CRWR 205 Quiz 3

Alisa Smith and JB MacKinnon

- authors are published writers for different reasons (novelist and non-fiction writer) - could only eat food they could find within 100 miles - became a TV show

IFTTT

- automatically follow keywords on social media

Leanne Simpson

- background is in Anishinaabe storytelling - isn't really thinking about genre - thinks about the story, and the layering of the story -- important practice in Anishinaabe storytelling, and many different Indigenous storytelling practices - in Anishinaabe storytelling, they repeat themselves a lot - every time you come across it, you learn and interpret and come across it differently

aspect-to-aspect

- bypasses time for the most part - sets wandering eye on different aspects of a place, idea, or mood

filetype:

- can also pay off to search for spreadsheets - tend to contain numbers, but sometimes also contain (confidential) phone numbers and addresses - e.g. PDF is used for specific reports - narrows down specific files - e.g. filetype:pdf or filetype:xlsx

food journalism

- can be political - e.g. Baking Bread by Zoe Tennant - Revisionist Chinese by Kevin Chong

oral history (usage, cont'd)

- can be used to talk about ground-breaking world events - e.g. Vanity Fair, Haruki Murakami and Story Corps --> organized around key dates and multiple voices

useful websites

- centralops.net - google alerts - IFTTT - many for science journalists - myactivity.google.com - tails.boum.org - duckduckgo.com - powersearching.google.com

script formatting

- characters on left hand side - sound effects capitalized - strict rules, no surprises

scene-to-scene

- deductive reasoning often required in reading these transitions - transports us across significant distances of time and space - almost film-like

comics

- describes the artform as a whole - does not necessarily need to be funny - very loose definition

Haruki Murakami

- did an oral history for Vanity Fair on gas attack in Japan - these accounts of everyday people feel like stories - separates each subject by a chapter - starts with their biography, then the events of the attack (organized around key dates and multiple voices) - differences from other oral histories: interjection, and reads like an interview/Q&A - review from London Book Review says that Murakami has primary objective (?)

commentary cont'd

- difference between Print and Radio - argument that writing for radio is not same as writing for print - circumstances in which you are consuming content is different - text in radio essay has to be more distilled and simplified - this means you must have just one thought per sentence, short sentences, active verbs, and speak plainly

difference of Indigenous CNF from Canadian lit

- different crafting ways for both sides - consider Joan Didion (Year of Magical Thinking) v. Therese Marie Mailhot (Heart Berries) - time - linear v. reflection - how they approach their experience affects this as well Didion - has had time to ruminate in experience - chronological - has a lot of factual information - crafted book to mirror her experience Heart Berries - comes at you the way she thinks about it - also mirrors her experience - lots of things happening at once, a lot of different feelings and experiences - huge processing of crafting to both works (Heart Berries seems messy, but is crafted this way for a specific reason)

food writing (don'ts)

- don't write restaurant reviews - keep in mind that CNF involves good writing, personal elements, scene, etc.

non-narrative

- e.g. Family circus (in newspapers) - e.g. Lynda Barry

Travel CNF (graphic)

- e.g. Guy Delisle

writing about the everyday (oral history)

- e.g. Londoners by Craig Taylor (Canadian writer, moved to London) - how to get great poetic lines from everyday people: listen well, have a discerning eye - provoke them

intitle:

- e.g. intitle:confidential - fun to use on law firms

comics code authority

- emerged in 1954 to self-regulate rather than be controlled by government - many criteria added - resulted in watered-down and uninteresting comics - wasn't what it used to be - underground comics emerged as a result

Terry Gross

- enjoys interviewing over phone/remotely - says that it is less distracting, easier to ask someone a challenging or difficult question if not looking the person in the eye - can also look at notes without fear that interviewee will be offended/assume she is not paying attention

websites for science journalists

- eurekalert.org - press.nature.com - pubmed.gov - scholar.google.com - wolframalpha.com

Joe Sacco

- explains that he is basically a journalist - does thumbnail drawings that help him later (mostly relies on photographs, so this helps when he can't get a picture) - even in photographs image isn't great, with comics/illustrations, you can really focus on what you need to focus on - photos mostly there for reference or to job memory

themes that food can inspire

- family - relationships - discovery - culture

Eddie Huang

- famous for opening a restaurant called "Bao" in New York - in "Double Cup Love" he tells the story of heartbreak wrapped in discussion of food - Connie -- met her on OKCupid, describes her as a flavour of ice cream (black sesame) - don't get much more information on her - casual and profane tone

Art Spiegelman

- famous intellectual, very smart - published underground comics in the 70s - stories were considered borderline obscene, could never be sold at a drugstore

action-to-action

- features a single subject in a distinct action-to-action progression

questions to ask in oral history and other considerations

- for many, save it for mid-conversation - Anyone: Who has been the most important person in your life? Can you tell me about him or her? What was the happiest moment of your life? The saddest? What is your earliest memory? - Religion: Have you experienced any miracles? What was the most profound spiritual moment of your life? Do you believe in the afterlife? What do you think it will be like? - Serious Illness: Do you regret anything? Do you look at your life differently now than before you were diagnosed? If you were to give advice to me or my children, or even children to come in our family, what would it be?

subject-to-subject

- goes from subject to subject - stays within scene or idea - degree of reader involvement necessary to render these transitions meaningful - disjointed transitions

LexisNexis

- good option as a UBC student - aimed at both journalist and law professionals - normally costs a fortune, use it while you're a UBC student

underrepresentation

- historically marginalized groups have been underrepresented in the publishing industry - this leads to misrepresentation of those groups - publishers allow only voices gatekeepers deem worthy of being heard (have narrow idea of what they want to see, and only put those views into the public; as a result, we will only see a certain type of writing) - Alicia Elliot: "They have no idea who we are" - indigenous perspectives, like Indigenous peoples, vary - attention to other values in writing, other than what you're traditionally thought, is okay

google alerts

- if you want to stay up-to-date without having to retype search commands every day - useful if you're covering a certain subject

world of indigenous literature

- includes Alicia Elliot, Heart Berries, Halfbreed, etc. - scholarly/research guides

Interviewer's Field Notes (Judith Moyer)

- interviewer should sit down and make notes in organized fashion very soon after interview - otherwise, time will dull the details - notes tell 'who, what, when, where' - add anything that will help transcriber or future scholars to understand the interview - there is subjectivity no matter what we do - e.g. David Thompson - considered Aboriginal accounts to be "creative writing"

literary journalism (graphic CNF)

- keeping a notebook, taking pictures, or doodling is great to help with thoughts - or use as reference for later work

Mike Daisey

- lied about his experience - wasn't honest about what he'd seen - fabricated many encounters, was a storyteller (would have been okay if he disclosed his exaggerations, but at first told everyone it was the complete truth

site:

- means that Google can only give you results from that site - use to quickly search online communities such as reddit, or crawl through the website of a prospective client - you can use this command to plow through a news site - often works better than using the search function of the website itself

CNF from indigenous perspective

- most do not neatly fit into a genre - e.g. scholarly works, but also brings in narratives and song - often there is self-identification (this is protocol and roots themselves in a position) - this aspect is often criticized -- will usually have a paragraph devoted to this self-identification and unknowing people will find it dry - have sub-genres - there is no one way for indigenous literature (same way that there is no one pan-indigenous group)

computer-assistive research

- need it for pitching stories - do your homework

Laura Quinn

- wrote "A Story About Hanoi" - repetitive use of negative "this is not..." - this espouses (add/support) stereotypes

Cheryl Strayed

- wrote "Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail" - advice: be deeply personal, be deeply vulnerable - also says to find something that will be universal to your readers

Sarah Vowel

- wrote Assassination Vacation - talks of Hawaii and their food - habit of swapping different foods of different cultures led to a new type of cuisine: the plate lunch - plate lunch symbolizes colonization - symbolizes cultures meshing, but also people's cultures being overtaken

Zoe Tennant

- wrote Baking Bread - Tennant is not an active figure in the story - but in the end, she gives some opinion

Elizabeth Gilbert

- wrote Eat, Pray, Love - inspired niche of faux travel writing (e.g. Wild by Cheryl Strayed)

Anthony Bourdain

- wrote Kitchen Confidential - food travel - style of cutting to the chase - wise cracking, profane language

George Orwell

- wrote memoir/participatory journalism - published 1933 - Part 1: Living on the breadline of Paris, working in restaurant kitchens - Part 2: A travelogue of life on the road in and around London from the tramp's POV - says not to feel sorry for a waiter

6 rules for creating an oral history

1. Choosing a subject 2. Be aware of plots and subplots 3. History is Always Cause and Effect 4. It's not writing, it's carving 5. The importance of slang, grammar, punctuation, and the integrity of the voice 6. Suggestions for Interviewing Subjects

suggestions for interviewing subjects

1. Don't talk about yourself (unless asked) 2. Maintain eye contact 3. Begin with simple questions - create a timeline of specific events in your story, so that you know these events backwards and forwards - this will help you determine who you need to interview and what to ask

food writing in CNF involves:

1. Fine writing 2. Scene 3. A personal element 4. An idea or narrative - use food as an entry point to talk about bigger issues!

three steps of pitching

1. What story do I want to tell? (a subject is not a story!) 2. Can I tell the story? (does my research support my pitch?) 3. Who do I want to sell my story to? (are they going to be interested? what is their process for pitching stories?) - all these steps require research

panel-to-panel transitions

1. moment-to moment 2. action-to-action 3. subject-to-subject 4. scene-to-scene 5. aspect-to-aspet 6. non-sequitur

Tips (food journalism, in general?)

1: when writing about touchy issues, find people to represent sides of an argument 2: (reminder) establish your interviews in scene (e.g. Rachel Dolezal shown folding laundry)

radio CNF

- Sarah Graham - encompasses trauma - e.g. Day 6 (?)

why use comics to tell the story?

- Scott McCloud: argues that comics appeal to others because you see a realistic figure, you see someone else - with a simplistic figure, you see yourself and can relate better Other Reasons - nuance in imagery, better explained in image - when it is in a graphic form, it is more digestible - being able to see it makes it easier to understand

clip example of oral history

- Son-in-Law of a War Veteran - son-in-law of subject asks certain questions to get certain responses - had a long interview (probably) - started at beginning, asked them questions to make them feel comfortable - asked general questions about the war

Scripted memoir and storytelling on the radio

- This type of memoir and storytelling is most similar to essay - there are no extraneous words, it's simple, and a sense of spontaneity is lost

Unscripted memoir and storytelling on the radio

- This type of memoir and storytelling is spontaneous, original - the person might say something they wouldn't otherwise.

webcomic

- a comic originally posted on the internet - can be any length or form - many are eventually published in book form

Serial

- a radio segment about a person who is convicted for killing his girlfriend - they tried to solve the case in real time, so the show didn't know the ending

examples of food travel

- "Kitchen Confidential" by Anthony Bourdain - going to Hong Kong and eating dim sum - Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell (voice of Violet in Incredibles) - eating a food that encapsulates a place

example of food participatory journalism

- "Living on the 100-Mile Diet" by Alisa Smith and J. B. MacKinnon

example of food essay

- "My Mom Couldn't Cook" by Tom Junod = personal essay on family cooking

John Steinbeck

- "Travels with Charley" - book-length memoir about 1960s road trip around the US made by Steinbeck and his poodle - wanted to know "What are Americans like today?" - his son believed that his father invented much of the dialogue in the book - people weren't sure he actually went on this trip - was a great storyteller

Women in Clothes

- "crowd-sourced" book - featured essays, interviews, photography, and art projects, and an unprecedented number of voices - reads like an oral history of personal style - emphasis always on the women, rather than the clothes - having a survey changes the texture of the story

André Gilroy

- "life in panels" - wrote set of terms

commands

- "site:" - "filetype:" - "intitle:" - can also also combine the commands

Studs Terkel

- 1912-2008, born in New York - author, broadcaster, writer - host of The Studs Terkel Program - Author of many Oral Histories (WWII, the Great Depression, People talking about that they do all day and how they feel about it) - all these topics are big and everyday/mundane - the voice you bring to these subjects can be wide-ranging

underground comics

- 1970s - R. Crumb was an influential figure

example of food memoir

- Eddie Huang, "Double Cup Love"

Oral History

- Oral History Centre at University of Winnipeg definition: the method of historical and social scientific inquiry and analysis that includes life histories, storytelling, narratives, and qualitative research - most commonly, interviewers sit down together with narrators to help them tell, record, and archive their life stories or their memories of a specific event, person, or phase in their life

examples of graphic CNF memoir

- Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi -- memoir about author's upbringing in Iran - Fun Home by Alison Bechdel -- sophisticated, brought up in funeral home, realization of sexuality, getting to know father - graphic non-fic is usually memoir

Day 6

- news magazine show - delivers a surprising take on the week - commentaries reflect a story that happened that week - subject should be self explanatory -- preferably, it is a story most people are aware of (if you have to spend your time explaining why this is a big deal, it could be a warning sign)

staying anonymous

- no guarantees when it comes to privacy, but it is a good start - use tails.boum.org - duckduckgo.com

requirements/how to write a commentary for radio

- not the same as writing for print - in radio, you need to write for the ear, this means: 1. One thought per sentence -- every thought gets its own sentence 2. Short sentences 3. Use active verbs -- talk to audience like it is happening 4. Speak plainly -- be colloquial and accessible

non-sequitur

- offers no logical relationship between panels whatsoever - appears the most infrequently - no connection between the two images

oral history anthropological roots

- one of most democratic forms of collecting info on the way we live (the way ordinary people experience certain events) - historians often overlook common people who experienced the events, and focus on key figures - oral histories wants to get everyone's perspective

writing about pop culture

- oral history has roots in anthropology - used in pop culture as well - used in thinking like (e.g.) the 10th anniversary of Gilmore Girls - certain key moments

powersearching.google.com

- refresher course for above information

moment-to-moment

- requires very little closure

options in radio memoir and storytelling

- scripted - unscripted - field recordings

some universal themes in travel memoir

- self discovery - mortality - culture shock - the need to be wealthy and privileged - expanding horizons - ambitions - knowing what can't be known otherwise (have to travel to find out something) - feeling smallness

comic book

- short, monthly magazine-format publication - also colloquially called a "flimsy", a "floppy", a "monthly", an "issue"

zine

- short, usually self-published "magazine" of comics - many underground comix artists of 1960s got their start by publishing zines - explore passions, rather than focus on money - sell at fairs, etc.

Examples of CNF Graphic forms

- snoopy - DC comics - Marvel

difference between subject and story

- subject: becomes a story thanks to the ANGLE you chose - a good pitch tells the editor WHAT your angle is going to be, WHY this is a good angle, WHY the subject is relevant now, WHY you are the right person to write the story, WHY it is a good fit with this particular publication - too many pitches from new journalists contain subjects, not stories!

Judith Moyer's definition of Oral History

- systematic collection of living persons/people's testimonies about their own experiences - not folklore, gossip, hearsay, or rumour - oral historians attempt to verify their findings, analyze them, and place them in an accurate historical context (fact checking) - oral historians are concerned with the storage of their findings for use by later scholars - they are not working with written documents, but there is still rigour involved

graphic novel

- tends to get used as a term for any longform comics narrative - technically, a graphic novel is a FICTIONAL longform comics narrative telling one story published all at once - basically, a novel written using comics - all graphic novels are comics, but not all comics are graphic novels - graphic memoirs and trade paperbacks are often referred to as graphic novels

centralops.net

- use if you don't know who's behind a website - doesn't always work because some people use masking services

myactivity.google.com

- useful when you no longer remember the URL to the useful page you found last week

research

- when asking a question, how would you prove something? - can start with google; reddit is also a good source of info - if you run into websites offline, you can use websites such as: - archive.org, then copy-paste URL - visualping.io, monitors pages for you - followthatpage.com

Svetlana Alexievich

- won Novel prize in 2015; only one of a handful of laureates to focus more on creative non-fiction - interview: top layer of banality; there so it doesn't hurt as much - allows you to get through it and live your life - culture suffering -wrote Voices from Chernobyl - used voice for different reasons: like a narrator, gives your story in driest ways possible, also tells you what the stakes of this are - more specific accounts, some display the humour of eastern Europeans

differences between radio and podcasting

Podcast - listen for a specific topic - ability to focus on niche content - less interruptive than radio (but also starting to do same with ads, etc.) - ability to do extended segments - less stress Radio - more interactive due to real time call-in and dialog between callers and host - program planning is usually more disciplined - more interruptive, littered with advertisements and commercials - imposes a degree of stress and apprehension - always pressure to move on, cut off hosts and guests even if conversation is excellent

basics of a good commentary piece

successful commentary pieces have a number of things in common: - focus -- intro, then go into topic right away, one strong point being made. there is a research element. - start -- intro read by host - brevity -- 90s script is good target range - researched -- read up on your story, find out what's already been discussed - personal -- opinionated, casual voice - ending -- commentary must have an end