Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “students”
The Village Voice print edition is about to die. This news leaves me nostalgic. In 1978, I was a Voice college intern. When the semester ended, the paper hired me as an office assistant. What an education. I learned about pushing boundaries and self-respect. At the time, The Voice was making a big, fat fortune in advertising revenue. Those were …
The earth pulses in three-beat rhythms. That’s why it helps to organize our writing around groups of three. When I tell my students this — especially the know-it-all adult writers — they almost always thumb their noses at the Rule of 3 (and at me). Too formulaic, they say condescendingly. But after I push them to examine this law of …
Being super-concise way is super-hard. In fact, it’s easier to blather on at length than to make a brief, laser-sharp statement. This ability to write tight is a basic journalistic craft. Even if you’re reading a 7,000-word article, rest assured that if the piece is any good, the journalist who wrote it struggled to make every word count. Whether I’m …
I have a ton of writing tips. But for students in a hurry, three essentials always work. Together, they constitute a crash course in cleaning up how they express themselves. If they can get at least these three tools from my classes, then my work is done. 1) Write conversationally Most students start off in love with long, twisted sentences. …
One of the best writing tools ever invented is called a “nut graf.” It can take your word craft to the next level. A nut graf can do magic for a journalistic article, a chapter in a novel, a personal essay, a research paper, a business report, a cover letter, a piece of advertising copy….or even a love letter. Until …
If you want to be a photojournalist — or just wish your photos had a more exciting, newsy edge — meet Chuck Zoeller. For the past 24 years, he’s been in the center of things at the Associated Press, the world’s largest and oldest news-gathering organization. Founded in 1846, the AP has a global news team of 3,700 that includes …
