MECM10006: Introduction to Media Writing

Folio (80%) - Part 1 (35%) due end of semester, Part 2 (45%) due during examination period. Tutorial participation (10%), pitching (10%). The assessments listed in the handbook are actually out of date.

The only other review of this subject wasn't a positive one, so I thought I might try give a different perspective on it.

Introduction to Media Writing is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin. Over the course of the semester, you'll learn how to write for the media in a number of formats, and by the end you'll end up with a neat little folio of all your writing. There are six pieces you'll have to write - a magazine profile, a personal narrative article (PNA), a news story, an op-ed (opinion piece), a travel piece, and a review. Additionally, you'll have to write a 75 word 'pitch' for each of these pieces, where you try sell your piece to an imaginary editor. They're extremely strict about this word limit for some reason - if you go a single word over, you'll get a 0. The logic behind this is that concision is a hallmark of good writing. Yeah, I dunno. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The tutorials are extremely hands-on: after the first few weeks, you'll start bringing in some of your pieces to be workshopped in class. The first draft of your magazine profile will be due in week 3, while your PNA and op-ed drafts are due in weeks 5 and 8 respectively. It's a bit confronting the first time you do it, sitting in a room while everyone else discusses your writing, but you get used to it pretty quickly. Naturally, you have to be open to criticism - there was one girl in my tutorial who got extremely defensive whenever someone would critique her work, and it became exhausting whenever we had to workshop her pieces. Basically, leave your ego at the door. For the most part, though, the tutorials were extremely laid-back. Maybe I was just lucky with the tutor and classmates that I had, but our classes were really enjoyable. Our discussions got off-topic a lot of the time and we were prone to tangents (one time we spent about 20 minutes talking about how PTV officers are dickheads), but even the workshopping itself was interesting. Most people I talked to in my tute said it was easily their favourite subject this semester.

Having a mark for tutorial participation is a bit shitty IMO, but it's there and it means that you'll have to speak up in tutorials pretty often. I'm not sure how hard this is marked, but I tried to voice at least some constructive criticism for every piece that we workshopped and I ended up with 8/10.

The only real negative for this subject is that the marking is definitely extremely harsh. One of my friends told me that no-one in his tute got higher than a H2B for the first PNA draft. Your mark will increase if you workshop your pieces well, but only three of your six pieces will receive this treatment. If you're looking to bump your GPA up, then I'd stay away from this subject unless you're a very strong writer.
The harshness of the marking pulled my rating down a little bit, but overall, Introduction to Media Writing was a thoroughly enjoyable subject. And if you don't enjoy it, you can always submit your pieces to a few newspapers and try earn your subject fee back.

Yes

Doug Hendrie is the head lecturer, but it'll change from week to week. All the lecturers had pretty extensive experience writing for the media, but some were more entertaining than others. One (my tutor) got into a fight with Hilary Duff once.

This is Arts bruh, ain't no exams here.

4/5

The prescribed text is Word Bytes. I only really glanced at it, but it seemed like a pretty decent guide to the different types of pieces you'll have to write. You can find a PDF of it for free pretty easily if you know where to look, so it's probably not worth buying. There's also a reader available from the Co-op which is filled with a bunch of sample pieces - if you find yourself struggling with writing any of the pieces, it'd be a good idea to purchase it as none of them are posted on the LMS.

One 1 hour lecture and one 2 hour tutorial per week

Semester 2, 2015

H1 (83)