the data-degree program, so please be sure to click on the correct link. We will hold a series of web chats about the curriculum later this month; dates and times to be announced shortly.

See you soon!

Sincerely,

Winnie O'Kelley

Dean of Academic Affairs

Please bring an SD, SDHC or SDXC card that is Class 10 or better.

Please bring an external hard drive that meets these minimum specifications:

FireWire 800, USB 3.0 and/or Thunderbolt connections
1TB or more recommended for students enrolled in digital media (video, audio) classes
Speed of 7200 RPM (the speed is very important for students who are taking video)

We recommend the G-Technology G-Drive. It offers good value for the price, durability, does not require a power supply, and supports USB3, FireWire 400 & 800 connections. The drive comes in a variety of sizes and prices. Before you make a purchase, you should consider what type of work you plan on doing. If you think you plan to do a lot of video work, you may want to purchase a larger drive. If you don’t expect to do much video or other multimedia, the capacity outlined above will be fine.

Laptop computer: The J-school has six computer labs, as well as work stations and video-editing suites located throughout the building. Our computers are Macs, and are equipped with all the editing software, such as Adobe Premiere, Audition and Photoshop, that you’ll need while you’re here. Your J-school ID card gives you access to our building 24/7, and you're welcome to use any lab not reserved for a class. So strictly speaking, you can do our program without a computer of your own -- but that said, our labs are in heavy rotation, so there’s no guarantee a computer will be available every time you need one. For that reason, we strongly recommend you bring a laptop computer if at all possible. Free wireless access is available throughout the school. Here are our recommendation laptop specifications:

Audio, Photo & Video Students:

Macbook Pro, which comes with the suite of editing software that you’ll need.
If this isn’t an option, a MacBook Air with the 128GB flash storage option will be sufficient.
Alternatively, look for a laptop with:
Note: Adobe Creative Cloud’s system requirements are an excellent benchmark for a laptop you plan to use to do multimedia work at the school; if a laptop meets Adobe’s specs, it will meet ours.

Print & Data Students

Any laptop that meets the following minimum specifications:

Smartphone: Apple’s iOS devices (iPhone, iPad) and the various Android smartphones available are great reporting tools. You can use them for mobile photo, video and audio capture; to email or text your instructor if you encounter a problem (or just have a question) while you’re out reporting; to file stories from the field, and to do research while you’re on the move. They’re also great for organizing your schedule and even for taking notes when nothing else is handy. While a smart phone is not required for J-School programs, it is very helpful. Additionally, you will need an analogue adapter for your smartphone should it only have support for digital audio out -i.e. iPhone 7 Please note your smartphone should be running the latest available OS for your model. We have a small number of iPod Touches available for short-term checkout in the equipment room for students who don’t have smart phones and need them for mobile-reporting assignments.

Required Reading

Each year, the Journalism School faculty selects a single long-form masterwork of reporting for a series of informal small-group seminars and an all-school conversation with the author. For 2019, the selection is Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in A Silicone Valley Startup (Knopf, 2018, available in paperback and Kindle editions). Written by Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou, the book is an award-winning exposé of the the multibillion-dollar Silicon Valley startup Theranos, a blood-testing company that was responsible for the biggest corporate fraud in recent years. Over the course of the fall, we’ll go under the hood of this compelling investigation, teasing out key questions of reporting craft, ethics, and storytelling.

All incoming students are required to read Bad Blood over the summer. Enjoy it as a compelling real-life thriller, but also read it as a reporter, taking note of Carreyrou’s sources, methods, and narrative strategies.

Strunk & White, The Elements of Style (Fourth Ed., Longman)

Please come to campus having acquired and reviewed this book.

Recommended Reading:

We also encourage all students to read/watch/listen to at least one of the works in each category below. These variously reflect fundamental issues in news today, and/or exemplary journalists who can inspire and inform your reporting.

THINKING ABOUT JOURNALISM

Adichie, “The Danger of The Single Story” (Ted Talk)
Bell & Shirkey, Post-Industrial Journalism: Adapting to the Present (Tow Center Report)
Carr & Rossi, “Page One: Inside the New York Times” (documentary, streaming on Amazon Instant Video)
Gonzalez, News for All The People: The Epic Story of Race & The American Media (Verso)
Malcolm, The Journalist and the Murderer (Vintage)
Schudson, Why Democracies Need an Unlovable Press (Polity)
Simon, The New Global Censorship: Inside the Global Battle for Media Freedom (Columbia University Press)

MASTERS OF CRAFT – LONG FORM

Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity (Random House)
Carson, Silent Spring (Houghton Mifflin)
Garcia Marquez, Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor (Vintage)
Hillebrand, Seabiscuit: An American Legend (Ballantine)
James and Marx, “Hoop Dreams” (Documentary, streaming on Hulu)
Gang, “The Great China Earthquake” in Schiffrin, ed., Global Muckraking: 100 Years of Investigative Journalism from Around the World (New Press)
Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (Vintage)

MASTERS OF CRAFT – THE STORY

Fan, “Last Train Home” (documentary, streaming on Hulu)
Gast & Hackford, “When We Were Kings” (documentary)
Hitt, “Act V” (radio documentary, streamed at ThisAmericanLife.org)
Kramer and Call, eds., Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers Guide from the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University (Plume)
Morris & Morris, “McCullen” (documentary, streaming on iTunes store)
Mueenuddin, “Sameer and the Samosas” at www.NewYorker.com
Stillman, “The Throwaways” and “Where Are the Children", at www.NewYorker.com

REPORTING NEW YORK

Agrelo, “Mad Hot Ballroom” (streaming at Amazon Instant Video)
Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (Vintage)
Hamill, Downtown: My Manhattan (Back Bay)
LeBlanc, Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble and Coming of Age in The Bronx (Scribner)
Mitchell, Up In the Old Hotel (Vintage)
Parks, A Harlem Family 1967 (Steidl)
Freedman, Small Victories: The Real World of a Teacher, Her Students and Their High School (Harper Perennial)

REFERENCE SHELF Students may find it helpful to keep at hand some of these reference works:

Houston et al, The Investigative Reporters’ Handbook: A Guide to Documents, Databases and Techniques (St. Martins)
Kovach & Rosenstiel, The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect (Three Rivers Press)
Swift & Miller, The Handbook of Nonsexist Usage (iUniverse)
Tu, Feature and Narrative Storytelling for Multimedia Journalists
Wong, WSJ Guide to Information Graphics

MMR Immunizations: There are two immunization requirements that all students, regardless of credit load, must meet before registering for classes. It is required that students submit their documentation upon admission or at least 30 days prior to their scheduled registration date. For this reason, all incoming students are placed on hold prior to their first registration. More information on how to document MMR immunization can be found at the Columbia Health Services page.

Meningitis Form: New York State requires all colleges and universities to distribute information to students about meningococcal meningitis and the vaccine that protects against the disease, and collect and maintain a record of each student’s decision regarding meningitis vaccination. As a Columbia University student, you must complete the following three steps, a process which takes about 2-3 minutes:

1. Read about meningococcal meningitis on this website.

2. Make an informed decision about being vaccinated. (Vaccination is not required.)

3. Record your decision online.

To begin the process, click here.

Writing About the Arts

Instructor: David Hajdu

Day/Time:

Description: The arts in their innumerable forms are central to 21st-century life. This class prepares journalists to report and write on the arts with rigor, depth, clarity, and a due quality of artfulness. Students will study how the arts function as a reflection of culture, an economic engine, and an influence on politics. Assignments include arts news, feature writing, and criticism.

THE WRITTEN WORD

Description: Journalism is changing rapidly, but the written word remains as important to journalists today as it was a century ago. It’s still a storytelling medium in and of itself, of course. But even if you don’t plan to work in print, you need to know how to write clearly and accurately in order to supplement or explain video and photos, to put together engaging audio and video scripts, and to pitch ideas to editors. You're required to take a 7-week writing module in the fall semester, but there are many options from which to choose:

800 Words

Art of the Profile

Business Writing

Deadline Writing

Feature Writing

Journalism of Death & Dying

Memoir Writing

Narrative News Features

Narratives of the Invisible City

Narrative Writing

Off the News

Secret Structure of Narrative Nonfiction

Writing About the Arts

Writing About International Issues

Writing for the Ear

Registration: The ballot for fall classes opens on July 11 at 10 am and closes on July 18 at 10 am. You will be sent a link to the ballot before it goes live. The ballot is not processed on a first-come, first-served basis. As long as you make the July 18, 10 a.m. deadline, you have as much of a chance of getting your top picks as anyone else. Please note that we can never guarantee that students will get their top choices, but we do our best. If you don't file a ballot, we'll place you in classes on a space-available basis. You will be notified when you can check SSOL to see for which classes you have been registered. Please be certain that you have completed your pre-arrival requirements for MMR, Meningitis, Welcome to Columbia and Haven. Although it will not impact balloting outcomes, we cannot register you for classes until all of those tasks are completed. Questions re immunizations go to immunizationcompliance@columbia.edu and questions about the tutorials go to preorientation@columbia.edu.

In the Data 1 module, you'll learn how to evaluate and analyze data for appropriateness, context and meaning. You'll leave the class knowing how to apply basic statistical methods to numerical data sets, and interpret the results of these methods using appropriate measures of spread and central tendency. You'll will know how to build a histogram, recognize normal and skewed distributions, calculate the mean/standard deviation/normal score and median/quartiles where appropriate, and understand how these can (and cannot) be used to infer meaning about particular readings within a given data set. Visualization in this course will be used primarily for data analysis and story formation; graphics for publication will be addressed in the spring. Students who have taken at least one statistics class can apply for Data 2, which covers frameworks and tools for finding, accessing, manipulating and publishing data (APIs, various databases, and some techniques for data "cleaning"); simulation-based approaches to statistical inference when data have special designs (surveys, A/B testing); "models" for data and the stories they tell (regression, trees); and advanced tools for visualization (to explore both data, the effects of data processing, and models).

Photo 1 covers the basics of photojournalism, such as DSLR camera operation, workflow, post production, captioning and keywording using Adobe software. Students will have weekly assignments photographing and editing news, portrait and multi-picture feature stories. Fieldwork will be supported by discussions of contemporary examples of photojournalism and the ethical and legal issues of visual reporting. Students will leave the class able to identify visual opportunities in the field, and be equipped to shoot single image and multi picture slideshows for print and internet publications. Photo 2 assumes basic knowledge of DSLR camera operation and basic knowledge of Adobe photo processing software. Students will learn how to make multi-image photo essays incorporating techniques of reportage, still-life and portrait photography. Fieldwork will be supported by discussions of contemporary examples of photojournalism and the ethical and legal issues of visual reporting. Students will learn best archiving practices, advanced Adobe software, and business and pricing standards including day rates, usage fees, and copyright. Students will leave the class able to identify visual opportunities in the field, and be equipped to produce single image and multi picture slideshows for print and internet publications.

The 7-week audio module teaches fundamental and advanced techniques of field reporting and writing in audio/radio media. Emphasis is on writing clearly and conversationally, with integration of recorded voices and natural sound. You’ll pitch, report, write and produce compelling, public-radio style pieces, including newscasts, news stories, features and interviews. You’ll will be trained in state-of-the-industry recording equipment and editing software. You’ll receive detailed, one-on-one editing and will publish your work in on-demand digital audio formats. Writing and technical skills of this course are intended to serve you well in any medium

In this course, you’ll learn the basics of video journalism: gathering sound and picture simultaneously; the fundamentals of exposure and composition; the grammar of video, writing to picture, selecting sound bites, the basic concepts of non-linear editing. By the end of the course, you should have a foundational understanding of the basic skills involved in documentary storytelling and the ability to produce short-form video pieces. We offer a Saturday video module in both halves of the fall semester.

Reported Opinion Writing

Instructor: Jelani Cobb

Day/Time: Wednesday, 6-9 p.m., beginning Sept. 6

Description: TK

Deadline Writing:

Instructor: Amy Singer

Day/Time: Monday, 6-9 p.m., beginning Oct. 30

Description: Do you want to be a foreign correspondent? Cover the courts? Write magazine features? No matter what your aspirations, the ability to put together an accurate, clearly-written story on deadline is essential to achieving your goals. Working on deadline is equal parts mindset and technique. Both can be acquired with practice, and you’ll get lots of it in this class. You’ll write at least one story a week and will get detailed guidance and feedback throughout the process. Assignments will replicate the sorts of deadline stories you would be likely to cover for a mainstream media organization — live events, second-day stories and short features. You will have the opportunity to cover stories from your Reporting class beats, thus building on the sources you developed in the first half of the semester. In class, we will brainstorm story ideas and angles and discuss strategies for reporting and writing when the clock is ticking. You’ll learn to turn deadline anxiety into adrenaline, to produce standout stories — and to have fun in the process.

Off the News:

Instructor: Mike Hoyt

Day/Time: Tuesday, 10 a.m.-1 p.m., beginning Oct. 31

Description: Story ideas can spring straight from the brows of editors, but the best ones tend to emerge from two faithful sources—a well-covered beat, or from the news itself. This course is about that latter category—reporting off the news, on deadline. In this class, we will organize our reporting to advance the story as quickly as we can, and publish the edited results on The Brooklyn Ink website (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site..What kind of things? They might be big or small, expected or unexpected, global or local. Maybe a gang shooting in Brooklyn—who are these people and what is the backdrop? Maybe a presidential election in Pakistan—what questions does this raise in our Pakistani neighborhoods? Maybe the consumer confidence number takes a jump: How can we localize that? Maybe a school closes or a restaurant gets a C from the health department or another hurricane is approaching or a politician unexpectedly endorses the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policy. Or… Much of this class will be about brainstorming—sometimes together, sometimes individually—around two issues: What news of the day raises the kind of questions that The Brooklyn Ink wants to address? And, once we have our story ideas, how do we go about adding context and new facts via our own original reporting, plus Web and library research? We will work on small group projects and individual stories, with rigorous editing. We will hear from a couple of guests who are good at this kind of reporting, too.

Art of the Profile:

Instructor: Paula Span

Day/Time: Tuesday, 1 p.m.-4 p.m., beginning Oct. 31

Description: There’s a reason one of the most successful magazines launched in the past 40 years is called People. Readers like profiles. Editors do, too. In this course, you’ll learn and practice the specialized interviewing, reporting and writing skills used to portray individuals. We’ll read and discuss some of the best contemporary and classic profiles, of subjects from Ty Cobb to a sex-toys saleswoman. We’ll talk a lot about structure. I’ll take a machete (at first) or a scalpel (later on) to every sentence you write. Some gifted practitioners will come tell us how they do it. We’ll discover how to leverage readers’ intrinsic interest in other people to inform them about things they think they don’t want to know.

Feature Writing:

Instructor: Karen Stabiner

Day/Time: Wednesday, 1-4 p.m., beginning Oct. 25

Description: Feature writing is a balancing act between information and narrative, reporting and the writer’s voice, news and what catches your eye. Walk in the door with an overheated curiosity, and we’ll turn that into diverse and surprising stories. You’ll learn how to think like a feature writer — to find local stories on your block, or to give a large, unwieldy issue a human face and focus. You’ll expand your interview skills, and discover how to improve and refine your writer’s voice. You’ll write one or two features, depending on length, read each other’s work, and learn the fine art of revision. We’ll examine the digital component of features as well, and discuss how best to use these tools to enhance a story. We’ll work through the steps that lead from idea to final draft; you’ll learn to conceptualize, pitch, and develop a compelling and well-reported story. On a practical level, this is the logical place to figure out how to apply your reporting skills to your masters project.

Narrative News Features:

Instructor: Lonnie Isabel

Day/Time: TBA

This course will explore a versatile, durable, lively and evolving approach to news writing. Using writing exercises and story assignments, students will develop skills in the elements of narrative writing —imagery, theme, characters and dialogue even with tight word counts. The news feature gives journalists a vehicle for examining a topic or event through firsthand accounts, background facts and context. It is widely used in publications and online. Assignments will range in length from 500 words to 1,200. The objective is to produce sparkling news features that are sharply and tightly written, and fit these characteristics outlined a few years ago by Roy Peter Clark: “You can read it, if you want to, in a single sitting on the day the story was published. You can read a short one in five minutes and a long one in 15 minutes. It is not a news story but can be inspired by the news. It has, at its heart, human interest. It illuminates lives lived in our times.”

Writing for the Ear:

Instructors:

Section 1: Ann Cooper

Day/Time: Monday, 5 p.m.-8 p.m., beginning Oct. 30

Section 2: Daniel Alarcon

Day/Time: Tuesday, 9 a.m.-noon, beginning Oct. 31

Description: Whether we are listening to them or reading them, stories told for the ear engage us, hold our attention and make us "see" the story. Driven by strong, clear narrative writing, these stories capture our imagination. They are intimate and compelling. The writing is conversational and active. The scenes are vivid and memorable. From Edward R. Murrow’s account of entering Buchenwald in 1945, to Sarah Koenig’s 2014 Serial podcast, journalists who write for the ear have always been among our most powerful storytellers.This class explores the qualities of the best audio storytelling and the ways it differs from, and is similar to, writing for print, online or video. For some assignments, students will record interviews and use them in producing audio scripts. These assignments complement, but do not duplicate, audio courses in the Image and Sound module. The level of technical skills required are no more than what all students have learned in the August digital skills training — recording and mixing a basic story with written narration and actuality from interviews. Storytelling for the Ear is not a prerequisite for any course, though the writing style taught in this class will make all of your writing stronger. it will be especially useful for students planning careers in broadcast journalism, whether radio, television or documentary.

800 Words:

Instructor: Kevin Coyne

Day/Time: Wednesday, 6-9 p.m., beginning Oct. 25

Description: Newspapers may be shrinking, but the most versatile, durable, readable literary form they gave us — the column — is flourishing, although it has migrated beyond the traditional beyond the traditional borders of print, and often travels under different names now. The column — 800 words of story, voice, idea and opinion, in varying proportions according to the occasion — has always been the three-minute pop song of our business, the marquee form of journalism, and it has become an essential building block of the Web: the blog, the posting, the musing, the reflection, the anecdote, the kind of brief essay that requires minimal scrolling. So how can we get better at this form, this length, regardless of the medium through which it reaches readers? What can we learn from the great columnists, past and present, that will bring more authority and poetry to our work, whether on the Web or in print? How can we bring more reporting, more substance, to a form that in its latest incarnation often strays too far from the ethics and practices of its roots in print? How can we shape a narrative arc in a narrow space? In a world that has come to value voice so highly, how can we make our voices more rigorous, fluent, persuasive and concise? In this class, you’ll read a wide range of work, from the earliest newspaper columnists to the latest bloggers, and you’ll write, and then rewrite, four columns of your own — four 800-word stories of varying subject, tone and purpose.

Journalism of Death & Dying:

Instructor: Ari Goldman

Day/Time: Tuesday, 10 a.m.-1 p.m., beginning Oct. 31

Description: Just about every journalist has to cover death, whether a fireman’s funeral, a fatal car crash, a memorial service or a simple obituary of a community leader. This seven-week course will equip students to cover end-of-life issues, including terminal illness, murders, suicides and fatal accidents in both the personal and public spheres. With the help of experts on trauma, students will discuss best practices about interviewing the bereaved and survivors. The reading list will include some of the great journalism on death and dying, including classic obituaries and accounts of disasters such as 9/11, Katrina, and the Indian Ocean tsunami. The class will also look at some of the digital media outlets that are increasingly being used to memorialize the dead. Finally, the class will explore the cross-cultural and cross-theological practices surrounding death. Over the course of the semester, each student will visit a public memorial and a funeral home and write a story from each venue. There will be weekly research, writing and re-writing assignments with the goal of producing three 1,200-word articles.

Underbelly: Narratives of the Invisible City:

Instructor: Jessica Bruder

Day/Time: Thursday, 1-4 p.m., starting Oct. 26

Description: “There are eight million stories in the naked city.” That phrase — coined in 1948 film noir —has never been truer. But you wouldn’t know it from our society’s ever-narrowing cast of headline-makers: celebrity athletes and entertainers, politicians and CEOs. Forget that fame parade. The lifeblood of New York runs in the margins. It’s apparent in the struggles of outsiders: newcomers, eccentrics, idealists, workers, dreamers and strivers of all kinds. It flows through networks of subcultures, tiny worlds beneath the city’s surface. In this course, we’ll use narrative storytelling techniques to illuminate the city’s edges. We’ll explore how literary tools – scenes, narrative tension, dialogue, character-building — can make fact more absorbing than fiction, while demanding a rigorous attention to detail in reporting. And we’ll talk about how, no matter where you are in your journalism career, you can pick up lessons from your favorite writers by reverse-engineering their stories. Along the way, we’ll study a spectrum of work from literary journalists covering under-reported populations, from Francis X. Clines and Joseph Mitchell to David Grann, Katherine Boo and Jennifer Gonnerman. Emulating this sort of “connective” journalism – the kind that brings separate worlds into dialogue — each student will produce a feature-length story of publishable quality, developing it through three drafts and contributing to in-class workshops.

Narrative Writing:

Instructor, Section 1: Jonathan Weiner

Day/Time: Thursday, 6-9 p.m., beginning Oct. 26

Description: All of the best stories in journalism, whether as short as a column or as long as a book, share the same basic narrative principles, and the aim of this course is to master those principles, to study them in the work of others, and to apply them to your own. The first few sessions are spent in an overview of the narrative form, discussing how to recognize, report, structure and write stories that move confidently through time, place and character. The remaining weeks proceed through a series of more specific technical issues such as using dialogue, choosing and depicting characters, compressing and expanding time, managing transitions, providing historical context, establishing a voice.

Instructor, Section 2: Michael Shapiro

Day/Time: Tuesdays, 10 a.m.-1 p.m., beginning Oct. 31

Description: The class is built around a single, core question: How can I tell a true story that will make readers keep asking, "What happened next?" To answer that question, we'll be spending a lot of time telling stories — small stories, that will lead to one, big, ambitious and compelling story whose subject is one that you feel you must write about. The best told stories are those writers need to tell, stories that as author Norman Maclean put it, allow writers to discover and tell something about themselves. The thrill of discovery happens in the reporting, which is the central task of journalism. The telling begins with the framing of the question at the heart of that story, which leads a writer deciding how best to tell the tale. There are all sorts of ways to tell stories, and in this class, form is not a virtue. Curiosity is, because curiosity, the need to know fuels the reporting that great stories are built upon. Count on weekly writing assignments, as well as reading, talking about what makes stories work, and what makes them just miss. Everyone comes to the school loving to hear stories, and often, very much liking to tell them. This class is designed to help you find ways to tell reported stories that readers cannot resist.

The Rise & Fall Narrative

Instructor: Steve Coll

Day/Time: Monday, 1-4 p.m., beginning Oct. 30

Description: The rise-and-fall story is a durably popular genre of narrative magazine and newspaper writing, as well as magazine broadcast journalism and documentary filmmaking. This course will teach you how to identify, report and write with verve such a time-honored narrative. The genre’s typical story arc is as old as Greek and Elizabethan tragedy. It involves, usually, a woman or man in public life who enjoys success, succumbs to hubris, and is laid low. In modern times, such a reader-friendly story might evolve out of a murder trial, an insider trading indictment, a high-flying Silicon Valley bankruptcy, or the firing of the first female editor of the New York Times. We will break down and diagram magazine-length examples of the genre such as Jim Stewart’s recent New Yorker epic on the collapse of one of the world’s largest law firms. We will learn how to map out a story’s chronology; how to choose a lead and then drive toward a narrative climax; and how to interview and report from multiple sources so as to serve writing that is brisk, well-ordered, accessible, character-driven, and enlivened by specific scenes and dialogue. Each student will pitch a rise-and-fall story of 2,500-3,000 words that can be reported in the time available and will draft and redraft as we learn and discuss the form.

Writing About International Issues

Instructor: Howard French

Day/Time: Thursday, 10 a.m.-1 p.m., beginning Oct. 26

Description: In this class, students will select international topics that are freshly or very recently 'breaking' and take them beyond the first day headlines. This involves resourcefulness and enterprise in their reporting, and also teaches them the vital skill in the web age of how to write the proverbial second day story (and beyond). This goes beyond fresh reporting and analysis and helps students achieve the right kind of voice and perspective for follow up news and feature writing.

Course Selection Instructions: The ballot opens on July 11 at 10 am and closes on July 19 at 10 am. You will be sent a link to the ballot before it goes live. The ballot is not processed on a first-come, first-served basis. As long as you make the July 19, 10 a.m. deadline, you have as much of a chance of getting your top picks as anyone else. Please note that we can never guarantee that students will get their top choices, but we do our best. If you don't file a ballot, we'll place you in classes on a space-available basis. You will be notified when you can check SSOL to see for which classes you have been registered. Please be certain that you are working to make the university's July 1 deadline for MMR, Meningitis, Welcome to Columbia and Haven. Although it will not impact balloting outcomes, we cannot register you for classes until all of those tasks are completed. Questions re immunizations go to immunizationcompliance@columbia.edu and questions about the tutorials go topreorientation@columbia.edu.