Conn M. Hallinan – Teaching Statement 2000-01
Lecturer, Journalism

For the past 19 years, my major role in the Writing Program at UCSC has been to teach a series of journalism courses targeted at enhancing writing skills, stimulating critical thinking, and developing research skills. The format of these classes is journalism, including re-writing news stories, doing interviews, profiles, and editorials, as well as covering news events.

On the surface, much of this looks like classical journalism of the news feature style, a format not dissimilar to a standard essay. The idea of a feature is not simply to get the facts down, but to structure them so that they persuade. The fundamental idea is to give students a format and a style which challenges them as writers and thinkers, while at the same time making assignments interesting enough to stimulate their imagination and creativity.

Since writing takes on different meaning when it is directed at an audience wider than one instructor, the courses are structured in a way that encourages students to think of their assignments as articles meant for people outside the class. (Many of their articles are in fact reprinted in the local media.)

Journalism is uniquely fitted for both general introductory and advanced writing, because the format gives students room for inventiveness, at the same time that it provides the security of an established style and form. For those who are insecure about writing, not knowing how and where to start, formulas like the "subject-verb-object" lead, and "inverse pyramid" style writing, are useful tools to fall back upon. As in Bridge, you use the rules until you feel secure enough to break them.

Take for a moment one of the most common roadblocks for beginning writers: "Where do I begin? How do I organize all this?" The answer a journalism course gives is to think about what you are writing, why you are writing it, and who is your audience. As the eyes and ears of the reader, the writer as reporter has a responsibility to locate the key material for his or her audience. What do you want to say? What is of interest to you in this story? What do you think other people should know about this subject? Such questions are no different than those any writer has to face, but in the journalism format this can be followed with some practical suggestions about how to put this all together in a framework which both informs and persuades.

A news structure forces students to think about what is primary, secondary, and tertiary. Like the concept of the "inverse pyramid" which layers facts and arguments according to a hierarchy of importance, newswriting makes students focus on what the core of their argument is, rather than burying it. The relationship then between structure and content is one that helps foster clarity of style, as well as organized, structured thinking.

The writing style I use is a feature rather than a daily newspaper format. The daily format is too formula-bound and restrictive, and does not lend itself easily to the kind of academic writing that the journalism program should be consistent with. Since feature style employs elements of argumentation, as well as resting on a foundation of research, it both parallels and enriches general academic writing.

My underlying philosophy is that writing consists of far more than practicing and memorizing various techniques. It is a profoundly intellectual process which requires new ways of thinking and looking at the world, and I have found the journalism format consistent with that process.

My own training as an anthropologist has proved valuable in this regard. Participant observation, the core of anthropology's unique field methodology, parallels the skills of a good reporter. In both fields, students are taught to not take things at face value, and to seek out underlying causes. That appearances are deceiving may be a truism, but it is one people all too easily fall into. As Adrienne Rich has pointed out, we are all "drenched in our assumptions." Anthropological field methods have proved extremely useful in getting students to zero in on what is significant in social interplay. At the same time, I find anthropology's cultural and social self-consciousness helps students understand how their own backgrounds and experiences might bias them in any given situation, and how to use the insights that self-awareness can give in the writing process.

I employ a series of assignments, each built on the one before it, with the idea of building students' skills step-by-step. Course assignments are built around certain "problems" in writing that students will need to confront and overcome in order to prepare themselves for the next set of "problems." Each assignment forces students to wrestle with a new concept of writing.

Writing 64

After a series of exercises aimed at introducing students to basic media critique methods and lead writing strategies, students are presented with a current news story. Limiting the topic allows students to exchange materials, as well as break up into sub-groups to talk about what they are writing, compare leads, etc. As much as possible, I try to break the "scoop" syndrome and underline the cooperative aspects of both writing and news gathering. News gathering, like academic writing, is frequently a collaborative endeavor, and beginning with common material like this allows students to develop strategies of cooperation that are helpful regardless of what field students end up in.

For our first major assignment, I produce a booklet of clippings representing a range of publications, from mainstream to alternative on subjects like the war in Colombia, affirmative action, immigration, etc. The booklet included a good deal of basic research, plus a host of editorials, columns, etc.

The "problem" inherent in the re-write is that in order to fit their story into the required length, students have to be very selective about what they choose to write about. They can't tell the whole story in 700 words. Conceptually, having to be "selective" forces them to carefully examine how their sources are "selective" as well. Organizationally, the assignment requires students to ask themselves what they think is important, and how to make that point to the reader. A critical evaluation of the facts, coupled with a clarity about what is important and what is not, is the key to the assignment.

The assignment forces students to confront their own view of the world. It makes them take a longer and harder look at news sources, and to begin to realize exactly how the opinions and biases of newspapers and writers are incorporated into news articles. The myth of "objectivity" in journalism is a pervasive one, much to the detriment of both writers and the reading public. Discovering that peoples' points of view may have a significant impact on fact gathering and argumentation is a way to allow students to choose their own approach with some sense of its implications, and to weigh the hidden perspectives contained in the world they receive in print. Such understanding makes them skeptical, a point of view essential for any serious scholar who aims at making an independent contribution in his or her field.

A series of assignments follow that build on one another, while developing specific writing and reporting skills. The final is an 1850 word feature combining much what students have learnedÑinterviewing, dealing with multiple points of view, and researchÑbut in a format closer to an essay than a classic news story.

Students are allowed to choose their subject, but they must first submit a query letter. The letter requires them to outline their story angle, and cite some sources, as well as identifying their audience and why they think the feature topic is relevant. Writing query letters is an essential skill for whatever students end up doing, but in this case it also helps them to focus. It also allows me to suggest sources, or lend students some of my own files. I also suggest topics, hand out examples of features in newspapers, and copies of previous features done by students in Writing 64.

Each student has a student editor, so that developing editing skills is also built into the course. Students also meet in small editing groups to read the preliminary work they have done on an assignment. Each student has a list of questions which they ask of their own work and others.

Besides writing, a good deal of time is spent examining contemporary media. A key ingredient in the introductory class is the assignment involving daily newspapers. What students discover in keeping a weekly journal of comparisons between two daily newspapers sometimes comes as quite a shock. They realize that newspapers are not simply neutral brokers of the news, but have strong viewpoints of their own, expressed through news placement, lead choice, story organization, and coverage.

Almost without exception, students end up "news junkies," thereby deepening their knowledge and understanding of the world around them. We live in a society that reads fewer and fewer newspapers, and students many times reflect that rather unfortunate fact. But reading is partially a habit, and students who get hooked on the morning paper are likely to carry that over into other aspects of their personal and academic life. This then is an exercise aimed not only at encouraging literacy on current affairs, but at developing curiosity, and one's critical facilities.

The message of this assignment is that "facts" must always be examined within an analytical framework and a point of view. This is not to argue that all information is subjective, but that ideas and valuesÐideologyÐare implicit in all our thinking, and to separate viewpoint out from facts requires independent comparison and analysis. By seeing what reporters do with stories, and how a viewpoint gets expressed by how a story is organized, the exercise ends up being an insight into the writing process itself.

Newswriting Practicum Writing 165

The course is organized around the concept of a "beat." By this I mean that students choose a specific area to concentrate on, and all stories are written about that particular area. Beats include such topics as education, city politics, police, health care, city development, the environment, women's issues, and the UCSC campus.

Students are encouraged to share beats, and to work together on things like research and story development. Editing groups are built into most class meetings.

Beat journalism not only requires students to thoroughly research their area of concentration, it demands that they break the confines of the newswriting format. There is no single way to report the news, and students find that some stories work well in a classic newswriting format, while others do best if they are written about from a personal point of view. Writing 165 introduces students to all the writing voices that a reporter might be called upon to use in covering a beat. They include:

1. A "Fly On A Wall" where students hang out in their beat and write an impressionistic piece about it.
2. A 1300 word feature that reflects something thematic about the beat, and includes at least four interviews. It should have an historical dimension to it.
3. A 1500 word profile of an important personality in the chosen beat. Includes an in-depth interview with the principle, and at least two interviews with other people about the person.
4. A 1300 word "Letter From" on any aspect of the beat. This may or may not include live interviews.
5. A 850 word column on the beat.
6. A 600 word editorial on some aspect of the beat.
7. A 3000 word combination of the above formats on the beat.

The main reading in Writing 165 is the course reader I put together. This includes our textbook's chapter on feature writing, the chapter on news essays, a chapter on science writing and investigative reporting, and examples of each of the assignments. I also supplement the reader with other handouts.

Writing 99F

I have taught "The Breakfast Club" twice, and plan to teach it in spring, 2002. The idea behind Writing 99 is to introduce first year students to the concept of press critique, and get them into the habit of reading newspapers. This is a college-based course.

Writing 167 Making The News

In the winter of l997 and l998, I team taught Writing 167 with Roz Spafford. In winter, 2000 I taught this class by myself. The class serves as the upper division media and cultural criticism course for the journalism minor, although it attracts a number of non-journalists as well. It concentrates on print media, although we also include a section on television ads and prime time programming. The course is built around a reader that draws on the major thinkers in critical theory, including Gans, Bagdikian, Chomsky, Tuchman, Fiske, Radway, Dorfman, Goldman, Steinem, Williamson, Seiter, etc. Besides the reader, students also read "Blooms Morning" by Arthur Asa Berger, and the "18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx." Students also selected a book from a list of nine titles to make an oral report on.

Assignments included a reading log with at least two entries a week. Students read from newspapers, news magazines, popular magazines, fiction, and pulp literature. Students also did two versions of the same news story, and an in-depth analysis of some piece of print media. The class is heavy on reading and theory, and within 10 short weeks covers basically every major trend in media and cultural critique.

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There are few real restrictions in a journalism format, so long as flexibility of style, format, and content is built in. Journalism does not limit the writing experience, it is merely one way to structure it. By not restricting the topics, by stressing the role of research, and by allowing a wide range of styles, journalism can serve as a valuable adjunct to the kind of writing strategies students will have to learn at the University.

Effective and intelligent writing is the fundamental goal of the journalism program. No matter how good a person's reporting and research is, it doesn't count for much unless he or she can put it into language that engages and moves other people. Writing is analyzed so that students not only understand what makes up the elements of good prose, but also that those elements can be learned and emulated. This is not to argue that writing is a simple mechanical process or only a "skill." It is an intellectual endeavor in which one learns new ways of thinking.

Those ways of thinking do not exist in the abstract, disembodied from the historical, social, and cultural milieu from which they emerge. If students are to learn to write, they must understand something about themselves, their world view, and the world view of those around them. A journalism format can tell a student to structure information, but only the student can decide what is important and why. Those decisions require an analytical framework, and it is that latter process I seek to stimulate.

Thus journalism here at UCSC fulfills a number of roles. First, it stimulates critical thinking. Second, it serves to introduce students to the field, and gives them basic training in the techniques of the profession. Third, it serves those students who have no interest in pursuing journalism as a career by giving them some solutions for solving general problems in writing. Fourth, it adapts well to upper division, research directed intensive writing. Lastly, it serves as an important tool for engaging students in the world around them, gives them an active way to relate to their lives through their writing, and builds the skills and awareness necessary for their participation in the business of democracy.

Student Journalism — City On A Hill

Student interns and editors put in between 15 and 30 hours a week working at City On A Hill, writing feature stories, news clips, columns, and editorials, and doing whatever it takes to produce a 28 to 40 page paper with a weekly circulation of 8,000. Students also produce a news and review magazine, Primer, at the start of each fall quarter.

Besides reporting, writing, and producing the paper, editors and interns meet once a week on their own to do a surface critique of the newspaper, to make collective decisions about what stories to run, and to plan the following week's edition.

Each week editors and interns also meet with me in the Writing 180 seminar to evaluate the newspaper in depth, and to confront issues in journalism, ranging from ethics to reporting problems, to legal questions. The seminar is one of the few times that editors and interns have the opportunity to hear the paper and their work critiqued by an outsider. Each news clip, feature, column, and review is individually examined. Topics include clarity of prose, consistency of style, structure, and an analysis of the reporting. For many writers, it is the only opportunity to examine their work, and othersÕ, in depth.

Students must read the newspaper from cover to cover, and be prepared to discuss their own writing, as well as others.

Other publications & KZSC

I offer independent studies for students working on Leviathan. I also offer independent studies for the campus radio station, KZSC, and work closely with the station manager and the SOAR advisors. With exception of KZSC, I meet with all students. In the case of KZSC, I work through the station manager and SOAR advisors. Each year I oversee the work of about 250 students working at City On A Hill, Leviathan, KZSC, plus some for off campus publications or broadcast outlets.

My basic philosophy in working with student journalists is to critique and challenge without getting in their way. They learn far more by doing journalism than anything I can teach them in class. At the same time, a university education needs to be an intellectual endeavor. As much as I can, I try to show students the consequences of their journalism, so that they hopefully understand the implications of the profession.