The Best Damn Journalist You've Ever Seen

As a journalism student, reading McPhee will have different experiences for me than some of my class mates. In journalism classes, most of the time, we are told to cut our stories to 300-500 words, with 3 sources, and talk about such-a-such-a topic. Most of the time, we cover politics or events. The Aquinian is like this too, but a bit more lenient on the choice of topics we, as writers, can choose from. However- stick to the word count. Don't go over. Don't expand your thought, don't expand your focus, and don’t expand your stories, interviews, or topic. Just don't. An editor will cut you up and spit you out if you do this.

However, I'm the kind of writer who wants to "broaden her horizons". I love writing about catchy trends or stupid stuff we used to do when we were kids (Did we honestly just prank call that person?) and McPhee's style and choice of the New Yorker allows journalists, like me, to do so. I'm no longer alone and can be appreciated by an editor who really REALLY wants good, thorough, in depth stories. They don't even have to be investigative like the sponsorship scandal or Watergate! They can be about oranges for heavens sakes!

While sitting in my journalism class, my professor keeps asking us: What do you want to write? How do you want to write? What do you want to be impressed by?

Well, honestly, if I can write just as half as good as McPhee I would be in heaven. The ability to find stories can be BRUTAL. Especially if you exhausted yourself on topics of which you enjoy. For example, a friend of mine likes basketball. He might cover every game, every basketball star, and every basketball-thing he can think about and find himself stuck for a story a year down the road. McPhee, in my assumption, is not like this. Where does he find his stories!? I wish I had the interview contact list that man has... but in my understanding, he probably doesn't even have one. He just FINDS these people randomly.

I'm too shy right now with my craft. I'm constantly wondering if my journalism is "good enough" to go up and ask perfect strangers their life stories or their opinions on this and that. But I am getting better because I can see, through McPhee's work that it is TOTALLY worth it. Just this past month I wrote an article for the Aquinian about Kijiji as a forum for bands to seek other artists. How else could I have done a story like this but by emailing perfect strangers, asking for their input and I found two AMAZING story subjects. Next week, I will be interviewing hosts of a Youtube video who makes prank calls every Friday night. I was, and still am, impressed by the courtesy and eagerness of strangers to talk to journalists. Of course, many don't like the limelight of the media- i.e. dirty crooks and politicians- but McPhee is able to side swipe them anyways and still get to the meat and juiciness of a story.

Now to apply this to the past McPhee article I read, "Firewood", I am completely impressed by his interviewees. How many people did he interview until he found the perfect quote about a woman trying to get a cord of wood into her Prius car? Or, how many people did he have to ask if he could tag along for the drive to the woodlots and watch them cut down trees? It must take a lot of skill and patience to single out these people and find a good story.

With these skills, I will keep them in mind- who knows? Maybe I will turn into the best damn journalist you've ever seen.

Reflection on Reading Responses

To tell you the honest truth, I used to HATE doing reading responses in school. It meant I would have to do an extra step and work to remember what happened and to vomit up something on a page. My responses were the usual "I like this story because it was funny." or "This story was crappy because I didn't understand". I never dug deeper into why I thought something was funny or sad or crappy. In high school, I wasn't really invited to think so. As long as I wrote something I received a mark. The longer I seemed to write what I thought was a "good enough" response, the higher the mark I got. I was happy. But not anymore.

I am addicted to reading responses now because of Russ Hunt's courses. I've learned something about myself- I was lazy, now I'm revived. I use to read stories with not much thought going through my mind about relationships with characters, why something believed something or acted in a way they did, or listening to the voice or narrator of the story and thinking about why they thought this particular story was important to share.

For example, when I read "Catcher in the Rye" I felt lost in parts. I still do. Who is this character? I thought it was just a snobby rich kid who thought he was invincible. It's been years since I read the book and I now wonder if I reread it and put thought into the story, plot, voice, and audience, I would understand the book better? Who knows? Maybe I should find out.

I am responding about my love-hate relationship with reading responses after my discovery of John McPhee's sense of humour in both his articles "Whiff" and "Land of the Diesel Bear". In both articles he barely hints a bit of sarcasm towards the George Bush Administration. If you didn't read the articles with thought or clarity, you probably would have missed them and just kept right on reading. I'm glad I didn't do so. I got a good laugh out of McPhee's thoughts on "Bush's possible failures". Read the articles, you'll see what I mean. Don't forget to read between the lines- we aren't in high school anymore.

Numero Uno

The first learning log of the year and I am ready to go. I hope by putting my blog in sections will help me concentrate better and not leave anything I want to mention behind. So far, I really enjoy the class because I never had the chance to really explore and research a journalist. Which I think is unfortunate, considering I am a journalism student. Russ chose a dandy of a writer to read and I appreciate the things that I've learned thus far with John McPhee.

The Introduction
This is my third class with Russ so I was well aware of what to expect in a course with him as my professor. I didn't really learn anything new with the class introduction. A few of the forums had changed but they will become easier as we go along.

However, one of the responses struck my learning chord in my brain to really sit down and think about it. And that is the thought of time in comparison to what we learn. The email from a classmate (I missplaced the actual email and cannot remember whose it was, if it was yours please comment below) had said that she was worried about her grades in the course. She didn't understand why someone who spent hours of work would receive the same check mark as someone who only took 2 minutes to scribble something down. I thought about this and I began to agree with her. It made perfect sense. However, over the courses I had with Russ I remembered something: it's not what you type on a piece of computer paper, but what you've learned along the way and how you got there. Russ is fair, in my opinion, in how he grades. He senses what people have learned from his class and what some should have learned but decided to put it aside or not think about it much if at all. I've learned that you can't enjoy life to the fullest by skimming by and hanging by a thread- you must absorb all that you can in order to explore the richness of a story or a movie or anything for that matter. It will be difficult for those who only take 2 minutes to jot something down without much thought to write a decent learning reflection, because well, did they learn anything at all? Did they allow anything to sink in?

I also want to post up another response I did for the intro about lectures. I personally hate lectures, despise them. But then again, I don't really like group work either so I need a happy medium. However, the reason to why I don't like lectures is that I find it hard to retain the information. Months after listening to a lecture and writing down notes, I gaurantee you I will not remember half of it. But what I had learned in both Aquinas and Art of Fact (both taught by Russ) I remember quite a bit of it because I discussed what I had LEARNED, what I THOUGHT was important, and why I DECIDED to talk about it. I took learning into my own hands- not what I was subject to absorb and then regeritate onto an exam months after.

John McPhee ... so far ...
The man is a bloody genius, is what I've learned. I hope to take what I've learned from his writing style and apply it to my own articles and journalism classes. Oooops, already did! My anecdotal leads have become stronger after reading literary journalism in the past two years because I know how important it is to grab your reader's attention. If they don't continue reading past your lead, well, what's the point of writing the story to begin with?

McPhee's attention to detail and description is quite amazing. I've learned to write about the big picture but to find the insignificant characteristics of a person or thing and make them special. For example, in McPhee's "In Virgin Forest" he describes his interviewee's personality and his outer appearance. Most journalistic venues don't include these details, such as Stiles mutton chops and jacket but McPhee knew how important it was to describe a simple man who had amazing intelligence of the forest.

I also LOVE McPhee's sense of humour. I've learned, after reading "In Virgin Forest", to read between the lines and to find definitions to words or names I don't understand. I was impressed to learn that a lot of my classmates find words they don't understand in the dictionary because I don't even do that! But when I began to read "Plains II", I quickly learned how important it was to keep track of words or you would quickly become lost. That is exactly what happened and why I didn't enjoy reading "Plains II". There were too many words I didn't know the meaning of, most of them were descriptive words used by cowboys so I had to remember McPhee's definitions for them and I just lost track of what the main story line was. I was too focused on remembering what a cowboy's term for a blanket was!

But back to McPhee's sense of humour. I applied what I had learned about reading between the lines and to read for details while I was reading McPhee's "Whiff". I have fallen in love. The article may only be 1,500 words or so but his talent to write tight but colourful is amazing. From just this one article (couldn't be more than 3,000 words) I learned something about McPhee's New Yorker editor's personality, the editor's journalistic values and beliefs, McPhee's story ideas and what I loved to write about, how McPhee doesn't like story restrictions, and McPhee's political beliefs (which ends to a funny ending).