A Brief One
Keep your eyes open. This is the essence of journalistic preparedness. At Columbia News Service, a Spring-semester class that puts assignments on a news wire run under the auspices of the New York times, and which goes out to over 400 newspapers nationally, we have five articles to write over the course of the semester. So while working on my first story, I get a lead for another story. It is essential to pay attention to these leads. They can make or break the future.
And this goes for professional journalism as well. Stories are not hard to come by. They’re always out there, waiting in that ether to be discovered by sight, sound and thought.
In another class, the first assignment is to write a narrative about the theme “In Wartime.” A narrative is a story about change over time. This is one simple incarnation of it, anyway. And when writing a narrative, it’s not so much about quotes and hard facts. It’s more about atmosphere, about bringing the reader into the lives of the characters.
My first narrative is about a chili cook-off, an interesting and off-kilter riff on the theme. My second assignment is on the theme, “Ties That Bind.”
In an example of what I introduced above, I had the opportunity to interview a friend about a marriage that took place in an ancient Scottish castle, in which, on a glorious summer day, a trained owl brought the white gold rings of leaves and diamonds that signified their bond of matrimony. What a powerful image of connection! And all this, a week in advance, simply because I followed up on a thought with a phone call, then an interview, and then the writing.
This is how to stay ahead, here at Columbia, and out there, in the big, bad, professional world.
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