The Foreign Correspondent: Global Reporting
Teaching Date: 10 sessions (Tuesdays & Thursdays, 4-6pm ET), November-December 2020 (please inquire about exact dates)*
Location: Online
In this online course, students will learn how journalists and travel writers cover foreign communities, events, and issues. They will learn the mechanics of journalistic writing and photography, challenge their personal assumptions and biases, and explore the world with a curious eye. Students will also consider how international journalism is evolving in response to a rapidly changing media landscape and what this means for news consumers as well as those who aspire to careers in the field.
Guest speakers might include: Nicholas Casey, national politics reporter and former Andes bureau chief at The New York Times; Sebastian Modak, former 52 Places Traveler for The New York Times Travel Section; Tara Todras-Whitehill, Middle East-based freelance photojournalist for Reuters and the New York Times.
COURSE HIGHLIGHTS
Students will learn how to:
Conceive, report, structure, and write a journalistic article.
Translate research, interviews and experience into meaningful and engaging stories.
Discover secrets to good storytelling.
Formulate good interview questions and techniques.
Find out what goes into fact-checking and editing a piece.
Develop people skills by approaching strangers on the street or online.
Tell an impactful visual story through photojournalism techniques.
Set aside their own preconceptions and possible biases to look at a foreign community through the eyes of its people.
Think critically about defining “the media”.
Investigate the world with curiosity and open-mindedness.
Improve their understanding of disinformation, misinformation and reliability.
Students will learn through a combination of online instruction, discussions, writing and photography assignments, and guest speakers. Homework may occasionally be assigned, including a final reporting project.
*a minimum number of 6 students required to hold this course.
“Thank you so much for this wonderful opportunity to learn from you. I’m so glad I did this course. It was insightful and engaging, but also very fun. You managed to put together a very interesting course all online. ”
About the Instructor:
I’m a freelance writer and photojournalist, based in New York City, who has contributed to The New York Times for over a decade, from all seven continents, as well as to a range of magazines, including National Geographic. Reporting on a range of subjects -- from science and the environment, to travel and culture -- I’ve embedded with anti- immigration vigilantes on the Mexican border and Afghanistan-bound Marines in the Nevada mountains, and covered the 2008 U.S. election from Barack Obama's Kenyan family’s home. I also lived for a month on the world's remotest inhabited island, and a month aboard a Norwegian research vessel drifting in Arctic sea ice. I’m on the faculty of the School of the New York Times. — Andy Isaacson