Common Sense Journalism: Internet Writing Syllabus

Common Sense Journalism

An extension of the Common Sense Journalism monthly column by Doug Fisher, former broadcaster, newspaper reporter and wire service editor. From new media to old, much of journalism is just plain common sense.

"In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock." - Unknown (often improperly attributed to Thomas Jefferson)

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair

"Common sense is not so common" - Voltaire "Common sense is instinct; enough of it is genius" - George Bernard Shaw

Friday, May 29, 2009

Internet Writing Syllabus

I had not seen this till a friend showed it to me today -- Robert Lanham's "Internet-age Writing Syllabus and Course Overview."

It has such nuggets as:

Instant messaging. Twittering. Facebook updates. These 21st-century literary genres are defining a new "Lost Generation" of minimalists who would much rather watch Lost on their iPhones than toil over long-winded articles and short stories. Students will acquire the tools needed to make their tweets glimmer with a complete lack of forethought, their Facebook updates ring with self-importance, and their blog entries shimmer with literary pithiness. All without the restraints of writing in complete sentences. w00t! w00t! Throughout the course, a further paring down of the Hemingway/Stein school of minimalism will be emphasized, limiting the superfluous use of nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, conjunctions, gerunds, and other literary pitfalls.

Evaluation: Students will be graded on the RBBEAW* system, developed to assess and score students based on their own relative merit.
A+ = 100–90
A = 89–80
A- = 79–70
A-- = 69–60
A--- = 59–50
A---- = 49–0
Instructor: Robert Lanham, star of the vblog series Writer's Block: Embrace It—Stop Wasting Time and Live!
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* Raised by Boomers, Everyone's a Winner