Author Archives

Aileen Gallagher
Aileen Gallagher is an associate professor of magazine journalism at Syracuse University's Newhouse School and the Education Editor of MediaShift. She was previously a senior editor at NYMag.com and has written for New York Magazine, Vulture, Slate, Poynter, Bust, and many others.
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Guns in America: A Comprehensive Look

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We’re pleased to bring College Longreads back for the academic year. Even if you had a productive summer, you still didn’t do as much as the 2014 News21 team. The Carnegie-Knight News21 is an investigative multimedia reporting project based out of Arizona State but staffed by student journalists from some sixteen universities. This year’s project, Gun Wars, resulted in dozens of stories, videos, interactive graphics and more about gun rights and regulations in the United States. The slick presentation is supported by deep, solid reporting, the kind that’s time consuming (interviews) and sometimes just plain tedious (comparing suicide-by-gun data, state by state). News21 presents its findings with empathy but without judgment, a rarity in a media culture where reporting is often presented through the lens of a particular point of view. So read, watch, and explore this lush journalism experience.

Gun Wars

Carnegie-Knight News21 Fellows | News21.com

September 10, 2014
Categories: College, Nonfiction
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College Students: Send Us Your Summer Stories

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Student journalists and recent grads! Are you writing for an internship this summer? Share your work with a wider audience via College Longreads. We’ll consider published news or nonfiction articles or essays of 1,500 words or longer. E-mail links to aileen@longreads.com, or post links to Twitter tagged #college #longreads.

Send us your stories

June 18, 2014
Categories: College
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The Last Night in the Shelter – Our College Pick

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What gets published is rarely what got pitched. Sources bail, circumstances shift, conflicts fizzle. Reporting out stories that go nowhere is a frustrating, tedious business – unless, of course, they turn into something good. Such was Wyatt Stayner’s experience in putting together a story called “Getting Out of Poverty in Oregon,” this week’s College Longreads selection. Stayner’s story, about a family’s last night in a homeless shelter, began as a piece about child poverty back in January. He shifted to families, but the subjects he found backed out after their first interview. A full two months after his initial pitch, Stayner, a student at the University of Oregon, found his story.

Getting Out of Poverty in Oregon

Wyatt Stayner, Flux Magazine, June 4, 2014, 8 minutes (1,950 words)

June 11, 2014
Categories: College, Nonfiction
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A Chinese Photojournalist Becomes a Star in Iowa: Our College Pick

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Beginning writers are fond of openings stories with quotes that aren’t strong enough to lead with. Who is the speaker? Why do we care? Until they have more experience distinguishing a great quote from a merely good one, journalism instructors urge students not to open with some one else’s words. In a profile, opening with a strong quote can give us a sense of the subject’s voice and identify—who they are, and why we care. In her profile of fellow Iowa State University student Yue Wu, writer Elaine Godfrey manages to use her subject’s voice to tell the story without falling prey to the trap of stringing quotes together. By the end of the profile you wish you could meet Wu. Thanks to Godfrey, you have.

Yue Wu

Elaine Godfrey | Ethos Magazine | February 28, 2014 | 12 minutes (2,924 words)

June 3, 2014
Categories: College
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On College Media Coverage of the UC Santa Barbara Shootings

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College newspapers serve as incubators for the real deal, at least until your local news becomes a national story. When a big story happens, like last week’s shooting of UC Santa Barbara students, the college newspapers often have the best coverage. They know the place and the players. Trusted by and familiar to sources, they get stories the national press can’t. And when the national attention turns elsewhere, the local paper — the college paper — stays on the story and follows it for months and months. So this week we salute the staffs of two college newspapers, The Channels (Santa Barbara City College) and The Daily Nexus (UC Santa Barbara) for their ongoing coverage of this tragedy.

Read more: The Channels

Read more: The Daily Nexus

May 28, 2014
Categories: College
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From Boston To Outer Space: Our College Pick

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Good journalism explains complicated subjects in ways that the audience can understand. Great journalism makes those subjects exciting. In his story about an organization at Boston University that’s trying to build a rocket, Jake Lucas conveys both why the students love what they do and what exactly is so difficult about it. When Lucas writes about the final test of the Mk IV Quasar, the audience shares a victory with the exceptional students who built it.

The Road to Space

Jake Lucas | The Quad | May 9, 2014 |10 minutes (2,488 words)

May 21, 2014
Categories: College, Nonfiction
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Finding a Life in the Details: Our College Pick

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Learning to capture the details that matter can take years. Beginning writers rely on physical traits to explain subjects, or do a notebook dump of descriptions that tell the audience nothing much at all. Connor Radnovich’s profile of Mike White, a Gulf War veteran with ALS, demonstrates a studied use of detail. Radnovich tells us how tall White is when standing, “which he does only with help, and rarely.” He finds out how much White’s wheelchair costs. He notes that White’s shoes are “out-of-the-box clean.” He mixes observant reporting with a novelist’s turn of phrase to offer a memorable picture of White’s life. This story earned Radnovich, a recent graduate of Arizona State University, a second-place win in the personality/profile category of the 2013-2014 Hearst Journalism Awards.

Mike White’s War

Connor Radnovich | Phoenix New Times | March 25, 2014 | 19 minutes (4,723 words)

May 14, 2014
Categories: College, Nonfiction
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Breaking the Silence About Sexual Assault on Campus: Our College Pick

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UCLA’s Daily Bruin published a comprehensive package about sexual assault on campus just days after the White House released a report outlining procedural guidelines for colleges to follow when dealing with such cases. In her thorough story about UCLA’s policies and procedures, Kate Parkinson-Morgan explains the intricacies of Title IX, the Clery Act, and other legislation that governs a college’s response to sexual crimes. But what makes the journalism so searing is Parkinson-Morgan’s delicate, angering chronicles of six survivors’ stories. The Daily Bruin also gave space for four women to tell their story in their own words. Parkinson-Morgan earned her subjects’ trust. In return she gave them the power of their own story.

Breaking the Silence

Kate Parkinson-Morgan | The Daily Bruin | May 5, 2014 | 12 minutes (3,051 words)

May 7, 2014
Categories: College
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Taking the Long View on Sports Reporting: Our College Pick

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It’s been almost a month since the UConn Huskies won both NCAA basketball titles, but the pangs of withdrawal are evident on certain basketball-crazed campuses around the country. Without a good game, we turn instead to a good story. Cal Poly beat Texas Southern to secure a spot in the tournament and lost in the first round to Wichita State. It was Cal Poly’s first appearance in the NCAA Tournament, much thanks to forward Chris Eversley. In his profile of Eversley, writer J.J. Jenkins laces a narrative between the unlikely journey of the team and the personal triumph of one player. This is not a particularly unusual angle for a Cinderella sports story. But as a longtime sportswriter for Cal Poly’s Mustang News, Jenkins can write with the deep familiarity that comes with covering a team over time.

Eversley’s Ascent

J.J. Jenkins | Mustang News | April 2, 2014 | 18 minutes (4,389 words)

April 30, 2014
Categories: College
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What Undergrads Talk About When They Talk About Money: Our College Pick

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When administrators, parents, and professors discuss money in the context of higher ed, they mean student loans and tuition. But when students talk money, it’s much more about who’s got it and who doesn’t. For students of modest means at America’s elite colleges, money acts as a barrier to extracurricular or social activities, or even friendships. What’s even more aggravating is that the students who have money can be blissfully ignorant about their peers’ financial reality. College kids are closer to being in high school than they are to being adults, and those social challenges like peer pressure can feel big in the dormitory. Sam Brodey’s article in 34th Street starts an important conversation among students about how to talk about, and how to understand, money as social currency.

Not Enough

Sam Brodey | 34th Street | April 3, 2014 | 8 minutes (2,085 words)

April 21, 2014
Categories: College
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