This seminar will focus on the profile, the multi-thousand-word portrait of an individual, which remains a mainstay of magazine journalism. In this course students will develop their skills as practitioners and critics of the form by reading and writing some of the best—and, occasionally, some of the worst—examples. Students will read, analyze, and write long-form profiles, consider the advantages and drawbacks of access, and look at writing about the famous and the unknown. Interview techniques, research methods, structure, and language will be explored with the goal of understanding what separates an ordinary profile from an enduring portrait.
