463/563 Specialized Reporting: Writing About Food

Spring 2012
Tuesday, Thursday 10-11:50, 204A Agate

JOHN RUSSIAL
220A Agate Hall 346-3750
Office hours: Wed, 1-2, Thurs 1-3. Or by appointment, or drop by. I'm around quite a bit.
E-mail: jrussial@uoregon.edu. Note, browsers often need to be set up to use this type of e-mail link. If you're not sure how to do that, you can cut and paste the address into the address field of an e-mail program.

Prerequisites: J361 or J432 or permission of instructor
This page can be found at http://journalism.uoregon.edu/~jrussial/j463/
Books
Required:
In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
Far-Flung and Well-Fed: The Food Writing of R.W. Apple
(This is out of print, but the bookstore got a handful of copies.) It's readily available on Amazon. I've put two copies on reserve in the Student Services trailer behind Agate Hall.

Course overview

The course is a broad-based exploration of writing about food. Good food writing reflects good reporting, and this class will focus on both reporting and writing.

The possibilities for stories are almost endless. In this region alone, there are interesting trends involving farm-to-table movements, winegrowing and winemaking, amateur and professional brewing, artisan production of cheese, meats, and other foods, home gardening, etc. There are trends, such as community supported agriculture (CSAs) and community gardens. There are stories about work in the food trades and industries--profiles of chef, cooks, innovators and growers.

Writers can look at food from such diverse perspectives as culture, politics, commerce and science. Food is a business for many, a career for some. Stories about food range from quick-hit pieces about a new restaurant in town or a new food entrepreneur to multi-part long-form series that look deeply into issues involving food production, consumption and safety. Several of these have won the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism. For example, The Oregonian won a Pulitzer in 1999 for a series called The French Fry Connection, which looked at the journey of potatoes from the Northwest to McDonald's French fries in Asia as an example of the interconnected global economy.

To explore some of these areas, I'm planning to bring in visitors and have Skype interviews with folks involved in different aspects of food. I'm not seeing this as a class primarily about restaurant reviewing, though that might be a part of it. I'm expecting students to be writing a variety of stories and, if there's interest, in doing some still photos and video. We can create a web site if we want. I taught the Cyberjournalism class for years, and we produced an original web site for each class.

Because this class is a new one, it will be a work in progress. Your suggestions about what aspects of food writing you're interested in will help make the class a success. Also, if you have ideas about interesting people to talk with, let me know

Class sessions

Class meets from 10 to 11:50 Tuesday and Thursday in Agate 204A.

Attendance is important. Classes will be a mix of discussion, review of stories and visitors. If you are going to miss a class, I need to know in advance. If I do not find out before the class, it may affect your evaluation grade.

Assignments

There will be a mix of assignments, including, most likely, a profile, an issue piece, a story about an ethnic food and its place in a specific culture, a story about trends in food production, an interview with a cook or chef.

Grading:

Grades will primarily be based on stories written. Twenty percent of the grade is based on class participation and attendance. Grading will be based on criteria of publishability.

Tentative schedule

Note the word tentative

Week 1: (April 3, 5)
Tuesday: Introduction
Thursday: Food writing as reporting, types of food stories, especially short profiles
Short food stories to read for Thursday: