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Cool Course

Flash Forward | Winter 2018

Course number:
JMC 40095/JMC 60195

Title: Music, Movements and Media: Rolling Stone @ 50

Instructor: Stephanie Danes Smith, BA ā€™79, assistant professor, School of Journalism and Mass Communication (JMC), College of Communication and Information (CCI)

Description: Special topics course offered the first five weeks of fall semester 2017, open to undergrad/grad students of any major. This one-credit course explores the history, authentic voices, visual storytelling, personalities, social impact and relevance of Rolling Stone

Guest speakers: Jacqueline Marino, BA ā€™94, JMC associate professor, on Rolling Stoneā€™s seminal writers and journalistic forms; Jan Leach,
MA ā€™06, JMC associate professor and director of Ńż¼§Ö±²„ Stateā€™s Media Law Center for Ethics and Access, on the ethical implications of Rolling Stoneā€™s provocative reporting. (Jann Wenner ā€” co-founder, publisher and majority owner of Rolling Stoneā€”had agreed to Skype into the course, but he canceled the session after he announced in the media that he was selling his stake in the magazine.)

Readings: Articles from Rolling Stone, Time, American Scholar, NPR and the recently published book, 50 Years of Rolling Stone; selected song lyrics

Field trip: Exploration of the magazineā€™s iconic images and artifacts during a special, after-hours tour at Rock and Roll Hall of Fameā€™s ā€œRolling Stone/50 Yearsā€ anniversary exhibit that ran through late November.

Projects: Three reflection papers on Rolling Stone writers, coverage of significant countercultures and the ethics of some of its controversial reporting; plus a final three-page paper for graduate students. In a about selling the magazine, Jann Wenner is quoted as saying, ā€œI think itā€™s time for young people to run it,ā€ so in a group paper the students offered specific suggestions for the magazine's future direction. Their manifesto, called ā€œBeing Jann Wenner,ā€ was published on medium.com.

Purpose: Pilot course for CCIā€™s ā€œMedia and Movementsā€ new experiential learning initiative to help students apply their communication skills to significant social issues. The program officially launches in spring 2018 with a 15-week course that will focus on alleviating Ohioā€™s opioid epidemic (also taught by Professor Smith).

Outcome: Apply lessons learned from a scholarly examination of Rolling Stone to emerging intersections of media, popular culture and social movements.

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POSTED: Friday, February 9, 2018 02:33 PM
Updated: Friday, December 9, 2022 01:24 AM