Category Archives: luennot

Music and Media Management, lecture 3

Book review: Louis Menand’s Finding it at the Movies

Essay, pt 1: Jonathan Lethem’s The ecstasy of influence: A plagiarism

Essay, pt 2: Garry Kasparov’s The Chess Master and The Computer

Film writing: David Foster Wallace’s David Lynch Keeps His Head

Review, pt 1: Lester Bang’s review of Astral Weeks

Review, pt 2: Pitchfork’s review of Sisterworld

Music criticism: Alex Ross’s Apparition in the Woods (the Sibelius piece)

Music criticism and essayistic radio: Robert Harris’ Twenty Pieces of Music That Changed the World, episode 1, 4, 11, 14, 15, or 19

The art of the profile, pt 1: Gay Talese’s Frank Sinatra Has a Cold

The art of the profile, pt 2: Andrew Corsello’s Shatner!

The pan, pt 1: Anthony Lane’s Space Case

The pan, pt 2: Pitchfork’s review of Lateralus

Video criticism: Matt Zoller Seitz and Aaron Aradillas’s The Evolution of the Modern Blockbuster, pt 2, pt 3, pt 4, and pt 5 (if you’re choosing this, watch all five parts)

Music and Media Management, lecture 2

Homework

Write a short piece of news. Subject matter doesn’t matter and it doesn’t have to be groundbreaking, but I want it to be real. So: do the research. Interview the people, at the very least phone them. Get new quotes. Check the facts. Separate opinion and fact. Be as objective as you can be and if you can’t be objective, be transparent.

Analyze

One of these:

Gladwell: The Ketchup Conundrum
Orlean: Orchid Fever
Wired: 23AndMe
Kemp: American Communion

What is the subject matter? What is the author’s point of view? Who are the characters? What are the main plot points? How does the level of abstraction vary? And most importantly: did it make you feel anything?

Links

The Inverted Pyramid

Basic News Writing (pdf)
Chip Scanlan’s columns on writing
Breakable Rules for Literary Journalists
Interview tips for documentary filmmaking

Literature

Sims & Kramer: Literary Journalism
Boynton: The New New Journalism
Kramer & Call: Telling True Stories (Nieman)
Brady: The Craft of Interviewing
Blundell: The Art and Craft of Feature Writing (WSJ)
Franklin: Writing For Story (formulaic)

Music and Media Management, lecture 1

Here’s the support material for the first lecture.

Linkage:

Reading:

  • Melvin Mencher’s News Reporting and Writing
  • Tumber: News – A Reader
  • McQuail: McQuail’s Mass Communication Theory
  • Grossberg et al: Mediamaking
  • Boyd-Barrett & Newbold (eds.) Approaches to Media: A Reader
  • Downing, Mohammadi & Sreberny-Mohammadi: Questioning the Media – A Critical Introduction
  • Curran & Gurevitch: Mass Media and Society