Longform Sports Journalism in a Cultural Context
While the drumbeat that “newspapers and magazines are dead” goes on, sports longform journalism is actually flourishing on both traditional and what we once designated as “alternative media.” In this course we will examine that craft, as well as the cultural canvas upon which it is written, with the goal of producing one publishable longform piece by semester’s end. To achieve that, students will deconstruct stories on a variety of subjects (race, cultural identity, gender politics, student-athlete unionism, violence on and off the field), learn about interviewing and story organization techniques, produce a weekly essay (in workshop format), and hear (both live and via Skype) from several of the writers who produced the pieces we will study.