Inquirer Columnist Serves as Editor of Blog
Featuring Bi-Co Journalism Students' Work

Planet Journalism, says veteran newsman Tom Ferrick Jr., is divided into three continents: Hard News, Feature News and Contentia, the land of the opinion writers.

As a Philadelphia Inquirer metro columnist, Ferrick now spends most of his time on Contentia, but as a visiting instructor in the College's creative-writing program, he is leading 15 Bryn Mawr and Haverford students on a tour that will touch down on all three land masses.

Ferrick aims to coach his students to report and write news and features that are ready for publication in a general-interest newspaper. To that end, he has founded a new publication: a blog named the English House Gazette.

The Gazette appeared midsemester, after the class had spent several weeks laboring at the essentials of hard-news writing, a strict discipline that requires copy to be scrubbed clean of individuality and pounded into a tried-and-true, if formulaic, mold.

As the students move on to features, Ferrick is encouraging their writerly voices to emerge, and he likes what he's reading.

"Now that the students have escaped the prison of hard newswriting, they are turning in good stuff. The pieces I post go up with minimal editing," Ferrick says.

He selects a few stories each week for the blog. The first pair of stories focused on Las Vegas mayor Oscar Goodman, a Haverford graduate who recently spoke at his alma mater; and Alison Malmon, the founder of the national mental-health-advocacy group Active Minds, who spoke at Bryn Mawr. The second week's offerings shared a theme: all three were profiles of artists.

Some of Ferrick's students have considerable experience as student journalists: for example, Dave Merrell, a Haverford junior who aspires to a career in the news media, worked on his high-school newspaper and a local paper in his hometown, and has risen through the ranks to become editor-in-chief of the Bi-College News.

This course, however, represents Merrell's first formal instruction in journalism, and he's finding it invaluable.

Aside from learning the terminology that might make him more credible in a job interview, Merrell says, he is sharpening his ability to think like a journalist.

"Everywhere I go, I'm looking, thinking to myself, 'Is that a story?' When I talk to people, I wonder, 'What is his motivation for telling me this? Is there a story behind it?' Not that I don't trust people, but I'm more curious about what people are saying and why they're saying it.

"And having a professional journalist read my work is an amazing experience," Merrell continues.

Not all of the class members hope to be journalists. Pauline Stern '10, an economics major, says that she's interested in newspapers, but not as a career path.

"The class has been fascinating for me because I get to see how a newspaper is put together," she says.

Ferrick, who has nearly 30 years of experience as a reporter, editor and columnist, supplements his own deep knowledge of the news business with appearances by other working journalists who offer off-the-record tales of their experiences and answer students' questions about the reporting, writing and editing processes.

"This course has really made me appreciate what I'm reading in the newspaper," Stern says. "I can see what the writer is doing and understand the technique. And I can appreciate how hard it is to get good quotes!"

Stern says that the course has perceptibly improved her writing.

"I'm learning to cut it down to what's necessary to get the message across. When you only have 400 words to tell your story, every word has to be important. You learn efficiency."

Have they? Judge for yourself at http://englishhousegazette.blogspot.com/.

<Back to Bryn Mawr Now 11/8/2007

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