January 5, 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m.
Non-Fiction Book Writing – Prof. Glenn Lewis
Take this one-day crash course on the essentials of conceptualizing, researching, organizing and writing a professional-level non-fiction book proposal. The seminar also focuses on techniques for reporting and writing non-fiction books. Students are given insights into negotiating book contracts as well. The session draws on Prof. Glenn Lewis’ experiences as a book packager, agent, writer and book proposal doctor. A guest editor may also be invited to participate. Prof. Lewis is director of the journalism program at York College and is a consortial faculty member at the CUNY J-School.

January 5, 1-5 p.m.
How to Do the Intimate Story – James Estrin and Jane Gross
This class will cover all the steps involved in doing an intimate story, including finding the right subject, conducting the research, planning the all-important initial conversation, managing time, and solving unexpected problems. We will also cover outlining, writing and/or producing the story as a multimedia piece. Photographer Jim Estrin and writer Jane Gross have teamed up on several such in-depth profiles at The New York Times.

January 6 , 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Making Sense of the Census – Rose Marie Fogarty
This session will help students navigate the U.S. Census site, focusing on the American FactFinder tool and other resources that will let them find the data they need quickly and easily. Rose Marie Fogarty is an information service specialist at the U.S. Census Bureau.

January 7-9, 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Covering Personal Finance – Amy Dunkin and Toddi Gutner
In economic times both good and bad, reporters who can write intelligently about investing and financial planning are in great demand. This workshop will start with a discussion of the importance of financial literacy. We’ll then talk about how to cover such topics as saving and investing, college and retirement planning, real estate, insurance, and taxes. The workshop will be taught by two veteran journalists: Amy Dunkin was BusinessWeek’s longtime personal finance editor and now works as director of special projects at the CUNY J-School. Toddi Gutner covered personal finance at Forbes and BusinessWeek and is currently a contributing writer at The Wall Street Journal and the Conference Board, an economics and business think tank.

January 7-9, 2-5 p.m.
Understanding Business – Prof. Sarah Bartlett
This series of three workshops is designed to help students who haven’t chosen the business concentration incorporate a basic understanding of business into their journalist work. It will be taught by Prof. Sarah Bartlett, director of the business and economics reporting program at the CUNY J-School.

January 7-8, 2:30-5:30 p.m.
Voice Coaching Workshop – Michael Lysak
The workshop begins with a classroom lecture on the basics of broadcast announcing using audio samples to demonstrate concepts. Topics covered include diaphragmatic breathing, considering the audience, listener distractions, radio versus TV, reporting versus anchoring, differing styles, pacing, and sounding conversational. Practical exercises are taught and demonstrated. The second part of the workshop involves a hands-on voice coaching session in the radio studio. A professional radio newscast is played and analyzed. Students then read newscast scripts. After receiving immediate feedback and critique, students get the opportunity to try again, implementing the skills they have learned. Michael Lysak oversees programming and operations for Bloomberg’s national radio network. Previously, he has been a news anchor and reporter at WCBS, WOR, WNEW and WRKS (Kiss-FM), all in New York City.

Jan. 8, 10 a.m. – 1 p.m.
Preparing a Resume Reel – Eden Pontz
Eden Pontz, executive producer of CNN New York, will conduct this half-day seminar on producing a professional reel. The session will cover what a television news recruiter looks for, what should be included if applying for a job as a reporter or producer, and the interview process.

January 8, 5:30-8:30 p.m.
The Art of the Personal Essay – Paula Derrow
In this three-hour hands-on workshop, students will work with Paula Derrow, SELF magazine’s articles director and editor of the Self Expression column, to shape a short personal essay into something artful, meaningful and publishable. Participants will learn what makes a good personal essay (and what’s simply naval gazing), what to leave in and what to take out, how to pitch to editors and how to take personal writing to the next level. Each student should come with an original 600- to 800-word personal essay (Think the “Modern Love” or “Lives” columns in The New York Times) to be critiqued in class.

Jan. 12-13, 9:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m.
The Digital Journalist – Michael Rosenblum
Journalism is undergoing its greatest revolution since the invention of the printing press, and once again it is being driven by a new technology. Today, small, broadcast quality digital video cameras and laptop edit programs are changing almost every aspect of journalism, from newspapers and magazines to television news. Add to that the capacity of the web to ‘broadcast’ full motion video globally for free, and open to everyone, and you have some insight into the changes that the world of journalism is about to undergo. In this workshop we are going to look at these new technologies and teach students how to use these new tools to report in an entirely digital world. A former network journalist, Michael Rosenblum was the founder and president of NYT TV, and president and founder of Video News International, a global VJ newsgathering company. He has trained reporters around the globe in video journalism.

January 12-13, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.
Copy Editing Essentials – Jennifer Johnson Hicks
Copy editors are a publication’s last line of defense against bad writing and factual errors. And as stories are published online with increasing speed, the copy editor’s role becomes even more vital. The ongoing news cycle also makes it more important for reporters to become better self editors. This workshop will focus on the basics of copy editing including grammar, style, punctuation, word usage, spelling, headline writing and news judgment. We will also talk about how copy desks work and careers in copy editing. Jennifer Johnson Hicks is an assistant news editor at The Wall Street Journal Online, where she oversees breaking news and production for the Web site in the evenings. She also is on the adjunct faculty at the CUNY J-School.

January 12, 13, 20
9-5
News Photography – John Smock
This workshop led by veteran photojournalist John Smock will help you improve your photographic skills for use in all media. We will cover the technical and conceptual aspects of basic camera usage, composition, visual vocabulary, photo editing, lighting, and Photoshop. The workshop will concentrate on practical tools and problem solving. We will learn how to handle portraits, news conferences, politics, intimate photo essays, and international conflicts. We will also learn how to photograph while recording audio, shooting video or reporting for print. An afternoon session will concentrate on producing audio slide shows and cross-platform storytelling. Whether you are a beginner or intermediate photographer, you will learn the tricks of the trade that professional photojournalists use. There will be assignments between Days 2 and 3.

Jan. 13
9:30-12:30
Starting a News Venture – Joseph Kolb
Rather than become victims of the next wave of media cutbacks, resourceful reporters and managers are starting their own news ventures. This seminar describes where the opportunities lie and how to select the right venture. It delves into business structures, marketing, management, and most importantly, making the conversion from information provider to entrepreneur. Joseph J. Kolb is the founder and publisher of The Gallup Herald Publishing Company in Gallup, N.M. He is also a Sulzberger Fellow at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

January 13, 15, 20, 22
5:30-8:30
Game On: Sports Writing 101 – Wayne Coffey
A hands-on writing and reporting workshop, the course will introduce students to the energizing world of sports journalism, covering everything from deadline-driven game stories to reporting-driven investigative pieces. While the course will be liberally interspersed with anecdotes from Derek Jeter’s Stadium locker to Michael Phelps’ Olympic pool and other locales on the journalistic front lines, the main emphasis will be on time-tested reporting and interviewing techniques – on turning out well-crafted pieces of writing and finding freshness in a sports world awash in cliches. Wayne Coffey is a special reporter at the Daily News, where he has worked for 23 years. The author of more than two dozen books, including The New York Times bestseller, The Boys of Winter, a chronicle of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team, Coffey has been voted one of the nation’s top sports feature writers by the Associated Press Sports Editors.

January 14-15
1-5 Freelance Workshop – Prof. Fred Kaufman and Ellen Walterscheid
This workshop explores such topics as: understanding the market, getting to the right editor, pitching the story, revising the pitch, understanding the contract, negotiating a good price, working with editors and polishing the freelance piece. The workshop will be taught by Prof. Frederick Kaufman, an active freelancer and consortial faculty member at the CUNY J-School, and freelancer Ellen Walterscheid, the J-School’s former career services director. Guests will include a legal expert and several editors of national publications, who will vet student pitches. This workshop will focus on the magazine market.

January 15, 16, 23
9-5
News Photography – James Estrin
This workshop led by veteran New York Times photographer Jim Estrin will help you improve your photographic skills for use in all media. We will cover the technical and conceptual aspects of basic camera usage, composition, visual vocabulary, photo editing, lighting, and Photoshop. The workshop will concentrate on practical tools and problem solving. We will learn how to handle portraits, news conferences, politics, intimate photo essays, and international conflicts. We will also learn how to photograph while recording audio, shooting video or reporting for print. An afternoon session will concentrate on producing audio slide shows and cross-platform storytelling. Whether you are a beginner or intermediate photographer, you will learn the tricks of the trade that professional photojournalists use. There will be assignments between Days 2 and 3. I’ll be available during that week for consultation. There will also be several guest speakers, including photographer Fred Conrad and multimedia producer Sarah Kramer from The New York Times.

January 16
9-4 Web Tools for Interactive Storytelling – Sandeep Junnarkar
Interactivity enriches storytelling on the web and you don’t need to be a programmer to create compelling timelines, news quizzes, maps and polling to get your audience involved in your piece. This one-day workshop explores the use of free and easy to use web tools to bring another dimension to your work. Associate Professor Sandeep Junnarkar teaches interactive media at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. He is the former New York bureau chief of CNET News.com, and has specialized in writing about technologies used in different industries.

January 16
2-5
How to Find Stories – Mark McSherry
Reporters have obvious and no-so-obvious places to look for nuggets of information they can turn into news stories. This workshop reveals those less obvious sources of news and advises on how to transform them into scoops, sometimes with just a few phone calls. The sources include help-wanted ads in local newspapers, obscure technical or academic journals, and regulatory filings. The class also identifies certain groups of people who are more likely to be good information sources than others. The instructor, Mark McSherry, has been a reporter and editor for various media organizations in New York, the Asia-Pacific region, and Britain for 28 years. He currently works for Reuters.

January 20
9-5
Food Writing – Indrani Sen and Prof. Fred Kaufman
Writing about food must be as simple as eating and cooking it, right? Wrong. Food writing requires more than a fine-tuned palate and a good recipe for holiday cookies. Locavores, the Farm Bill, food safety scares, commodity prices, food access – in this post-Michael Pollan era, food writing is increasingly complex. The good news is, it’s also an exciting and growing field. Even as circulation declines at newspapers and many magazines, food publications are seeing modest growth. CUNY J-School Craft professors Fred Kaufman and Indrani Sen lead this day-long workshop that will introduce students to the fundamentals of food writing. Kaufman is the author of “A Short History of the American Stomach,” and has written on food culture and other subjects for Harper’s magazine, The New Yorker, Gourmet, Gastronomica, and The New York Times magazine. Sen is a former Newsday reporter who has written for The New York Times dining section and Saveur magazine, among others.

January 20-21
9-5
Using Excel in Reporting – Jo Craven McGinty
Excel is a very useful tool to reporters for organizing and analyzing data, managing story records and progress, contacts, analyzing polls and surveys, spotting trends and enterprise stories, and turning numbers into graphics. Reporters in all four of the J-School concentration areas will benefit from knowing how to work with spreadsheets and manipulate them. And Excel skills are essential for those interested in doing any form of investigative journalism. Jo Ann Craven trains reporters at the New York Times in how to use Excel to improve their stories and uncover exclusive stories.

January 21
9-12
Tips, Tricks and Techniques for Time Management – Tim Harper
If there aren’t enough hours in the day or days in the week to get everything done – finding ideas, preparing pitches, reporting and writing, keeping up on Facebook – here’s a breezy, fast-moving half-day workshop led by CUNY J-School Craft Prof. Tim Harper that aims to help you develop your own individual time management system. The goal is efficiency and productivity: not only getting things done, but getting everything done, and doing it all well.

January 21, 22
3-6 Voice Coaching Workshop – Michael Lysak
The workshop begins with a classroom lecture on the basics of broadcast announcing using audio samples to demonstrate concepts. Topics covered include diaphragmatic breathing, considering the audience, listener distractions, radio versus TV, reporting versus anchoring, differing styles, pacing, and sounding conversational. Practical exercises are taught and demonstrated. The second part of the workshop involves a hands-on voice coaching session in the radio studio. A professional radio newscast is played and analyzed. Students then read newscast scripts. After receiving immediate feedback and critique, students get the opportunity to try again, implementing the skills they have learned. Michael Lysak oversees programming and operations for Bloomberg’s national radio network. Previously, he has been a news anchor and reporter at WCBS, WOR, WNEW and WRKS (Kiss-FM), all in New York City.

Jan. 21, 22
10-4
Copy Editing Essentials – Mona Houck
Copy editors are a publication’s last line of defense against bad writing and factual errors. And as stories are published online with increasing speed, the copy editor’s role becomes even more vital. The ongoing news cycle also makes it more important for reporters to become better self editors. This workshop will focus on the basics of copy editing including grammar, style, punctuation, word usage, spelling, headline writing and news judgment. We will also talk about how copy desks work and careers in copy editing. Mona Houck has been a reporter and editor for newspapers ranging from a small Iowa weekly to The New York Times, where she is an editor on the national desk.

January 21-23
1-5 (Jan. 21) and 9-5 (22,23)
Flash and Interactivity for Interactive Majors – Russell Chun
Learn what Flash can do and how it is used to present media-rich, interactive and compelling stories for the web. Students will learn how to integrate text, photos, audio, and video and incorporate buttons for non-linear navigation. We’ll address the important questions of where and when to use Flash versus other kinds of delivery methods. We’ll survey existing new media sites to evaluate techniques and discuss how other news and non-news sites use Flash to present content. We’ll also explore online tools that help build rich Flash content. Russell Chun, an adjunct at the CUNY and Columbia graduate journalism schools, is an educational media developer and the author of the Flash Visual Quick Pro Guides and the official Flash Classroom-in-a-Book guide.

January 22
9-5
Travel Writing – Tim Harper
One reason most of us got into journalism was to see the world, and tell people about it. CUNY J-School Craft Prof. Tim Harper leads this workshop that aims both to inspire and inform, whether your goal is to become a full-time travel writer or you merely want to supplement your day job with stories you do while on vacation. The sessions will cover everything from how to find and pitch travel stories to what you can write off on your taxes when you get home, with an emphasis on what travel editors are buying now. Tim has a broad range of travel writing experience – books, magazine articles, newspaper stories and online – with datelines from China, the Middle East, Central America and across Europe and the U.S. One session will include a pitch slam, so bring your own ideas for travel stories.