Welcome!

Welcome to Magazine 1!

Below you'll find our course syllabus, your first week's assignment sheet, and your instructor's bio.

Please register and follow this blog. Plan to check in regularly for assignment updates, useful links and information, and other course essentials. Some of your assignments will require you to post and respond to others' posts, so if you're not used to interacting on a blog, you soon will be.

Here's to a great semester!

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About the Course:

English Writing 1331/Magazine I
Fall 2010

Professor Jakiela
208 Faculty Office Building
724-836-7481
lljakiela@gmail.com
loj@pitt.edu
Office Hours: T/R Noon-1 p.m. and by appointment
Class Meets: T/R 136 McKenna 1-2:15 p.m.


Required Texts:
Peter Jacobi, The Magazine Article: How to Think It, Plan It, Write It
Lillian Ross, Portrait of Hemingway
The Associated Press Stylebook
The Rolling Stone Interviews (ed. Jann Wenner),Back Bay Books


Browse the magazine rack next time you drop by the Giant Eagle. Visit the magazine section at a Barnes & Noble near you. Scan the Web for zines. No matter your interest, you’ll find a magazine that’s a perfect fit.

Passionate about fine wine and felines? Try Gourmet and Cat Fancier. Are you a smart edgy woman with a tattoo and a passion for Chanel lipstick? Try Bust. In love with the literati? American Poetry Review or Poetry or that old standby, The New Yorker.
Like all things nonfiction? Try Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre, and Brevity.
Do your friends call you Guy Politico? See Slate. Are you a people person? People.
Looking for the perfect shoes this season? In Style and Vogue, beautiful. Looking for the perfect tie to wear to the perfect martini bar? Esquire can help. Still have that life-sized poster of Vince Neil over your bed? Get your Metal Edge here.

In a wildly-changing journalism landscape, magazines and zines continue to offer one of the most diverse and sometimes lucrative venues for writers in the U.S. If you’re a writer who’d love to see your name on the cover of Rolling Stone, or at least in your local city alt-news mag, this is the course to help you get started.

By the end of the semester, you should be able to write well-crafted articles and essays for popular commercial, news, and/or literary magazines and online zines. Each article you write will be targeted to specific publications and will often be stylistically or thematically linked to our readings and handouts.

Our readings will give you a broad sense of what’s out there. We’ll cover personal essays and creative nonfiction, feature stories, profile pieces, q & a’s, how-to articles, reviews, and criticism. We’ll also take a look at various kinds of reporting (investigative, intimate, immersion, and so on) you’ll find in some of the best magazines on the market.

Since this is an upper-level course in non-fiction, I assume you’ve chosen to be here because you’re serious about your writing. That said, I’ll spend time this semester helping you to prepare your work for publication. You will learn how to write query letters, conduct market research, and make informed decisions about possible publishers/markets for your work. And I will encourage you to submit articles – once you’ve revised them – to magazines.

General course requirements include the following:

1. Come to class and participate in it. You may miss two classes without affecting your grade. After that, your grade will drop by one letter for each additional absence.

2. Come to class on time.

3. Meet deadlines. I will not accept late work. I will not accept work that is slipped under my office door. E-mailed assignments must come in under deadline. Assigned blog posts must also come in under deadline.

4. Please be professional when using e-mail. E-mailing me is not a substitute for class participation.

5. Read all assignments. Be prepared to answer questions about readings. If you are obviously not prepared for class, I may consider you absent. This will adversely affect your grade in this course.

6. Purchase and read (or subscribe online to) three monthly magazines to which you do not already subscribe. Be ready to write about and discuss what you learn from each magazine. Bring magazines or samples to class when needed.

7. Present a market analysis to the class.

8. Write one query letter.

9. Write at least four (may include: how-to, opinion/essay, q & a, profile) short articles and one long (6-10 pages) news/feature, interview-driven article. The long piece will be due at our last class meeting. It should be immersion-based. I’ll ask you to revise the shorter pieces as needed during the term. You’ll revise all pieces for your final portfolio. You may choose to expand one or several of your short articles into your final piece.

A Return to Intro to Journalism
Your writing should reflect your mastery of basic journalism. These include, but are not limited to, using sources and quotes effectively; writing with vivid, accurate details; handling facts with precision; maintaining AP style and following the journalists’ code of ethics; properly attributing information obtained through research; etc. Consult your Stylebook and a dictionary regularly to ensure accuracy.


An Ethical Reminder
Plagiarism is, of course, against the journalists’ code of ethics (“tell the truth and do no harm”). It’s also against UPG’s honor code. If you plagiarize, you will, at the very least, fail this class.

Assignments
I’ll give you an assignment sheet every week. Assignments will be adapted based on class proficiency and interests.

A Hint About That Long Piece
You should start to think about and research your long piece early in the term. Since there are no restrictions on subject – except that it must be fresh, marketable, and worthy of intense scrutiny and passion on your part – an early start shouldn’t be difficult.

Grading
Grades will be based on the quality and improvement of your writing and on class participation. There will be short quizzes, as needed, throughout the term. Your grades on the quizzes will be factored into your class participation grade.

Added Technical Proficiency
In addition to displaying journalistic skill, you must also show an advanced proficiency in all technical matters. Sloppy and/or late manuscripts simply won’t be accepted. More than four errors per assignment will result in a failing grade for that assignment.

A Note on Publishing
If you’re not already writing for the UPG literary magazine or newspaper, or for a local or regional newspaper or magazine, you should be. These all are natural markets for you. Now is the time to start building a portfolio of your work. You may also want to consider -- if you're not already doing this -- creating a blog of your own. We'll talk more about this in class.

Learning Disabilities
If you have a learning disability or need any individual accommodations, see Lou Ann Sears in the Learning Resources Center, located on the lower level of the Faculty Office Building.

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About the instructor: Lori Jakiela is the author of the memoir Miss New York Has Everything (Warner/Hatchette), and three poetry collections -- The Mill Hunk's Daughter Meets the Queen of Sky (Finishing Line Press), Red Eye (Pudding House Press) and The Regulars (Liquid Paper Press). Her essays have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pittsburgh City Paper, The Tribune Review, Creative Nonfiction, and elsewhere. Another poetry collection -- Spot the Terrorist! -- will be published in Spring 2012 by Word Tech. Her second memoir, The Bridge to Take When Things Get Serious, will be published in January 2013,

Her poems and essays have been widely anthologized in the U.S. and the U.K., and her work regularly appears in many literary magazines, including 5 AM, Chiron Review, KGB BarLit, Nerve Cowboy, River Teeth and elsewhere.

She has been a columnist for the Tribune Review company, and her column "Here and Now" received a 2010 Golden Quill Award for Best Column Writing from the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association. She's a speaker for the Pennsylvania Humanities Council, an associate professor of English at Pitt-Greensburg, and on the faculty of Chatham University's low-residency MFA program.

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Assignment Sheet/Week 1

Course Introduction. Review syllabus. Discuss basics of magazine writing. Audience/demographics.
Thursday lecture: The How-To Feature.

Assignments:

1. Identify three magazines you’d like to target. These should be magazines that are open to freelance and semi-novice writers. (You’ll need to do some research to make sure that the magazines you choose meet this criteria. You can look in each magazine’s masthead, at on-line sites, or in a freelance- writer’s guide like The Writer’s Market or The Guide to Literary Magazines and Small Presses.) In other words, these should be magazines where you might realistically place a story between now and the end of the semester. Bring in copies of the magazines or links (please add links to our class blog) for Thursday and be prepared to discuss.

2. Bring in one article from one of your target magazines to add to our course handouts. The article should be an example of what you think makes for a good magazine piece. If the article you're citing is online, please post the link on our class blog. Due on Thursday.

3. Consider your areas of expertise. Follow the assignment on our blog and post in the comments section under Experts.

4. Write one how-to piece. (500 words) Due on Tuesday. Be sure to identify your target market and at least one specific magazine/news mag that might be interested in publishing your work. Use at least one professional source when gathering your information. Be sure to include quotes from your source. Think about ways to illustrate your piece. Take photos, if possible. Post your piece to the class blog before noon on Tuesday.

Read: Chapters 1 and 2 in Jacobi.