Music Journalism

Catalog description

This writing course teaches students how to report on all aspects of music--from concert reviews to performer profiles, from musician retrospectives to articles about non-performance aspects of music (e.g., the recording industry, instrument makers). To familiarize students with the history of music journalism and provide models for writing, readings will be drawn from prominent music magazines such as Rolling Stone, Creem, Crawdaddy!, Blender, and others--as well as from places where music journalism frequently appears today, especially blogs and podcasts. The class will consider the ways in which music journalism has changed in response to the technologies through which music is made available to listeners. Students will write several pieces of original music journalism of various lengths.