FEATURE ARTICLE WRITING COMM 325 Fall 2009 Professor Iris Krasnow Office: 117 Dunblane/TenleyCampus Wed. 2:10 p.m.- 4:50 p.m. Media Production Center - Room 102
[email protected] 202-895-4914 PURPOSE : This course is designed as an upper-level journalism writing skills class that builds on the basic Reporting class. It will teach you the fundamentals of solid feature reporting and writing, as well as how to market your stories to magazines and newspapers. The emphasis will be on learning to write clear and strong features, focused on the people, places and issues surrounding Washington, D.C. The heart of your work this semester will be four five-page feature stories on subjects of your choice, within boundaries of my choice. Features are the gems of journalism, an area of writing that crackles with life. You will work on becoming an artist with language, creating compelling features that fill the audience's imagination and bombards their senses, this while telling them a new, great story. You will come away from this course knowing the difference between good and great. SKILL MASTERY : You will develop the following skills: Perfecting the core elements of feature article writing. This breaks down into choosing a subject, the art of the interview, cultivating sources, proper quotation, coherent organization, and weaving it all together with your best lead, anecdotes, details and clear voice. Analyzing feature articles, all kinds and lots of them. While our required text and handouts will serve as your guides, mostly this course is about your own interviews, observations and writing experiences.