The New English.

Well, Dr. Longinow sure knows how to sell journalism as a major. “Creative nonfiction narrative” is what he calls it. His perception is that English departments across the country are feeling pressure to place emphasis on post-modern literature and are steering away from writing and the development of the narrative writer. Journalism, he says, is the new English.

The class that I am sitting in on, Dr. Longinow’s Foundations of Journalism, is currently engaged in a lab assignment. The students were given complimentary notebooks sent by The New York Times and sent out to interview a secretary somewhere on campus. They were sent with the question, “How does God show up here at work?” They were encouraged to observe sights, sounds, smells, taste and texture. THIS is the journalism that I was originally drawn to. Personality profiles, feature stories, stories with heart.

What were the words of C.S. Lewis that Matt quoted on the tour earlier? We are souls with bodies? I see a good “creative nonfiction narrative” article that way. A story shouldn’t be facts thrown together, it should be a soul in the form of an article. We are not simply scientific beings; love and desire are not simply hormones being moved around. A story is not simply the form to which we mold it, it transcends the placement of paragraph and number of words in a lead.