Pop Spotlight

Rolling Stone and NYU are teaming up with the online education platform Yellowbrick to teach aspiring journalists the tools of the trade. Modern Journalism is a six-part educational content series that features an esteemed roster of lecturers, from NYU adjunct professor of journalism Liza Kaufman Hogan to Rolling Stone’s own culture editor Elizabeth Garber-Paul.

In each module, students will learn techniques for finding, pitching, developing, and publishing stories in written and visual mediums. In the course’s first module, lecturers covered the basics by exploring the importance of journalism and the myriad challenges that journalists and the industry at large are currently facing.

Taking things a step further are modules two and three, where students will receive more targeted and tactical instruction. In module two, titled “Journalistic Inquiry: Basic Investigating and Reporting,” students will learn research principles, interview tips, and best practices for developing sources.

The module is led by Garber-Paul and Kaufman Hogan with additional support from respected industry veterans like novelist Julia Dahl. She speaks to the importance of gathering quotes that are additive to your story in daily news reporting. “A good quote is not just a factual quote,” she says. “Something with emotion, something with a point of view. That’s what a good quote is.”

In module three, gears shift to focus more squarely on long-form and feature writing for students looking to tell in-depth magazine stories. Some key topics in the module include word choice and order, narrative structure, and strategies for pitching your work to publications. One of the standout contributors to this module is distinguished NYU writer in residence Eliza Griswold, who speaks at length about the four elements of what she calls a story’s “spine”: characters, experts, chronology, and models.

If you’re an aspiring journalist looking to learn from some of the industry’s brightest minds on your own time, you can head HERE to learn more and register for the Modern Journalism course today.