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Breaking the Rules
Module 1, Activity 6.1 - Literary Journalism Basics
Student Page
(teacher lesson for this page)

Introduction:
In this lesson you will learn the basics of literary journalism, a type of journalism that is starkly different from traditional journalism in a number of key ways.

Activities:

Task One - The Art of Unlearning
New Journalism was invented by Tom Wolfe. Like many other traditions of the beat generation, it focused on breaking conventions that bound expression. It evolved into a type of journalism now called Literary Journalism, which has retained many of Wolfe's ideas about moving beyond traditional practice.

In this task, you will be asked to make an image of traditional news reporting and show what disadvantages it has. Work through the steps below to help you develop your work.

Step One: Choose an element of journalism we have learned about like libel, structure, how to interview or how to structure a story.

Step Two: Decide what about it limits how well the journalist can do what they want to do. Write that as a simple statement.

Writing in inverted pyramids is dull.
Step Three: Create a cartoon, collage, or picture to show your idea. Spend less than 40 minutes on your creation. It might look like a group of reporters trying to interview someone with inverted pyramids for heads (see the image on the right). Iit could be a newspaper folded in the shape of a pyramid and asleep on a pillow. View the tool for assessing your work before you start.
Once you have completed your work, complete the assessment on yourself, and hand the assessment and your art in to your teacher. Remember to think carefully about each mark you give and why you are giving it.

Objectives:

You will be able to
- identify the characteristics of new journalism and literary journalism.
- evaluate the quality and reliability of various forms and examples of journalism
- evaluate the concept of objectivity

Resources:
- paper and art supplies
- self-assessment tool to attach to your sketch
- principles chart

Task Two - Selective Deleting
In this task, you will formally go through the process of challenging traditional ideas about journalism. Complete the chart in your word processor or print it and complete it by hand.

Task Three - Procuring Principles

In this task, you will read through the basic principles of Literary Journalism and answer several questions. View Task Three

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Last Updated
May 27, 2005

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