In this faculty spotlight, we are pleased to introduce you to Dale Maharidge, a Pulitzer Prize-winning professor of journalism at Columbia Journalism School who is the author of the forthcoming book F__ked at Birth: Recalibrating the American Dream for the 2020s, which will be published by Unnamed Press in January 2021. Professor Maharidge's new book combines memoir and investigative journalism to explore the realities of being poor in America in the coming decade, as the pandemic, economic crisis and social revolution upend the country.
A full-time teacher at Columbia Journalism School since 2001, Professor Maharidge teaches Master of Science Program students how to report and write about social issues with empathy and depth. "I find that the students have made me a better writer," he explained. "Teaching has invigorated me. Teaching is an extension of what I've always done as a journalist. And I tell my students: 'you are teachers' - if you're doing your work right, then you're educating the public about things that aren't known. I call it 'Star Trek journalism' - go where no human has gone before and do journalism that we need and that no one else is doing."
This spring, Professor Maharidge is offering "Narrative Social Issues/First Person Immersion," a 15-week Master of Science Program class about the art of the written word — storytelling rooted in deeply reported journalism about the myriad social-political-cultural issues facing the world today. It’s journalism that is literary and "documentary" in the manner of the great nonfiction writing produced during the 1930s by such writers as James Agee, Edmund Wilson, Louis Adamic, and by such current practitioners as Joan Didion, Kate Boo, Ted Conover and Rachel Aviv. The class is aimed at students who want to produce serious narrative journalism in books and podcasts, for long-form sites such as the Atavist and Narratively, and The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Harper's; quarterlies such as VQR or the Oxford American. Students craft a final 2,000-word-plus written piece, to be developed through several drafts and through workshopping sessions.
Professor Maharidge teaches his "Narrative Social Issues/First Person Immersion" students to produce rigorous, powerful works of literary journalism that have the potential to be published and to make an impact beyond the classroom. "I have a whole class on pitching," he explained. "Early on, I give them my pitching tips, and I have samples from former students and some of my pitches that have worked. And I have some examples of pitches that are maybe not so good. Getting your work into the world is, for me, part of the whole encompassing process."
Prior to joining the Columbia Journalism School faculty, Professor was a visiting professor at Stanford University for ten years, and, before that, he spent fifteen years as a newspaper reporter who wrote for papers including The Cleveland Plain Dealer and The Sacramento Bee. He has also written for such magazines as Rolling Stone, The Nation, George, and Mother Jones.
In addition to F__ked at Birth, Professor Maharidge is the author of eleven books, many of which are illustrated with the work of photographer Michael Williamson. His first book, Journey to Nowhere: The Saga of the New Underclass, would inspire Bruce Springsteen to write the songs "Youngstown" and "The New Timer;" it was reissued in 1996 with an introduction by Springsteen. His second book, And Their Children After Them, won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction. His other books include The Coming White Minority: California, Multiculturalism & the Nation's Future; Denison, Iowa: Searching for the Soul of America Through the Secrets of a Midwest Town; Someplace Like America: Tales from the New Great Depression; and Bringing Mulligan Home: The Other Side of the Good War. He recently created the Audible podcast The Dead Drink First, and, with adjunct professor Jessica Bruder ('04 M.S.), co-authored the 2020 book Snowden's Box: Trust in the Age of Surveillance.
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