UPDATE: I’ve moved my the course blog here: http://www.ayeshanasir.blogspot.com (Apologies for any confusion!)
“Be a child again. Teach me poetry. Teach me the rhythm of the sea. Return to the words their initial innocence. Give birth to me from a grain of wheat, not from a wound. Give birth to me and take me back to a world before meaning, so I can embrace you on the grass. Do you hear me? A world before meaning. The tall trees walked with us as trees, not meaning. The naked moon crawled with us. A moon, not a silver platter, for a meaning. Be a child again. Teach me poetry. Teach me the rhythm of the sea.”
– In Presence of Absence, Mahmoud Darwish
I’m enrolled in a course called News Reporting and Writing. We are to run a newsroom of sorts in which we are documenting our time together and what we learned from the stories we wrote. In pursuing an education – in the conventional and formal sense – one requirement of our teacher is to maintain journal entries. Our journals will be documenting our time working on the stories we seek or stumble upon. It is likely that my blog will be held to a scrutiny of a different kind and I am to ask you, reader, to be patient with my writing. It may grow colder and far too formal for any of us to recognise. What I can try and do is bring back the makola who would speak of the stranger things. Perhaps then, this assignment will be more of an attempt to educate not only my readership but also myself. That should be fun. I’m assigned the Campus beat where I’m to primarily work as an editor. My reporters have picked out stories they want to report on and I’m thinking of what good can come around if we begin to discuss, share and pass on what we have learned in our time here. Maybe our stories may never end up on the rundown of a major news organisation. Maybe we won’t ever be the subject of a headline, or even a shoulder. But regardless of that, I will try to share insights into this class. Perhaps someone out there will read it, seek what is good in it and make it a part of their life.
Ayesha
Interesting finds:
1. BBC’s news style guide http://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/journalism/news-style-guide (Shared by our teacher during this week’s class)
2. StoryCorps 414 My Name is Yusor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTES5Hr41sE&feature=youtu.be (A podcast with Yusor Abu-Salha)
3. Dove’s campaign on “A mother’s body” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuNBduVqX4Y
4. David Carr’s interview with Laura Poitras, Glenn Greenwald and Fdward Snowden http://timestalks.com/laura-poitras-glenn-greenwald-edward-snowden.html
عائشہ ناصر 